In 2019 when Game of Thrones aired its finale, it was both an ending and a beginning for fantasy television. The most popular fantasy show of all time had finished, for better or worse, and just like when Robert Baratheon's death sparked the War of the Five Kings in the show, a number of contenders rose in its wake to compete for the loyalty of Thrones' ardent fantasy viewers.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this also coincided with the birth of numerous streaming services, each looking for their own mega-hit to lure viewers and convert them into addicted subscribers. What has become known as the streaming wars saw the rise of series like The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and The Wheel of Time at Amazon, The Witcher and The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance and Shadow and Bone and too many others to name at Netflix, Foundation and Severance and Silo at Apple TV+, and of course, HBO's own attempts to retain its genre market dominance with the Game of Thrones spinoff House of the Dragon. And that's just scratching the surface.
It's been a glorious time to be a fantasy and science fiction fan, with studios racing to adapt long-beloved works that they had never previously had the guts to take the chance on. But there have been signs that, as of the past year or so, the wind is starting to blow in the other direction. Many of the shows that sprang up in Game of Thrones' shadow have been canceled. Some made sense; as good as The Dark Crystal was, it was also an extremely expensive show to produce and far more niche than many of its contemporaries. Others hit like an axe to the stomach, most notably The Wheel of Time, which Amazon prematurely pulled the plug on earlier this year following its critically acclaimed third season.
The fantasy television landscape now feels far more precarious than it has at any time since Bran Stark became king of Westeros. There have been hits and misses, triumphs and tragedies. And somehow, amidst it all, an unlikely series has managed to fend off many of its foes. It isn't the strongest show of the lot, nor the most faithful to its source material. It has often been mired in controversy. But through it all, the show kept moving, birthing numerous spinoffs and adapting iconic scenes from a beloved book series. Now, with its end in sight, it looks like it may actually be the winner of this mad scramble.
I'm talking about The Witcher. Just like Geralt of Rivia himself, it has managed to defy the odds time and again in a way that only adds to its legend.
The Witcher got off to a rocky start, but kept going
When The Witcher premiered in 2019, I was among the contingent of diehard fans of the books and games who was disappointed with how the show turned out. I've been fairly vocal over the years about the show's ups and downs, largely feeling like it botched its chance to be a better series by drawing more faithfully on its source material and resisting some of its more cringeworthy impulses. Season 2 and the first two spinoffs, Nightmare of the Wolf and The Witcher: Blood Origin, only added to those feelings.
Things got even more complicated in the lead-up to The Witcher season 3, when it was announced that Henry Cavill was stepping back from the lead role of Geralt of Rivia. Regardless of any criticisms viewers or critics had with The Witcher, the one thing almost everyone seemed able to agree on was that Cavill was exceptional as Geralt. To lose him felt like a blow the show couldn't possibly bounce back from, and a not small number of people wrote the series off outright.
This blowback reflected negatively on season 3, resulting in mixed reviews and bitter feedback online. Which is a shame, because season 3 actually represented a huge course correction for the show, bringing it much closer to Andrzej Sapkowski's book narrative than the previous two seasons. Yes, there were still plenty of deviations, but we were back to debating the details of those changes and whether they worked, rather than groaning over The Witcher inventing an entire season's worth of material out of whole cloth. To this day, I hold that people who boycotted season 3 or had a hard time enjoying it because of Cavill's departure are actually missing out on his best work of the entire show.
The Witcher was given the freedom to tell a full story
Recasting the lead role in a show is never a small task, and that's doubly true when that star is as synonymous with a part as Cavill was with Geralt of Rivia. In an alternate universe, The Witcher might not have weathered that transition, and Netflix might have just axed it. But fortunately, that wasn't the reality we got. Instead, Liam Hemsworth signed on to play Geralt, and Netflix greenlit a final two seasons of the series. Essentially, they brought on Hemsworth, and as part of that overall restructuring, guaranteed that the show would be able to finish the story laid out in Sapkowski's books.
This took a lot of pressure off the series, because the team behind it could craft seasons 4 and 5 with the full framework of the source material in mind. That's a luxury that few other shows get.
Now that The Witcher season 4 is out, we can already see the benefits of that decision. Fans were understandably anxious about Hemsworth's portrayal as Geralt, and he may not be quite the showstopper Cavill was, but he's still doing an all-around solid job as the White Wolf. Even more importantly, at this point in the books the story becomes much larger than Geralt, with his foster daughter Ciri stepping into the forefront. I enjoyed Hemsworth's Geralt just fine, but Freya Allan absolutely stole the season for me as Ciri, with a big helping hand from the Rats and the eccentric mercenary Leo Bonhart (Sharlto Copley). Throw in a larger arc for Yennefer (Anya Chalotra) as well, and there's plenty to enjoy in season 4.
I won't quite call it a comeback for The Witcher — season 4's debut weekend viewership was massively down from season 3, though that could turn around with positive word of mouth — but at the very least, the show's return is better than it had any right to be. There's a feeling that the series has regained its focus and planted its feet firmly beneath it for the home stretch, as evidenced both by the strength of the production as well as the story, which ends on a brutal cliffhanger in season 4 because the production team knew they were getting a season 5.
Making it all even better is the fact that the show already filmed season 5 before season 4 had even aired. That means that not only was The Witcher team able to make the last two seasons with full confidence and a clear vision for their overall goals, but fans are able to watch season 4 knowing for certain the show won't get canceled and they'll get to see how it all ends. In our current media landscape, that's a rarity, and a welcome relief.
What about the other big fantasy shows?
Now, I know what you're probably thinking: The Witcher won over House of the Dragon or The Wheel of Time? Really? Hear me out.
While there are enough big science fiction shows still going strong that it's a totally separate conversation, when we talk about the post-Game of Thrones fantasy boom, there are really four main contenders who have risen to the top of the heap: House of the Dragon, The Wheel of Time, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, and The Witcher. When I talk about The Witcher "winning" the fantasy TV gold rush, I'm not talking only about the quality — I'm talking about the freedom to tell the story it set out to tell, with the full support of its studio behind it.
Personally, I enjoyed The Wheel of Time more than The Witcher, and it's pretty much impossible to deny that House of the Dragon stands head-and-shoulders above Netflix's series as a production. But out of these four main fantasy shows, none has received anywhere near the support that The Witcher has, and as a result I think it has embedded into the broader popular discourse in a way that the other series haven't quite matched.
Let's take The Wheel of Time, for example. It got off to a rocky start at Amazon thanks to the COVID pandemic, and struggled to find its footing, gradually getting better until season 3 set a new gold standard for the series. Then Amazon canceled it, which shows the level of investment it had in the series; even at its best, it still wasn't something the studio was willing to commit to for the long run.
Game of Thrones is an extremely important brand for HBO; obviously, there's a lot of money behind the spinoff series House of the Dragon. But that didn't stop the studio from ordering the show to cut its second season short by two episodes, negatively impacting the season by forcing it to end on an absurdly anti-climactic note. Add in a public feud between the studio and author George R.R. Martin over its handling of his source material, and it's not in the best place as of this writing.
There's still time for House of the Dragon stage a major comeback in its final two seasons, but no matter how good it is, it will always live in the shadow of Game of Thrones. It owes its existence entirely to Thrones, and therefore it's hard for it to become a true successor.
Then there's The Rings of Power, which Amazon has sunk so much money into that it currently stands as the most expensive show ever produced. If House of the Dragon has a difficult task stepping out of its predecessor's shadow, The Rings of Power has an all but impossible one. It's drawn from J.R.R. Tolkien's appendices — the stuff Tolkien himself didn't even want to bother writing a whole book about — and utterly pales in comparison to Peter Jackson's iconic films. Amazon has thrown a lot of support behind the series, but there's always been a sense that it's chasing The Lord of the Rings because it's a massively huge name, rather than because it made any real sense to.
The show's first two seasons got heavily mixed reviews, casting its future into doubt. The Rings of Power season 2 reportedly failed to break through in the way the studio hoped to return on their investment. But according to another report that came out recently, Amazon would still be on the hook for $40 million a season to the Tolkien estate even if they canceled the show. I won't say they're going to continue making it begrudingly, but it certainly isn't a situation that screams overwhelming confidence.
That brings us back around to The Witcher, our black sheep of the herd. It has had its ups and downs, its truly awful moments and its surprisingly great ones, but at the end of the day, it's clear Netflix has thrown a considerable amount of weight behind it. The streamer got wise to the fact that fans were going to get impatient with two year waits between seasons for these big fantasy shows, and planned accordingly by giving The Witcher room to expand. To date, there have been four seasons of the mothership show, two animated spinoff movies, a live-action limited miniseries spinoff, and a standalone special in The Rats: A Witcher Tale. Not all of those spinoffs have been good, but if there's one thing you can say for Witcher fans, it's that they've never been left wanting for content despite the fact that the show has been airing for longer than any of the other current big fantasy series.
Ultimately, The Witcher has been given the leeway to succeed or fail on its own merits. It has had its missteps, but it has always done well enough that Netflix has kept pushing it forward. And in our current media landscape, that's saying something. By giving The Witcher so much room to grow and finish out its story, Netflix has succeeded at creating a show that stands a better chance of sticking around in the public consciousness longer than many other fantasy shows. I have a feeling people will revisit this series in the years to come, and that it may be looked upon more kindly in hindsight.
The Witcher books may not be as well known in the United States as, say, The Lord of the Rings or The Wheel of Time, but for many fans around the world, scenes like Geralt's duel with Vilgefortz and Ciri's encounter with Leo Bonhart are every bit as iconic as Rand al'Thor's journey to Rhuidean or the fall of Númenor. The Witcher has adapted many of the most important scenes from the books already, and while it's at times struggled as an adaptation, it's actually managed to land many of those important scenes really well. It's had issues, but at this point it's hard to deny that fans are getting a full adaptation of The Witcher Saga book series and then some.
Which, alas, is more than fans of a lot of other big fantasy series can say.
The Witcher season 4 is currently streaming on Netflix. The show's fifth and final season has already been filmed, and is expected to release sometime in 2026.