Is The Witcher Season 3 Having Viewership Issues?

With Part 1 of Netflix’s The Witcher Season 3 now streaming (and Part 2 coming later this month), there has been speculation about how Henry Cavill’s swan song on the popular fantasy show is faring ratings-wise – and it doesn’t help that Netflix, along with every other streaming platform, has not exactly been consistent in providing viewership numbers.

There are reasons to believe, however, that there’s been a decrease in viewership. For starters, Redanian Intelligence, a popular Witcher news site, crunched some of Netflix’s numbers and found that, by their calculations, the first half of the third season suffered a 30% drop in viewership when stacked against Season 2’s performance.

Now, there’s a bit of math involved as Netflix changed the way it reports numbers. It used to report them based on how many hours viewers’ watched the series for, but that gave an unfair advantage to shows that had a longer runtime. It’s new metric, called “views,” is based on the number of hours views divided by total runtime.

Plugging that metric into Season 2’s first 10 days of viewership, 310 million hours divided by the show’s runtime gets you 41.8 million views. The first 11 days of Season 3, meanwhile, saw 29 million viewers tuning in to catch up with Henry Cavill and company, representing a 30% drop.

And it’s not just those calculations. Numbers compiled by analytics company Samba TV and obtained by IGN say that 1.1 million people watched The Witcher Season 3’s premiere episode in what’s called “L+5D” data – basically, tracking the amount of people who watch it in the first five days. According to Samba, that represents a 15% drop from the Season 2 premiere.

“The data indicate viewer interest may be waning for the Netflix series,” Cole Strain, VP of Measurement Products at Samba TV, in a statement. “Last season, every episode drew in over a million households within its first week of streaming. This season, however, fewer viewers have returned in the initial viewing window, with the series experiencing a 15% decline between the most recent season and season two’s premiere.”

According to Samba, Episode 2 had 893k U.S. viewers, Episode 3 had 750k, Episode 4 had 602k, and Episode 5 had 505k.

As Redanian Intelligence points out, this drop could be attributed to a number of causes. Some fans are waiting until the entire season is available. Others may be miffed at Netflix’s decision to drop Cavill and replace him with Liam Hemsworth. Netflix, however, really wants you to know that Cavill is still in Season 3, making a point to say as much in marketing to the point where some fans have argued that it’s throwing Hemsworth under the bus.

The Witcher premiered on Netflix in December 2019, receiving mixed reviews but enjoying enough attention to warrant a renewal. The second season hit the streamer in December 2021. Viewership numbers for Season 1 are not available using Netflix’s current metric.

The show is based on Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski’s bestselling series of books, which follow the sword-wielding Geralt of Rivia as he fights and screws his way across a fictional land called The Continent. 

The Witcher Season 3: Vol 2 will be available to stream starting July 27.

Hayden Mears is an entertainment journalist who enjoys (you guessed it) entertainment. He also likes fitness boxing and writing bios in the third person.