On May 24, a website named Glass Almanac published a report about Netflix's monster-hunting fantasy series, The Witcher, claiming that it has been "officially cancelled by Netflix after multiple seasons." There's just one problem: it's completely untrue.
Now that this "news" is spreading into the wider fandom, I thought it might be a good idea to debunk this ridiculously misleading headline. Yes, The Witcher is ending...several years from now. Netflix has already filmed the fourth season of the show and is currently filming season 5, which will end the series. The show isn't ending because it was cancelled; it's ending because season 5 will bring the show to the end of the main storyline from Andrzej Sapkwoski's Witcher book series. The Witcher is getting a proper sendoff.
Following the departure of Geralt of Rivia actor Henry Cavill after season 3, Netflix announced that Liam Hemsworth would don the white wig for more seasons. A few months later, the streamer confirmed that the show would film seasons 4 and 5 back to back, bringing the show to its conclusion.
That's still the plan, and The Witcher is far enough into it that nothing will change that. Season 4 is already in the can and is expected to premiere sometime later this year.
From where I'm sitting, five seasons always sounded about right for The Witcher. The two remaining seasons will cover three books: Baptism of Fire, Tower of Swallows, and The Lady of the Lake. Geralt and company spend a lot of time wandering around during those books, so it's always felt like they could comfortably fill two seasons without overstaying their welcome. So unlike The Wheel of Time, which was cancelled by Amazon last week, The Witcher will get a true ending.
What's with these weird Glass Almanac articles?
Now, if I can throw a bit of shade: that Glass Almanac article does include mostly correct information...after the headline. But that headline spin is clearly meant to mislead people into clicking with a completely untrue statement. Since we cover The Witcher pretty thoroughly here at the site, misinformation about it is a particular peeve of mine. It sent me down a rabbit hole, looking at Glass Almanac's site to try and figure out what exactly is going on there.
After reading a few other articles, I have a very strong suspicion that AI is being used to spin up these articles, with little regard to whether they're factual or not. Many of the site's articles feature AI-generated images, and this Witcher article also has an AI-generated YouTube video version of itself embedded partway down. None of the writers on the site have any social media presence that I could find, and several of their bios use extremely similar and generic wording. The Reddit account linked on Glass Almanac's website also appears to have been suspended. Yes, I'm speculating...but there are enough red flags that I would not be at all surprised if it came out AI was at play here.
AI or not, we can say for certain The Witcher will return for a fourth and fifth season, and that that the series is not cancelled. We just went through this with The Wheel of Time, I'm not ready for the internet to give me another heart attack today, thank you.
Hopefully soon we'll get an update for The Witcher season 4 premiere date. Until then, we'll have our ear to the ground for more.
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