In other media news, I finished season 3 of The Witcher. That series is a bizarre rollercoaster. I really liked season 1 and thought the small changes they made to Yennefer's backstory and Geralt's personality were improvements on the original story. Season 2 went off the rails and it felt like even the actors were a little thrown off by it. It still had some great character moments, especially with Geralt and Ciri, but mostly it was pretty meh. I was going to give it up, but sat through season 3 to see where they went with it. It was even more uninspired overall than season 2, but I feel like I got whiplash from them returning hard to the events from the books in the last few episodes.

I played the games (Witcher 3 is easily in my top 5 of all time) and read a bunch of the books. My main takeaway from the Netflix Witcher series is that showrunners need to be clear and concise with the direction they want to take an adaptation. Expectations are important to set and maintain with beloved franchises.

There's definitely room for change in modernizing and adapting to screen, and I'm all for freedom with creator's intent. But there's also a point where you're just hijacking a recognizable name and running away with it if you go too hard into doing your own thing at the expense of the core material. If they wanted to do something different, they should have made something unique and say it was inspired by The Witcher.

I heard rumours that the show might get canned indefinitely between Cavill leaving, the various union strikes and low viewership. So I think that's it for the show. I'd be curious to hear what really went on behind the scenes and know why they made the decisions they made. Of course, as a chronic and obsessive plotter, I'm biased about these things.

Did you watch the Witcher? Feel free to reply and let me know what you thought.