2019 fantasy drama television series
Videos
This thread is for sharing your thoughts and discussing Netflix’s The Witcher Season 4. Feel free to share your reactions, theories, and opinions full spoilers are welcome here.
S04E01: What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger
S04E02: Dream of a Wish Fulfilled
S04E03: Trial by Ordeal
S04E04: A Sermon of Survival
S04E05: The Joy of Cooking
S04E06: Twilight of the Wolf
S04E07: What I Love I Do Not Carry
S04E08: Baptism of Fire
The review embargo is down and reviews are up! We'll update these as Metacritic does. If you see any other reviews, please drop them in the comments to be added.
Variety
IGN
The Wrap
Collider
Paste
Slash Film
Times Now
The Guardian
Dexerto
Absolute Geeks
Inverse
The Daily Beast
Radio Times
Roger Ebert
USA Today
Screen Rant
I finally finished season 4. It’s not the acting that irks me so much as the writing that saddens me. It’s painfully clear to me now that the writers never really wanted to tell a Witcher story.
What made The Witcher special in the books, and even in the better parts of the earlier seasons, was the moral ambiguity, the quiet monster-of-the-week stories that secretly dissected politics and human nature, and the way Geralt was often just a grunting bystander in other people’s tragedies.
Season 4 seems embarrassed by that. It pushes aside the grounded, dirty, monster-hunting world in favor of shiny courts, melodrama, and soap-opera politics that could’ve come from any random fantasy show. They’ve written a generic medieval drama and slapped The Witcher brand on top.
In the end, the world still has the same names and places, but the soul of it is gone, that hurts more than any bad performance ever could.
It’s getting back on the books a lot compared to I think season 2 which fucked things up. Compared to season 3 which I thought was a slog, season 4 moves things along a lot more. Liam honestly kinda is growing on me. Loved Henry, but appearance wise and kinda performance wise he always kinda reminded me of a hollywoodficaton of geralt from someone who only played the games. Liam feels a lot more like the books for me where Geralts a lot more quiet less bulky
They make a point of showing off viglefortz a lot more compared to when he fucks off in the books for a bit. The choreography feels a lot more like the fight season from the first episode of season 1. You also get some great reveals that tie back to previous seasons and they also try to make the nilfguardians armour more accurate to the books. Regis is also in this season and I think they did a good job, though he spends most of the season just saying wise words, I was kinda hoping to see him fight.
Now for the cons. If you read the book, ciri spends most of her time with the rats this season, which I’ve never liked in the books in the first place. Geralts jacket uniform is kinda distracting. If you’ve read the books and played the games, there’s a change to a certain characters trajectory which I didn’t mind but I know other people will. Specifically if you’ve played the games. Since Freya Allan is older they had to age up the rats which kinda threw me off. Someone needs to fix Jaskiers awful haircut.