This is a non-spoiler review for all eight episodes of The Witcher: Season 4, premiering October 30 on Netflix.
It's another good-not-great season for The Witcher, as the spotlight Netflix series lands its most anticipated season since the first, thanks to a huge headlining actor swap wherein Liam Hemsworth replaces Henry Cavill as Geralt of Rivia. Season 4 continues the show's tradition of being a completely serviceable fantasy adventure with credible action and compelling characters, though now with a main story that feels more streamlined and focused as we barrel toward the end. Season 4 is actually better than Season 3, though not quite good enough to warrant that full extra point.
Season 4 is also the most plain so far, and there's a clumsiness to the finale that may make you feel like the season should have either ended sooner or sprung for a ninth episode to resolve a few moments that don't land well as seasonal cliffhangers; it just didn't feel like a proper end point. Season 4 features three separate season-long adventures, each belonging to one of our main Witcher trio: Geralt, Yennefer, and Ciri.
These separate journeys, which keep the trio apart, harken back to the first season, though without all that Dunkirk-ian non-linear structure. There is a new framing device that I won't spoil for you, but aside from that, Season 4 is just a straightforward odyssey comprised of an injured Geralt trudging through the war-torn Continent looking for Ciri, Ciri adopting a new found family in "the Rats," and Yennefer recruiting any magical woman she can find in an effort to take down Vilgefortz. It's probably the simplest Witcher run yet.
Adapting Andrzej Sapkowski's third book in the Witcher saga, Baptism of Fire (with some tweaks, naturally), Season 4 stumbles under the strain of being filmed back to back with the fifth and final season. We really do just follow these three stories from the first episode until the eighth, and they barely lock arms with one another. While there are a few chapters that have big enough or divergent enough elements to make them stand out as notable encapsulated episodes, Season 4 on the whole just feels like part one of a split final season; it's one big "TBD." The fifth season will now have to contend with all the leftovers here and settle things on the Wild Hunt front, the wrath of whom is totally absent this year.
Liam Hemsworth is fine but also, yes, you need some time to get used to him as Geralt. Okay, so how is Liam Hemsworth? That's probably what everyone's come here to check on, honestly. Do we have a Temu Geralt on our hands? Well, it's certainly not a lateral actor trade in terms of star power, as shitty as that sounds, but there are a handful of things to consider here when I say that Liam Hemsworth is fine but also, yes, you need some time to get used to him as Geralt. That happens with any big casting change, like going from Andy Whitfield to Liam McIntyre on Spartacus...if we're sticking with titular characters and Australian actors. Can a new actor come in and nail all the Geralt-isms? Of course. Geralt is grim and gruff and usually only emotes on micro levels, but that doesn't mean we as viewers didn't form an attachment to the way Geralt looked with Cavill at the helm. You do build a relationship with an appearance, no matter what.
I will say that the series does a little, ahem, Peacemaker-style trickery with the integration of Hemsworth into the lore, for those who saw what they did with the opening of Peacemaker: Season 2. But also, for the most part, Hemsworth's Geralt barely interacts with his "family" in Season 4, instead building a ragtag "hansa" of allies as he heads to rescue Ciri from Emperor Emhyr (even though we know she ain't with him). The point here is that we're not immediately forced to accept Hemsworth in Geralt's most loving and nurturing form, like where we found Cavill at the top of Season 3.
Geralt's story here, plucked from Baptism of Fire, actually creates the best "break" spot you could hope for in an actor swap situation. Geralt's playing hurt (after getting dropped by Vilgefortz), he's meeting new people and forming new relations, and he's making a handful of drastic emotional realizations, fundamentally becoming a new version of Geralt. Would it have been more rewarding to watch Cavill make these shifts as Geralt? Absolutely. But, as the old adage goes: It is what it is. If there had to be a new White Wolf, this was an adequate transition.
Another element to consider is how much the Witcher is not on The Witcher anymore. The show has always had dozens of characters, but it felt the most like an ensemble in Season 3, with Geralt occupying less screen time than ever before. Season 4 continues this situation, since not only is Geralt just one of the three main quest lines, but his own story amasses a full adventuring party: Joey Batey's Jaskier and Meng'er Zhang's Milva are joined by Danny Woodburn's Zoltan, Linden Porco's Percival, and the return of Jeremy Crawford's Yarpen and Eamon Farren's Cahir. The cherry on top? Laurence Fishburne's wise, amiable, and vampiric Regis. Even in Geralt's own Season 4 story, he is but one of many.
Geralt's path through ravaged villages and impromptu violence is a good one, shared nicely with his cohorts old and new. They meet monsters, human and supernatural, experiencing triumphs and setbacks, while Geralt opens up more and more to his need for love and community. The addition of Fishburne's Regis gives Geralt someone new to confide in and heed as he continues to more readily accept others as assets and not burdens. It's Yennefer, though, who has the biggest and best adventure this season, as she aims to form a sorceress army to take on that bastard Vilegfortz, who now has full control of all magical portal travel. Yen's is also a crowded thread filled with Phillipa, Fringilla, Triss, Sabrina, Istredd, and more, all of whom participate in the biggest and best set piece of the season, near the mid-point, at the Battle of Montecalvo. It's a blow-out that reminds us that The Witcher excels at magical mayhem.
But even without this big sorcery spectacle, Yen's goal here is the most direct, dangerous, and earnest. She's transforming into a trusted leader and (like Geralt's quest) embracing elements that are building her into a legendary figure. She and her perilous crucible dominate the sixth episode, "Twilight of the Wolf," while Geralt's best moments lie in the seventh episode, "What I Love I Do Not Carry." Ciri has the messiest seasonal exploits of the three in an awkwardly balanced adventure with the Rats, that shady thieving bunch of outcasts who found her last year. Not only are there now six more new characters to follow, but the push and pull of "them rejecting Ciri/Ciri rejecting them" grows tiresome.
Ciri, now going by Falka, is clearly going through it, trying to reinvent herself while at the same time being unsure of who her old self was. Does she care about the Rats above everyone else now? Does she still know right from wrong when it comes to their nomadic plundering? Is she full of rage and hyper-violence in a way that frightens the rest of them? Instead of settling in with them, the season keeps her bouncing around too much, to the point where we ourselves wind up not caring about most of them. Christelle Elwin's Mistle is the touchstone, however, as Ciri bonds with her the most (in sexual ways, even) .
Mistle then, in a way, becomes the "one we might care about" in this lengthy Rats journey that just doesn't click as well as the Geralt and Yen stories. It's not bad per se, and neither is Freya Allan as Ciri, but for the first few episodes, if you don't know the books, you'll be like, "okay, when does the clearly superior Ciri ditch these fools?" All that being said, the Rats story does gift us a delicious new villain in Sharlto Copley's bounty hunter, Leo Bonhart. He, like Fishburne, is a boon for the season; Bonhart is so vile and spindly that you can't wait for someone to take him apart. But he's also, like, the best fighter we've seen, so you fear for anyone who steps up to him.
The Witcher: Season 4 has more successes than missteps, but as a season, it feels incomplete and just part of a larger tapestry for the show's endgame. Netflix made a business model that's destroying the concept of episodic TV by wanting everything to feel like one ongoing movie. Still, we've gotten seasons of Netflix shows that feel like their own; this does not. It feels like we should be getting Part 2 a month from now.
Connexion
