Making a fantasy series is hard. It might look easy, after the floodgates were opened by The Lord of the Rings, and then Game of Thrones became a cultural phenomenon, but it's very difficult. Fantasy stories are inherently silly, with dragons and magic and characters called L'othiralica Glordinthinga, yet often try to be dark and self-serious tales of sex and violence, loaded with political intrigue. Netflix's adaptation of The Witcher, despite a strong enough first season, has struggled in the face of these difficulties, and fans seem pretty clear on why.
Most of The Witcher’s fans, who by season three have turned against the show almost entirely, point to Henry Cavill. The man seemed a dream casting as Geralt, not only for his movie star pedigree and impressive physique, but because he was a fan. He loves The Witcher, every inch of every page and every pixel of every video game, and fans have taken his impending exit as a sign that things will only get worse from here.
We don't know why Cavill left The Witcher. It may have been an ill-timed exit, thinking he was returning to Superman full-time after his cameo in Black Adam at the behest of The Rock, only for James Gunn's plans for a reboot to scuttle that. It may have been that, as a movie star, he did not want to establish himself too much as a TV actor - few Game of Thrones stars have made much of a splash post-Westeros, after all. Perhaps it was because Warhammer, the one thing Cavill publicly enjoys more than The Witcher, came calling. Or it might be, as the popular fan theory goes, that he did not think the show was very good (or more kindly, very loyal to the books) and after repeated disagreements, decided he would rather not be Geralt than be a compromised version of him.
But fans who back Cavill to the hilt are misguided at best. Firstly, while the books are popular novels, most Witcher fans entered the fandom via the games, which are actually sequels to the books and tell completely new stories. Some may have gone back and read them, but most would dismiss Cavill as a nerd if he was a scrawny guy in the pub with a beard talking about his Warhammer minis and how Season 3 Episode 4 uses an incorrect version of a spell from page 148 of the third collection of short stories.
Could it also be that there is more than a love of the books behind Cavill's lack of respect for the female writers and directors on crew, which allegedly saw him change scripts on the fly leaving the show and other cast members directionless? Could his inability to be a team player on a project he believed himself to be an expert in, despite having no writing, producing, or directing credits to his name, have been the problem? Cavill, the man who once said he was too scared to flirt in the modern world in case he was "called a rapist"? We shall never know.
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Of course, the flipside of that is we will never know how disruptive Cavill was, if at all, and whether his insistence on staying true to the lore impacted the show in any way, positively or negatively. Fantasy is hard to make, and Netflix's track record on original programming is spotty. It might just be that The Witcher kinda sucks, and it might still kinda suck with Liam Hemsworth as the lead. But I hope the lesson taken from this is not that we need more fans involved.
Adaptations are meant to adapt. That's another word for 'change'. It's important to respect the source material, sure, but you also have to make a different piece of art, not an impression of the existing one. We only need to look at Star Wars to see the dangers. While lifelong Star Wars fans like Jon Favreau, J.J. Abrams, and Dave Filoni gush over all the toys they get to pull out of the box in their plastic, pointless tales that add no depth to the universe besides wheel-spinning cameos, outsiders like Tony Gilroy - who, when asked about being a Star Wars fan, said he “had no reverence for it whatsoever” - can push things forward with bold adventures like Andor.
I get that it's cool that the handsome movie star likes the same weird shit you do, but liking weird shit and being obnoxious about it is not how you make a TV show. We have too many fans milking IP dry already, and maybe it's best for everyone that Henry Cavill got out when he did. If you want a Witcher project loyal to the books, just read the books - there's enough fans out there who never have in the first place.