Netflix’s The Witcher isn’t very good. It looks cheap, has wonky CGI, is filled with jokes that don’t land and dialogue that doesn’t fit, and struggles to build up its world in any meaningful way. It’s hard to care about the politics Geralt gets swept up in. To top it off, the spin-offs are diluting a pretty basic premise, stretching a world ill-designed for stretching too thin. I can’t see the show lasting more than another season.
These are all fair thoughts—not everything is for everyone, and healthy critique is a vital part of appreciating art. What’s not healthy is obsessing over a show you hate and making it your entire personality. Switch off, go do something else. I promise this show doesn’t matter as much as you think it does.
Witcher fans have spent every year since the first season picking apart the Netflix show and all its novel inaccuracies while lamenting costume design, race swapping, Jaskier’s bisexuality, Henry Cavill leaving, and all the minute details in between. It’s textbook toxic fandom, treating an adaptation you don’t like as though it’s trodding all over the original and ruining the legacy of something you hold dear.
The mix of bigotry and backlash has devolved into seething hatred that lends itself to conspiracy theories and harassment against the cast and crew, turning the Witcher fandom into a homogenous blob representing nothing but feral, visceral anger. There’s no rhyme or reason anymore, just a need to log in every day and loudly bash a show and everyone involved in its creation to the point of exhaustion.
We’ve seen baseless accusations against showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, claiming that she hates The Witcher and is purposely sabotaging it as a gotcha to the fans. Many are even weaponising Cavill’s exit as further evidence. It’s more likely that it was to focus on the Warhammer adaptation and his short-lived return as Superman, or because of constant clashes on set as he had no producer or writing experience but would allegedly try to fill those roles in the name of authenticity. These conspiracy theories dominate discussions around quality when in reality, Hissrich’s approach simply doesn’t align with what these loud angry fans want—that doesn’t mean it’s a purposeful attempt to annoy them.
It’s a lot like when The Last Jedi came out, and Star Wars fans everywhere said that it had completely ruined the series and there was no salvaging the mess that this evil hater Rian Johnson had left behind. In their mind, he set out to make a movie so ‘bad’ and ‘insulting’ just to spite them.
Fans love to position themselves as victims of art, which is a warped view of our relationship with movies and TV as an audience. Directors and showrunners aren’t setting out to hurt your feelings, but to tell their version of the story in a way that is meaningful to them. That’s why The Last Jedi carefully subverts expectations and plays with classic tropes to new effect, and why The Witcher show is more diverse and sheds a light on side characters as much as it does Geralt. That is what’s important.
Too many fans read into movies and TV as though there’s a parasocial relationship, which is why they get so invested and feel wronged when things change or don’t go their way. Anyone who steps in with a new perspective is then invading their space. Connecting with art and having it resonate emotionally is the whole point, but too often it passes the line and becomes a possessive obsession built on the back of gatekeeping.
And when that happens, it’s time to look in the mirror and reflect. Does it really matter? You can just play the games and read the books—they still exist. The show isn’t all there is, and forcing yourself to watch it out of hatred isn’t doing you any favours, let alone the people who so often face the harassment that spills out of this compulsion.