SHOCKING: The Witcher Season 4 scores the lowest Rotten Tomatoes rating ever, exposing the “impossible” challenge Netflix is facing!
The hit series is now disappointing millions of fans, revealing the enormous pressure weighing on the streaming giant in the battle to retain viewers after losing Henry Cavill. 👇

Los Angeles, November 22, 2025 – 07:12 PST.  
The numbers are brutal.  
At the time of writing, The Witcher Season 4 sits at a catastrophic 34% on Rotten Tomatoes, the lowest score ever recorded for the franchise and one of the worst launches for any Netflix original in 2025. The audience score isn’t much kinder: 41%. Social media is on fire. #BoycottWitcher4 is trending worldwide. Henry Cavill’s name appears in more tweets than Liam Hemsworth’s.

The first six episodes dropped at midnight. By sunrise, the verdict was unanimous: something broke.

Critics are merciless. Variety calls it “a hollow shell wearing Geralt’s face.” The Hollywood Reporter writes, “Replacing Cavill was always going to be hard; replacing the soul of the show turned out to be impossible.” IGN gives it a 4/10: “Season 4 feels like fan-fiction written by an algorithm that read the books once and then forgot half of them.”

But the real wound is coming from the fans.  
Reddit’s r/witcher has collapsed into civil war. YouTube reaction channels that once celebrated every trailer are now posting 40-minute videos titled “How Netflix Killed The Witcher in One Season.” TikTok is flooded with side-by-side comparisons of Cavill’s growl versus Hemsworth’s, and the comment sections are a bloodbath.

Netflix knew the risk.  
Everyone did. When Henry Cavill announced his departure in October 2022, citing creative differences and a desire to return to Superman (before that fell apart too), the internet mourned for weeks. Cavill wasn’t just Geralt. He was the reason millions discovered Andrzej Sapkowski’s books and CD Projekt’s games. He learned sword choreography for fun. He corrected pronunciations on set. He wore the medallion like it was real.

Liam Hemsworth, talented and likable, was handed an impossible job: step into armor that was never designed for him.

Insiders say the production itself was chaos.  
Reshoots lasted four months. Entire storylines were scrapped after test screenings scored below 60%. Showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich admitted in a now-deleted Instagram post that “we tried to honor both the books and Henry’s version while moving forward.” The result, critics say, is a season that pleases no one: too far from the source material for book fans, too different from the first three seasons for Cavill loyalists.

And then there are the “enormous pressures” no one at Netflix can escape.

As one veteran producer explained in forty-six words that are now being quoted everywhere:

“The real problem is the insane expectation after three beloved seasons and the nightmare of replacing an iconic lead while trying to innovate plot and cast. Netflix is learning the hard way that some roles simply cannot be recast without breaking the spell.”

That quote, first whispered on the set in 2024, has become the epitaph for Season 4.

Behind the scenes, the numbers are terrifying for Netflix executives.  
The company spent an estimated $112 million on Season 4 (up from $80 million for Season 3) betting that the franchise could survive the transition. Early data shows a 38% drop in completion rate compared to Season 3’s first weekend. In the UK and Germany, two of the show’s strongest markets, viewership is down over 50%. Investors are nervous. Stock dipped 4% in pre-market trading.

More worryingly, the dreaded “review-bombing” defense no longer works. Even verified viewers (those who watched all six episodes) are averaging 2.8 stars out of 5. The most liked user review on Rotten Tomatoes reads simply: “Henry Cavill carried this show on his back for three seasons. Without him, it’s just expensive cosplay.”

Netflix tried everything.  
They released a 22-minute “making-of” documentary focusing on Hemsworth’s training. They dropped a surprise Yennefer spin-off teaser. They even brought back Joey Batey and Anya Chalotra for emotional damage control interviews. None of it moved the needle.

At a crisis meeting yesterday, executives reportedly discussed pulling the remaining four episodes and releasing them weekly instead of all at once, a strategy they abandoned years ago. Nothing was decided.

Henry Cavill has remained silent on social media since the premiere, but his last Instagram post (a black-and-white photo of him in the original Geralt armor with the caption “Thank you”) has received 11 million likes in 24 hours.

Meanwhile, Liam Hemsworth posted a respectful statement: “I knew the shoes were huge. I gave everything I had. I’m proud of the work, and I hope one day the fans can see past the change.” The comments are disabled.

The Witcher was once Netflix’s golden goose, second only to Stranger Things in global hours viewed. Now it’s the cautionary tale every studio whispers about: never let your face walk away.

Season 5 is already filmed.  
Whether anyone will watch it is now the biggest question in streaming.

Netflix built a monster.  
Henry Cavill made it human.  
And sometimes, that’s a spell even a billion dollars can’t recast.