The Witcher: Blood Origin arrived on Netflix to miserable critic reviews, but audiences have been almost as brutal as the show’s action scenes. While there are plenty of fans of The Witcher slamming the show as being another example of a badly written show, there have been a huge number of one-star reviews being logged from fans of Henry Cavill who are still angry at his departure from the main series.
The Witcher: Blood Origin is a prequel series to The Witcher, focusing on the first Witcher and featuring a whole new cast of character and stars including Michelle Yeoh, Jacob Collins-Levy and Lenny Henry. However, while Netflix had been hoping for another big hit from The Witcher-verse, they instead have been given a massive headache about what could happen to the future of the franchise.
Among the some 2500+ audience reviews that have been left on Rotten Tomatoes, there are plenty that are more interested in airing their annoyance at the upcoming departure of Henry Cavill than commenting directly on Blood Origin itself. However, they were more than happy to give the show one star of less, leading to the current abysmal 9% approval rate.
One review said: “Netflix had a winning lottery ticket with The Witcher franchise and Henry Cavil but decided to change the numbers.”
Another added: “Not only that the show completely changed and disrespected the source material, but the writer has made some very misandric comments about Cavill and insulted the fans. I couldn't even get through the first episode.”
A third said: “Honestly this took me by surprise, I knew that the series was having trouble after it strayed so far from the source material and figured that it would be bad without Henry Cavill but wow, I had no idea it would be this bad...”
Another review simply said: “Horrible show should've kept Henry Cavill”
A further unhappy viewer contributed: “How? How did this go from awesome to just horrifically bad? I tried. Believe me I tried even though I knew WITHOUT Cavill it'd probably be nowhere near as good but it was shocking bad! Good god... don't bother!!”
The Witcher: Blood Origin Defied Bad Reviews To Become A Netflix Hit
Despite struggling gain many positive reviews in amongst the vast number of reviews that hate the writing, the characters, the stars and the fact that it doesn’t have Henry Cavill, The Witcher: Blood Origin managed to debut at #1 in Netflix’s chart.
The big question for Netflix now is how it approaches other potential spin-offs of The Witcher, as well as the challenge it is going to face when Liam Hemsworth takes over as Geralt in season 4. With many fans having strong feelings about Henry Cavill’s exit, there is a rocky time coming for The Witcher franchise in the coming years. For now, all Netflix can do is wait for the third season of The Witcher arriving on Netflix in 2023, and then brace themselves for what comes next.
The Witcher: Blood Origin and The Witcher seasons 1 and 2are currently streaming on Netflix.