The Witcher’s New Movie Just Proved What The Netflix Show Got Wrong

The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep, an upcoming animated film based on Andrzej Sapkowski’s “A Little Sacrifice,” is a reminder of what the Netflix series should have done when adapting Geralt of Rivia’s adventures. While neither Liam Hemsworth nor Henry Cavill is voicing Geralt in The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep, the movie is meant to be part of the same universe as the Netflix show. Joey Batey and Anya Chalotra are reprising their roles as Jaskier and Jennifer, respectively, with Doug Cockle voicing Geralt after playing the character in the Witcher games.

Sirens of the Deep is not the first animated Witcher movie set in the same continuity as the live-action show. In 2021, The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf followed a young Vesemir and premiered to an impressive 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Whereas The Witcher’s latest seasons have struggled to appeal to both casual audiences and fans of the franchise, the animated films seem to have found the right tone and pacing for these stories. Although it’s too soon to say how good Sirens of the Deep will be, the movie is cleverly adapting one of The Witcher’s best short stories.

Sirens Of The Deep Is Doing What Netflix’s The Witcher Should’ve Done More Often

The Witcher Should’ve Given Geralt More Standalone Adventures

Andrzej Sapkowski’s The Witcher canon consists of nine books, the first two of which are short story collections. Considering how Geralt of Rivia was introduced to the world through standalone adventures, plus how The Witcher games would have players go from mission to mission, a TV show seemed like the perfect way to bring the character to live-action. Netflix’s The Witcher would have the chance to cover most if not all short stories before diving into the larger narratives of the novels. While The Witcher season 1 did embrace this episodic aspect of the saga, seasons 2 and 3 didn’t.

The Witcher will end with season 5.

The Witcher’s first season covered a few different short stories from the first and second books, although it played around with the timeline. However, the Netflix series soon began to favor overarching stories about the Continent and its factions over Geralt’s episodic adventures. As a result, Netflix’s The Witcher would often feel more like Game of Thrones than The Witcher. The upcoming animated film avoids that problem by simply covering one of Geralt’s many missions. Of course, an animated feature and a live-action series have different structures, but doing standalone adventures is undoubtedly a great way to adapt The Witcher.

Netflix’s The Witcher Needed More Standalone Adventures Before Diving Into Larger Stories

The Witcher Got Too Convoluted Too Quickly

Although Netflix’s The Witcher did cover most of the short stories or at least incorporated elements from them across the first three seasons, the show would have arguably benefitted from a slower approach. The Witcher became too convoluted for its own good, from spinoff setups to complex political battles for the fate of the Continent. While all of those elements play a role in the Andrzej Sapkowski novels, Geralt sometimes felt like an afterthought in his own show.

Doing more self-contained episodes or even specials and movies like Sirens of the Deep would have been a great way to bring Geralt’s most famous stories to the screen before expanding the world of The Witcher. Fortunately, while the live-action series has to tackle a lot of storylines that have been set up in The Witcher season 3, The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep can be just a self-contained tale about Geralt getting himself in trouble.