Netflix finally cancelled The Witcher 

It boggles my mind how tf can anyone f*** this up. You had the PERFECT lead actor, the perfect source material, a solid well established fanbase of the books/games willing to support you. How tf did you fumble this easy W???

Congratulations to Netflix. They always manage to mess up every single time.

Imagine being a writer. Your story becomes internationally popular and gets adapted. The chosen, famous lead actor is a huge fanboy of your lore. Then, this happens...

"especially in the fantasy world, it felt like these worlds were predominantly white".. You're telling me that a story about Witchers fighting creatures that exist in *Slavic Folklore*, in a section of the world with *mainly north-eastern European architecture/naming conventions and politics*, written by a *Polish Fantasy writer*. Has a predominantly white population? That's crazy.. Who would've thought. They could've EASILY stuck to the source material, and then went on to make a good spin-off (not you Blood Origin) about say a previously eluded part of the continent, such as I dunno.. Zerrikania? If only we knew characters from there that could tie into that lore, oh wait. Tea and Vea. Maybe they could give their own spin on what is literally a Matriarchal Queendom, that has a culture revolving around Warrior Women and dragon cults? It's.. RIGHT THERE. Give me that, give me a story about other cool parts of the Witcher world, not this bastardized garbage

You memorized all the textbooks. You went to all the classes. You did the extra work. You even had an invisible cheat sheet. And you STILL fail the exam. That's legendary stupidity.

Never, ever bastardize the source material.

They tried to frame henry Cavill as toxic abusive with fanboyism, but henry just want the story to be faithfull. And now this happen.

No one is going to be able to convince me that Fingilla’s casting, a unnaturally beautiful sorceress who has a resemblance to Yennefer, wasn’t done out of pure malice and spite. Like you didn’t have to do that, and now you have forced me to denigrate the actress, because of how absolutely awful the casting choice was.

imagine getting a life changing role only because the casting director thought you were really ugly and it had nothing to do with your acting skill you spent decades working on

"does powerful things to the people watching" Offending people hard enough to give them violent revulsion doesn't make your work 'powerful'.

I would have liked to se the conversation they hade when the writers wanted Geralt to use Roach´s death as a small humor moment to the fact that he names all hes horses Roach. When the writers and showrunner just gave up and told Henry to come up with a better scene himself he has to have been just refusing to do whatever they wanted him to say. If anyone dosent know that death scene when Geralt says goodbye to Roach was entierly writen by Henry himself becouse he down right refused to turn Roaches death into a comedy moment for the show.

*Shoots self in foot.* *Starts bleeding to death and can't run to get help.* "How did this happen?"

When you hear about the endless BS Cavill put up with behind the scenes of the Witcher, it's painfully obvious he was the only one pushing the show-runners to respect the source material (which should be THEIR job BTW, not his). Getting rid of Henry shows exactly what Netflix's company values are and what audiences can expect from their future projects.

They literally had the golden goose *right there* , but they just couldn't help themselves.

Another show made for no one, not book fans, not game fans, not fantasy fans. Takes talent to mess up an IP like that, so great job Netflix keep giving beloved IPs to braindead writers and directors.

when the director cares more about diversity than making a good show...

Imelda Staunton, the actress who played Dolores Umbridge, said that she was approached by Warner Bros saying that she was perfect fit for the character. Then she read the book and saw that Dolores was described as "a short bitter woman with toad-like features" and was salty but reluctantly took the role

All we wanted to see was Cavil chasing monsters around, i would have thought that'd be difficult to screw up but apparently not.

Congratulations are in order. Netflix managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Imagine having the source material by one of the greatest fantasy writers of our times...and messing it up only because someone thought: "Eh, i can writer better stuff than that old polish dude"

Netflix could have had 7 seasons starring Henry Cavill. Instead they chose to have 5 seasons, Lauren Hissrich, and Liam Hemsworth. 🤣

One of the best adaptations of all time is No Country For Old Men, specifically because the directors sole intent was to NOT change any of the source material. The directors bragged about how literal pages of dialogue are copy and pasted from book to screen. Hollywood/Steaming services should take notice.

At least we have at least another half season of Fallout before some woman with an agenda takes over and starts making random non-canon changes and then calls us all incel neckbeards for not liking it.

This table reminds me the cast of Game of Thrones reading the script of season 8 before they begun filming 😂

"Challenge what people think of as the standard of beauty", that is the diversity speak right there, it is never about enriching the series the show or appealing to viewers, it is always about what matters to themselves and their ideals.

Henry said that he'd stay for as long as they needed if they stuck to the source. With the response being negative to the changes and cavil leaving the show was already doomed

We should’ve seen the red flags from season 1, making best boi Cahir evil, making up plot lines for Ciri and Yenn, and introducing characters early

1:45 SweetBaby filter applied: "Uglify; Darker shade of skin"?

I thought this show was already over. I had no idea they would actually go through with the cast change.

Well, as a polish guy and fan of Witcher, I'm hella disappointed in netflix..

How can cosplayers do a 10/10 Yen/Triss/Ciri cosplay while Netflix money can't even get close? Agendas have ruined this show.

Only watched the 1st season and then I started reading everything about what the writers were doing to the show and the direction it was going and I didnt watch anymore after that. Not even surprised this happened.

I refuse to feel guilty for not wanting an actor/actress because they’re black. If the original source material describes a character as white with certain features, I’m not sorry for being immersion broken for a complete miscast

She was like: Y'know, considering most video game adaptations fail as movies or shows because people avoid the source material, I have an idea: let's challenge "traditional beauty standards", outright change the ethnicity of main characters, ignore Henry Cavil's lore expert advice and say fuck the source material we'll do something to be different, more politically correct and woke. Interesting how that ended up, eh?

Henry in an interview said that if the series was very attached and developed based on the source material that he would be willing to do the necessary seasons, but when he realized that they were deviating and doing a lot of changes, he decided to leave. This great series died in the third season.

0:48 this is so true. Blows my mind

I remember the first time I saw Netflix Yennifer. I felt exactly like the "Confused John Travolta" meme from Pulp Fiction. Not because she looked ugly or bad ... It's just she was the opposite of the source/game. It's as if someone was exacting revenge on The Witcher for the crime it didn't commit. Edit: To the "Ackchyually" squad ☝ 🤓 I did indeed mean the 'looks' and 'race' in particular. They cast someone of Indian decent for a role that is canonically Slavic. While logically speaking, the opposite of 'Slavic' is not 'Indian,' colloquially, it does *oppose* the source material. It's like watching 'One Thousand and One Nights' with Barbie playing the role of Shahrazad. If done unintentionally, it is clumsy casting; if done purposefully, as is the case here, it is tactless agenda-pushing. Although I agree that forcing her into the main character role was another prong of their prioritizing diversity over canon, but that wasn't my initial point. Apologies for assuming this was a simple enough concept to grasp from my original comment :)

I didn’t mind Season 1 it wasn’t perfect but I never expected it to be. Season 2 is where it started to feel really insulting.

Only surprising is that they are doing a fifth season but they probably already had contracts for it and maybe outlined and story boarded somewhat but not surprised at all that they are ending it early. Will be surprised if Amazon don't end Rings of Power and Wheel of Time early as well because they are big budget and really don't think they are doing very good. Haven't looked at the Vampire Chronicles on what ever network it is on but don't really give it much chance either. All have totally borked the lore and/or books story lines and from what I watched on RoP and WoT true fans of the source material won't really be missing much (refused to watch the Vampire Chronicles after I read about the story changes).

Love it when asmon always skits a question by saying, "hey, look..." and talks about some other point.

Man, watching this unfold as a polish guy who grew up with those books was straight up soul wrenching. The only way this could work is if they hired people from CDPR who wrote and expanded Witcher universe in Witcher games. On the other hand I knew Netflix gonna fuck it up so I literally had no expectations, but man, the abomination that came out even got me bewildered.

The Witcher became a side character in Netflix tv series the Witcher

there’s a simple rule that every corporation seems to forget: If you go woke, you go broke

I almost started watching this, and never got around to it. Boy did I dodge a huge bullet not getting into it.

Should've been canceled after the first season

And absolutely no one was surprised.

Can print money just following source material and it will 99/100 times do very well, but ego gets in the way usually and you end up with writers messing things up trying to deviate too much.

Oh no. _Anyway_

If we go by rate of progression, Geralt would show up for the first 5 mins of the first episode, then again at the last 3 mins of season 5

My biggest problem with season 1 was why they thought it was a good ide to have the constant time jumps everytime they swapped betwinn the 3 main characters and not making it clear to the audience that they are jumping around in time. I know a little Witcher lore but i´m definatly not a lore master so it felt very wierd when ever they swapped character and pretty mutch nothing telling u that they are jumping around in time. With Yennefer and how mages can effectivly stop there aging process yeah u kinda hade to use timejump to show her backstory as she is around 80 now i think. But i can definatly se alot of ppl getting confused when they se Ciri´s home town destroyed and her grandmother died in the beginning and then mutch later in the show Geralt just appears in the city with her at a big feast and gets thrown into the dungeon at 1 point aswell. They did it again in s3 with that mage conference/dance and i dont think i have seen a single person reacting or reviewing the show saying that was a good ide.

imagine being a fairly attractive, fit and talented actress, cast opposite to an extremely popular and attractive actor like Cavil, working hard on a pretty difficult role, and then being told "you were picked because you're not very pretty". That's gotta hurt.

I don't even find the actress ugly but if the producer or director told that to me I'd feel that's so disrespectful.

I love what Andrzej Sapkowski looks like. Mainly because his expression completely matches mine when someone mentions the Netflix "adaptation" of The Witcher.

There were 3 seasons? Damn I only remember 2, it fell down so bad, not sure I'll even keep watching it

Alright, that's one down. Now to get rud of Rings of Power & Wheel of Time.

1:22 Go woke go broke Edit: I would like to mention Budlight, Disney, Warhammer40k, and Warnerbros losing *billions* of dollars. Now if any of you say that’s “not a lot”, we’re done talking.

The story was already written. And the main star was a massive fan. It was impossible to screw up.

Nothing like grasping defeat from the jaws of victory.

No offense to the actresses that were casted but jesus christ did they cast all the wrong people to be the witches in the live action. The fact that there is a whole ass lore reason as to why ALL the fucking witches are suppose to be beyond beautiful and they decide to cast people that "challenge the beauty standard" is just shitting on the original source material. I swear to god it took me a while to realize that Triss was even in the show until someone in the episode called her by name in front of her. I was dumbfounded cause to me Triss was always this super hot white red head like from the game and then I look at the actress and was like "well damn". Watched half of season 2 and dropped it afterwards, didn't touch S3 and not planning to watch any of the other seasons either. I'll just wait and hope CDPR can do something great with the new witcher game, but rumors aren't being so kind to that either.

Didn't even know it wasn't already over. OK.

bruh i was just starting to finally catching up on season 2 as part of my pre-sleeping activity and they do this 😂

As a massive witcher fan, this feels like a breath of fresh air

What I do not understand about Hollywood sometimes is why pay for the source material if you are not going use it. Why can't they just ask their writers to just read a book they want to copy and ask them to make something similar but different enough so they can not be sued.

How anyone can go against the established lore on any project and expect it to succeed is beyond me.

Actually this gives us a good lesson about how in spite of we give so many credit to actors and actresses, with such a great cast and a source with so much potential, producers and writers can succeed to mess it up utterly.

In this case they're not saying she's ugly, they're saying everyone that likes white girls is racist, so they wanted a pretty girl that wasn't white.

the story take on Poland but the characters they cast is mostly black let that sink in... either they CHALLENGE the race in europe or simply being netflix

I'd feel bad for Yennefer's actor but she tried to throw Henry under the bus on twitter so fuck her i guess lol. It got community noted too.

I had to watch the season 1 twice just to figure out the timeline on what the hell was going on. But it was by far the best season of them all. Quickly went downhill from that. Something not surprising after learning the writers hated the source material which was very evident in the result

Good, at least the source material won't be tarnished more that it got tarnished by "creative" writer of the s5.. Poor Liam tho, he got in when the show already shows signs of decline.. Also can't beat Henry as Geralt, he is a fan of the character, and he try his best to commit to the role so he could do justice of the character on screen.

In a free market economy, a writer who managed to butcher something so easy THIS badly would be permanently out of the business. That writer's name would become radioactive and nobody would even dare to call them for a job. But in Hollywood, being that bad while pushing certain narratives is often an endorsement. The thing is, it can't last forever. The market always self-corrects, it just takes much longer when there are external influences trying to force it to go a certain way

How about you choose to serialize a fantasy-world that's not from Polish folklore if you don't want them to be predominantly white? It's as absurd as making the little mermaid of color. The little mermaid is a Danish fairy tale by H.C. Anderson. They were more than 99% white when it was written.

Glass half full guy here, at least caville snd the author made siome bank bro, and rhe idea of netflops losing a lot of money gives me joy and hope ❤

My dad did work for this show as a graphics designer and I know when he works on a show he likes to watch it so this is sad

It's not just what they did to Henry, it's the entire show? Asmon tried to defend it a bit, but the best he could say was "uh.. I thought season 1 was pretty good." unfortunately, when there are 4 seasons, that doesn't cut it lol. You can't tell me you didn't piss yourself laughing when she said "I'm Falca", or when the tiny girl physically overpowered the massive guy in the bar. Let's not even talk about the kissing scene with Geralt and Yennifer, when they exploded and everyone flew backwards. Who's writing this crap? A 14 year old girl?

Beauty only has room on the edges where people kinda argue with each other whether a somewhat unique looking person is beautiful or not. Most of the time it's pretty standard what people think is beautiful though. The standard can slowly change over time, but you can't just pick It up and carry it off to crazy land and expect everybody to accept your new definition.

the problem is that the directors are not a gamers or even book readers(maybe) thought: ow yea baby this is my time to shine and flopped the face to a side walk from failed magic trick. and worst part is - got paid by doing it and will move on and will get other projects to burn.

7 seasons and I saw 1 and a half. Hope that they don't have the only rights to make a tv shows about the witcher and maybe cdpr will make it like edgerunner at least.

In 2024, the Academy implemented a new rule: Films must complete a confidential Representation and Inclusion Standards Entry form (RAISE) that meets two of four standards in order to be eligible to be nominated: Standard A: On-Screen Representation, Themes, and Narratives (Must complete one): One of the lead actors or “significant supporting actors” is from an underrated racial or ethnic group. At least 30% of actors in minor roles are from at least two underrepresented groups, including: women, racial or ethnic group, LGBTQ+, the disabled. The main storyline, theme or narrative of the film is centered on at least one of the four aforementioned underrepresented groups. Standard B: Creative Leadership and Project Team (Must complete one): At least two of the following positions - Casting Director, Cinematographer, Composer, Costume Designer, Director, Editor, Hairstylist, Makeup Artist, Producer, Production Designer, Set Decorator, Sound, VFX Supervisor, Writer - must be from one of the four underrepresented groups, and at least one must be from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group. At least six other crew/team members (excluding PAs) must be from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group. At least 30% of the film’s crew is from one of the four underrepresented groups. Standard C: Industry Access and Opportunities (Must complete one): Film has at least two apprentices/interns from one of the four underrepresented groups (including one from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group) in production/development, physical production, post-production, music, VFX, acquisitions, business affairs, distribution, marketing, and publicity. Film’s production, distribution or financing company provides training/work opportunities to people from one of the four underrepresented groups. Standard D: Audience Development Studio or film company has at least two “in-house senior executives” on their creative and development, marketing, publicity, and/or distribution teams from one of the four underrepresented groups, and at least one from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group.

Honestly, I'm surprised they even made a season 4 or 5. I guess NetFlix does have money to throw away, which is odd since they put a stop to password sharing.

Literally just needed to follow the books. Not perfectly for that is impossible but just as closely as possible. That's all they needed to do. The fact that they got Henry Caville as Geralt was a huge bonus. Yet, it was an absolute disaster.

it all reminds me of that Breaking Bad moment: We had a good thing running here, all you had to do is sit and do your work quietly! But NO, you wanted to "fix" what was not broken and mess with a functioning formula for what? To please your ego or some minor woke mob on twitter? Nobody asked you to do that, your shareholders and investors definitely did not ask for this. Now Michael from The Office comes to mind: why are you the way that you are. Honestly every time we just want to have fun, YOU make it NOT that way... I HATE so much about the things you chose to be. God I hate them so much

omg.. he watched it with his mom. that makes the show sentimental and dear. seeing it fucked up is worse now.

@0:15 thats what they said about Spiderman and batman back in the day and now we on like the 5th guy in that role and it's fine. People get over it

Young Catherine Zeta Jones would make the perfect yen

They don't think the can do a better job than the original author, frankly thats not even a factor in their mind. Their only concern is that they can use the original work as a vehicle to push *the M E S S A G E* which is the only goal they have here.

Yup. It's gold watching these people constantly fail as they drag companies down with them. Keep it up. I love watching the show.

"the PEOPLE who write the shows" oh boy, here we go again....

I wholeheartedly agree. When the people making the film or tv show think they can do better then the person who came up with the source material, you might as well start digging the hole. It never goes well that's for sure.

Liam Hemsworth can be insanely good and it will not matter because the people who are ruining the show are still there writing it. And so you all know if you did not already, Blood Origin was the preview for what is in store when Henry has nothing to do with the show.

"I can write this story better than the person who wrote this story" - Every hack activist writer in every industry in the current age.

A perfect franchise for film adaptation if you have enough money foir specials affects, decent actors and respect the source material. It's hilarious that Netflix came so short with the part which comes FREE.

holy shit, they made 4 more of these ?

Now Amazon trying to bring down Henry Cavil and the Warhammer live-action colab. Instant disappointment with the power suit revealing some kind of lesbian with a Zorg haircut. Fuck.

the reality that had they kept the story stream lined close to source material and then in a number of years did their own "spin off" style show for yennifer and do all this female boss stuff later after making all that money... now that money is just gone.

The took ol’yellar behind the barn.

I was so hype for this show when it was announced. I love the franchise. Henry was born for this role. Season 1 was good, and it all went downhill after that. They ignored the source material, they did Henry dirty and now, because of these idiots, we might never get a reboot of this franchise for decades, if ever.

Witcher could have been done way better. Too bad Henry wasn't also in charge of the series. He was a fantastic Geralt. And they did do a lot of things right. But they did a lot of things wrong that could have been easily avoided, had they just stuck to the established lore more closely. Honestly, I get people want to always hold books in high regard compared to other media but we all know it was the video games that made Witcher as popular as it is. They absolutely could have used the video games to guide their design/vision for the show. But they didnt. They barely followed the books either. So the show will fail because of it. Them getting rid of Henry Cavill was just the straw that broke the camels back in the eyes of the fans.

Netflix didn't cancel this show, Henry did when he walked away from it. He was the only string holding together any semblance of the real Witcher books/games in this show, losing him was always going to be a death sentence.

Season 1 wasn't perfect but i found it really enjoyable & they did a decent job of it (despite my annoyances at certain castings). I still remember the feeling when i finished the season & how satisfied i was but also how down i felt at having to wait 2yrs for more. Then season 2 arrived & did a 180...