AI Summary
5 min readIn the first episode of season four of Netflix’s The Witcher, the showrunners reshot scenes from previous seasons with the new Geralt, Liam Hemsworth, including the beach fight with Vilgefortz. The result, according to Asmongold, played out “like a parody—think Austin Powers with Tom Cruise, yet not played for laughs, but just as funny.” This is the moment the host uses to anchor a longer argument: Netflix’s The Witcher has been a slow-moving disaster driven by a showrunner who dislikes the source material, and season four is the final, undeniable proof.
The central conflict: showrunner vs. source material
The core thesis of the episode is that The Witcher adaptation was sabotaged by showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, who openly shifted the show’s perspective from Geralt to an ensemble focused on Yennefer and Ciri. Henry Cavill tried to warn audiences before season two, saying in an interview that “the books… are very much from a Geralt perspective,” but that Hissrich’s vision made it “an ensemble” and he could only try to be “as faithful to the source material as possible within the structure set out for me.” Asmongold reads this as Cavill being “so political about it but it’s so obvious what he’s trying to say.” The result was that season two “strayed from the source material, turning the Witcher into the Yennefer show,” and ratings dropped. By season three, view
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:05) **The Witcher Season 4 is universally panned** - Asmongold and co-host open by declaring the new season "completely cooked" and "totally dead" before launching into a montage of "Siri" jokes mocking the show's repetitive focus.
- 2 (02:19) **The decline from a promising start** - The hosts recap how The Witcher premiered in 2019 as a potential "heir apparent to Game of Thrones" but went downhill after season one.
- 3 (05:24) **Behind-the-scenes drama and source material contempt** - The discussion covers writer Bo DeMeo calling out Hissrich for openly mocking the books in the writers' room, and author Andrzej Sapkowski saying they "never listened" to his input.
- 4 (07:00) **Liam Hemsworth's doomed replacement** - The hosts discuss the announcement of Liam Hemsworth as Henry Cavill's replacement, arguing he "set himself up to fail" by taking a role where audiences were already primed to hate it.
- 5 (09:44) **The problem with professional critics** - A digression on why critic reviews are "worthless," arguing they are peer-pressured to give positive reviews and ignore audience sentiment.
- 6 (11:49) **Liam Hemsworth is not the primary problem** - The hosts defend Hemsworth, noting the show was "going down the shitter for years" with Henry Cavill still in the role, so the actor is being unfairly scapegoated.
- 7 (13:52) **The cringe-inducing season premiere** - The hosts describe how the season opens with a two-minute recap that deliberately avoids showing Henry Cavill's face, followed by eight minutes of reshot scenes from previous seasons with Hemsworth.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
The new Witcher is so bad now.. Asmongold podcast for all of his stream highlights, competitions, reactions & more.
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----- Keywords: world of warcraft, gaming news, gaming culture, gaming drama, video game analysis, gaming hot takes, twitch streamer
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