The Witcher Season 4 Suffers Dramatic Drop in Viewership Compared to Previous Seasons

The Witcher Season 4 looks like it’s having a hard time compared to previous seasons of the Netflix series, with viewership data showing a dramatic decline.

For Season 4 and the upcoming fifth and final season, Netflix replaced Henry Cavill with Liam Hemsworth as Geralt following the former Superman actor’s exit at the end of Season 3. Season 4 made its debut on October 30 with all eight episodes and met with a mixed response from fans and critics. IGN’s The Witcher Season 4 review returned a 7/10. We said: “Even with the Cavill/Hemsworth shake-up, The Witcher sticks to its guns (er, swords) and delivers a decent season of magic and mayhem.”

According to What’s On Netflix, Season 4 has struggled for views in its launch week. It landed at No. 2 on Netflix’s English TV list with 7.4 million views across its first four days of availability.

The comparisons make for tough reading if you’re Netflix. While we don’t have figures for the breakout first season, Season 2 has first week views of 18.5 million, and Season 3 had 15.2 million. For extra context, animated spinoff The Witcher: Blood Origin had 4.6 million cumulative views in its first week. While there is nuance to be found within these comparisons (Season 3 was a split release, for example), it cannot be denied that Season 4 of The Witcher has disappointed.

In a note to press, media analytics company Samba TV delivered its own verdict on The Witcher Season 4, saying 577,000 U.S. households watched Season 4 Episode 1 during the launch window. That’s down 35% from the 885,000 U.S. households that watched Season 3 Episode 1 during the same launch window period.

Cast your mind back six years to the launch of The Witcher and it was one of the hottest TV shows on the planet. In January 2020, Netflix said The Witcher Season 1 was on track to become the biggest Season 1 TV series ever on the streaming platform, with a huge 76 million member households watching in its first four weeks of release. It was so big that it drove up sales of the CD Projekt video games, the books upon which they’re based, and even spawned a viral musical hit. You’d worry for the future of The Witcher if it were any other Netflix show, but we already know how this one ends: the confirmed fifth and final season.

In truth, The Witcher has endured a rocky road ever since Cavill’s dramatic exit. The show has faced a backlash from some fans who adored Cavill’s portrayal of Geralt, and it feels like it wouldn’t have mattered who had replaced him, such was the sentiment after the news broke in 2022. It’s still unknown why Cavill left but the actor said in November 2021 he was absolutely committed to a seven season run of The Witcher “as long as we can keep telling great stories which honor Sapkowski’s work.”

In September, Liam Hemsworth spoke for the first time about replacing Henry Cavill, admitting reaction online forced him off social media and the internet. Last year, speaking to Collider, Ciri actress Freya Allan said she felt sorry for Hemsworth for having to take over from Cavill in what was “not an ideal situation.”

“I feel sorry for him, honestly, because, number one, that fan base can be very attack-y, and it’s not an ideal situation to be in taking up someone else’s role,” she said. “But I’m really excited to see what he does. And he’s such a lovely guy. I just hope that people give him the time of day.”

Back in 2022, Cavill took to social media to say he would return to play Superman “after being told by the studio” to do so, but new DC Studio heads James Gunn and Peter Safran went in another direction (Gunn later admitted Cavill was messed about by previous studio leadership). Cavill went on to sign a deal with Amazon and Games Workshop to adapt Warhammer 40,000, a tabletop game he loves, and is currently recovering from a leg injury sustained training for the Highlander reboot.