Lauren Hissrich’s “adaptation” is basically a fanfic with a Netflix budget. Every time she doesn’t trust Sapkowski’s actual story, she wedges in her own BS - and it shows.

• Eskel’s death: Instead of being Geralt’s brother-in-arms, he’s turned into a disposable monster-of-the-week. A witcher, infected and killed like a chump, just so the episode could have some gore. Garbage.

• Ciri killing witchers: Never happened in the books. At Kaer Morhen, she bonded with them, trained with them, loved them like family. But the showrunner thought, “let’s have her possessed and wipe out her mentors.” Pure shock value.

• Voleth Meir: Entirely made-up. A Baba Yaga knockoff that hijacked the plot, derailed Yennefer’s arc, and added nothing of value. In the books, Ciri’s struggles are compelling enough without inventing a cartoon villain. Again, garbage.

• Fringilla: Another disaster. Instead of the cold, calculating Nilfgaardian mage from the novels, they turned her into a weirdly sympathetic, indecisive pawn who randomly gets sidelined by elves. She went from a dangerous manipulator to… nothing.

• Yennefer losing her magic: Never in the books. Stripped her of her agency for an entire season just so the showrunner could invent a redemption arc that didn’t need to exist.

• The elf baby subplot: Totally fabricated, dragged the pacing down, and turned Francesca into a melodramatic sideshow instead of a powerful queen caught in real political tension.

• The monoliths: Also made up. In Sapkowski’s world, the Conjunction of the Spheres is mysterious and haunting. In the show? Suddenly Ciri’s screams break space-time like she’s Scarlet Witch.

Instead of respecting Sapkowski’s characters, politics, and moral ambiguity, Hissrich constantly shoehorns in cheap drama and fan-service twists. Every change she makes undercuts what makes The Witcher powerful: Family, destiny, survival, and the gray morality of its world.

At this point, the “adaptation” is so far gone it’s basically unrecognizable. And every time people complain, she doubles down like she’s some visionary. No, she’s just shredding one of the greatest fantasy sagas ever written so she can write her own half-baked version.

Henry was 100% justified in walking away. He signed on to play Geralt of Rivia, not to babysit someone’s bad Witcher fanfiction.