The Witcher Season 4 Suffers Disastrous Drop In Viewership on Netflix

The Witcher was meant to be certainly one of Netflix’s greatest reveals of all time, and following season 1, that actually appeared prefer it may be the case. Nevertheless, because the present advanced and new seasons dropped, it shortly grew to become clear the collection was in decline from season 2 onward and is, at greatest, what we’d dub a second-tier title. Season 3 noticed a big drop in viewership, though it was notably cut up into two. With season 4 now out, although, serving because the second-to-last outing for Geralt, have issues rotated?

To recap, The Witcher returned for a binge launch on October thirtieth after being cut up for its third season. It got here again with an enormous advertising and marketing push and a big change on the high of the solid checklist, with Liam Hemsworth taking up the character of Geralt from Henry Cavill. Opinions have been finally combined as soon as once more for the brand new season, with it carrying a 60% on Rotten Tomatoes from critics, down from prior seasons, and viewers scores have been extremely combined. We gave the brand new collection a three-and-a-half-star score, calling it a refreshing increase however finally doing little to win again followers. 

Let’s check out the stats from three totally different areas to see precisely how effectively The Witcher season 4 is performing up to now. 

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Netflix High 10 Knowledge

Let’s start with the newly launched Netflix high 10 knowledge from the Netflix TUDUM website. Per Netflix’s press launch, right here’s how they sum up the efficiency for The Witcher season 4:

“These in search of a extra magical and mature spooky-weekend watch indulged within the new season of The Witcher, casting its spell at No. 2 on the English TV checklist with 7.4 million views. Season 4 introduces Liam Hemsworth as Geralt of Rivia, the monster hunter for rent, as he, Ciri (Freya Allan), and Yennefer (Anya Chalotra) at the moment are scattered throughout the continent. Additionally new this season is Laurence Fishburne, who joins the solid as Regis.”

So the headline quantity is 7.4M views for its first 4 days. How does that evaluate?

There’s a bunch of caveats! No season 1 knowledge is obtainable for the present, because it premiered in 2019, lengthy earlier than Netflix launched the day by day high 10s globally and definitely earlier than the weekly high 10 as we all know it at this time. The one knowledge we received on the time was the previous viewership stat masking whether or not two minutes of the present was watched, which counted in the direction of the viewership, which stood at 76 million, making it adequate for second place on the out there knowledge charts we had for the time, behind Bridgerton S1 and forward of Maid. 

We must also caveat that The Witcher season 2 launched on a Friday, so it solely had 3 days to construct viewership, and season 3 is cut up, so it had much less runtime in week 1 to construct larger views early on. 

That mentioned, nevertheless you paint it, season 4 had an enormous drop in views in comparison with prior seasons however did do higher than The Witcher: Blood Origins:

How about in comparison with different reveals? That’s the place issues look even worse as a result of it barely will get above some canceled reveals and definitely less than par with the likes of Netflix’s greatest hits like Bridgerton and Stranger Issues. The truth is, it’s not even in the identical universe.

We’re going to place in a number of charts masking hours and views, although evaluating seasons precisely for the views on this occasion isn’t at all times the very best when cut up seasons are concerned, given the runtime adjustments when new episodes drop. Let’s start with the views chart: 

And now shifting onto the hours chart (observe that hours weren’t out there on the time of publishing and we’ll replace the second we get them):

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FlixPatrol Knowledge for The Witcher

FlixPatrol, in case you didn’t know, is the tracker of Netflix’s high 10s in every nation. What this enables us to do is see extra granularly the place the present is performing effectively and the place it’s flagging, and choose up the place it’s performing effectively. 

From their knowledge, we are able to see that the present has been struggling to select up factors within the high 10s, fairly like season 2 and season 3 earlier than it, and is already exhibiting indicators of falling away shortly. 

Transferring onto their heatmap, we are able to see the place the collection is choosing up probably the most factors, and it’s the place you’d count on it to be. Europe is robust alongside India and the Center East. 

Curiously, The Rats has solely simply began discovering its approach onto the day by day high 10s in 21 nations, however solely up to now day or so. Provided that Netflix dropped it so quietly onto the service and most will solely be uncovered to it after finishing season 4, that shouldn’t be too stunning. Jap European areas appear to be the highest performers up to now. 

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Samba TV

Lastly, some knowledge from Samba TV has additionally been put out, masking the launch in US households who additionally report a drop in viewership. 

Yesterday, they posted knowledge masking the primary 4 days and commentary that states, “The primary episode of season 4 was watched by 35% fewer households than season three (577k vs. 885k). Presently ranked because the collection’ lowest-rated season but on Rotten Tomatoes, that’s not stopping some followers who’re nonetheless curious as to the place this subsequent chapter leads.”

For different comparisons, they’ve beforehand revealed that The Witcher: Blood Origin scored 1.3M US households within the first eight days. In its first weekend, Season 2 scored 804K US households for the premiere. 

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After all, the info doesn’t matter a lot as to the way forward for the franchise. Netflix has confirmed that season 5, which has wrapped filming and is at present in post-production, would be the final. As we revealed final 12 months, Netflix scrapped its solely different recognized venture, a youngsters collection, and The Rats restricted collection was revived right into a film that dropped alongside season 4 (quietly). 

Did you get pleasure from the brand new season of The Witcher? Tell us within the feedback down beneath.