The Witcher season 4 has arrived with a two-year break between seasons, but new information has come to light that the wait until season 5’s release date is going to be much, much shorter.
While the quality and viewership of The Witcher season 4 seem wobbly, with series-low scores and a third-place debut, that doesn’t matter. Season 5 is not only happening, but it’s actually already been filmed.
- According to reports, The Witcher season 5 wrapped filming last month, before season 4 had even aired. So, using that as a metric, we know about how long it’s going to be until the release date.
- The Witcher season 4 wrapped filming in October 2024. That’s exactly a year for post-production.
- So if The Witcher season 5 wrapped last month, a year from then is September 2026.
That means instead of a more than two-year gap, we are possibly shrinking that to a single year, almost unheard of with Netflix shows, much less ones this large in scope with significant location filming and VFX work.
It’s still not clear why it took so long to get season 4 out the door. I do not think the Liam Hemsworth transition has anything to do with it, as Henry Cavill announced he was leaving The Witcher after season 3 way, way back in October 2022, when season 3 didn’t even air until June 2023. The decision was probably even made before that.
The most likely answer is the back-to-back filming of seasons 4 and 5, which delayed season 4 in order to get season 5 out this quickly. So, that cost then for season 4, but now it’s greatly benefited them for season 5. So, from December 2019 to presumably September 2026, it took almost seven years to do five seasons. Honestly, that’s not terribly in the grand scheme of the streaming market.
The Witcher season 4 has just ticked over into positive critic scores, now at 60% on Rotten Tomatoes. But audience scores are as dismal as last season at 19%. It’s not just because Cavill left, as his season 3 has a 20% score; it’s mainly about book changes, which many fans do not like. In the end, it doesn’t really seem like this series panned out the way Netflix hoped it would, once upon a time thinking it could even be a Game of Thrones competitor. Still, at least they’re going to get five seasons out and finish the story, even if it took a Geralt switch to do so.
Whether there will be more spin-offs ahead is unclear, as we’ve already had a number of those of varying degrees of quality. But I think Netflix is probably ready to set this world down for a while and move on to the next thing. The next thing possibly being buying all WB’s IPs from DC to Harry Potter to…Game of Thrones.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.