Netflix's 'The Witcher' Could Air Into Three Presidential Administrations

By Dustin Rowles | TV | January 22, 2020 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | January 22, 2020 |

Netflix has had a hair-trigger when it comes to canceling many of their series, particularly after the third season (when it becomes less profitable to continue), but that may not be an issue for their Henry Cavill series The Witcher, a show I gobbled down in one day, even though I’m not a fan of the genre. Hell, I don’t even know if I liked The Witcher, although I do know that I couldn’t stop watching it.

Indeed, my Netflix account is one of apparently 76 million that watched The Witcher (for at least two minutes, which is a nonsense metric, but Netflix is gonna Netflix). Netflix expects that it will be the biggest first season of television in the streaming network’s history. So, after hyping The Witcher as the next Game of Thrones, Netflix actually managed to pull it off, at least insofar as The Witcher — like Game of Thrones — is a very popular fantasy series that contains a lot of sexual content (as Mike notes, however, the binge-watching model really does a disservice to the series, which would otherwise inspire hundreds of weekly think pieces and an audience that would grow incrementally over eight weeks of episodes).

Viewers don’t need to worry that the series will leave them anytime soon, either. It was renewed for a second season before the first even aired, and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings suggested it was “a massive new franchise that will develop season after season.” The good news there, too, is that there are five novels to adapt, they’ve all been written, and The Witcher saga could probably be stretched into six or seven seasons overall. Which is to say: Theoretically, we might have two more Presidents before The Witcher ends its run — it could survive the Presidencies of Trump and Biden, and still be around well into Stacy Abrams’ first term (what a comforting thought!)

There is one depressing caveat to news that The Witcher is the most popular series ever on Netflix (according to their nonsense metric), and that is this: Michael Bay and Ryan Reynolds’ 6 Underground (blergh) was watched by 83 million accounts (for at least two minutes). It is still short of the most popular Netflix movie, however. That title still belongs to Bird Box.

Source: THR, Forbes