Netflix’s The Mandalorian.
The Witcher, which focuses much more on Sapkowski’s books than the video games, has become a pop culture phenomenon. Despite one of Netflix’s hottest properties.
According to Netflix’s fourth quarter earnings of 2019, The Witcher has become one of Netflix’s most successful first seasons ever, tracking as its biggest. Over the course of its first four weeks, 76 million households watched The Witcher. Netflix’s definition of “watched” means “chose to watch and did watch for at least two minutes.” This metric is different than their previous metric of “watched 70 percent of a single episode of a series." While two minutes isn’t a lot of time, 76 million households tuning in to see Henry Cavill’s Geralt, Anya Chalotra’s Yennefer, and Freya Allan’s Ciri is still a lot. The three main characters and their show will no doubt only increase in popularity once season two airs in 2021.
One of the only things both fans and critics took issue within The Witcher’s first season is its convoluted timeline. While the first season follows three main characters over a nonlinear timeline,Game of Thrones.
Before The Witcher became available on Netflix, it was being hyped by many people as the next Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones’ disappointing final season and the resulting backlash has served as a sort of benchmark for what not to do. The Witcher’s first season may not be critically acclaimed like Game of Thrones but it already has a big-budget and record-breaking viewership numbers. Unlike HBO’s Game of Thrones, Netflix’s The Witcher has a complete set of beloved source material to draw from; in the long run, The Witcher might not just be Netflix’s biggest first season of television but one of the biggest fantasy shows of all time.