The Witcher fans have been making it very clear over this past couple of years that they’re not impressed with the direction the series has been going, with the departure of Geralt actor Henry Cavill causing fans to boycott and heavily criticise upcoming series. Now that Season 3 has released, it seems like the shows recent controversial decisions and lackluster marketing could be having an impact on viewership.
First shared by Witcher fansite Redanian Intelligence (thanks Kotaku), it's been discovered that The Witcher's viewership is down by a pretty sizable 30 percent compared to the release of Season 2. Netflix recently introdcued a new metric called "views" that we can use to judge a show's success, that being hours viewed divided by season runtime. Previously, Netflix would simply release the hours viewed of a particular season, which would usually skew results in favor of longer shows.
Thanks to this, we can get a rough idea of how the first part of The Witcher Season 3 compares to the release of Season 2 in terms of viewership, and it's not great reading. Within the first 10 days of Season 2's release, the show racked up 310 million hours viewed, which divided by the season's runtime gives us 41.8 million views. In comparison, the first part of The Witcher 3 has racked up 139.5 million hours viewed in its first 11 days, which comes out to 29 million views in the new metric. That's a roughly 30 percent drop.
Before you grab your pitchfork and declare that this is all because Henry Cavill is leaving, there are a few possible reasons behind the drop, some of them completely unrelated to the show's quality. It's fairly natural to see a drop in viewership between seasons, as it's just inevitable that not everyone who watched Season 1 and 2 will be compelled enough to watch Season 3. There was always going to be a drop in that regard.
You also have the fact that this is only the first part of Season 3, with the second part dropping at the end of the month. It's likely there might be a few people simply waiting for the whole series to be released before they give it a watch, especially since there isn't much time between the release of the first and second halves.
However, it would be remiss not to mention the controversy surrounding Cavill's departure, and the entire situation alongside Netflix's handling of the series will likely have contributed too. The real test will be Season 4's viewing figures, which is when the series will finally make the switch from Cavill to Liam Hemsworth. I do not envy that man's position right now.