I sometimes ponder what an extraordinary show Netflix could have had with The Witcher, if the streaming giant had given its production over to people who actually knew what they were doing and had the same deep love for the source material as star Henry Cavill.

Cavill, who made his way to these stories first by way of the video games, then the books, like so many fans, is leaving the show after Season 3. And you can see why. Despite the promise of Season 1, which I really enjoyed despite its somewhat confusing format, the second two seasons have been a mess. Season 3 started off strong, but by the end I was annoyed and confused and more than a little perplexed.

Season 3 starts off with Geralt (Cavill), Yennefer (Anya Chalotra) and Ciri (Freya Allan) on the run, moving from house to house in hiding before being snuffed out by their various pursuers. Geralt and Yen are not on speaking terms still, the witcher having not yet forgiven her for her betrayal in Season 2. (Like us, who have not yet forgiven the writers for torpedoing Yen’s character last season).

The good news is that Yen is back to her old self, closer to the actual character she’s based on, and Cavill as Geralt is as terrific as ever. Allan’s Ciri is also enjoyable, but whoever did her makeup did . . . too much. She’s supposed to be nimble and quick, not weighted down by a pound of face paint.

In any case, let’s look at the good, the bad and the ugly of Season 3, Part 1. This encompasses the entire first five episodes of the season. Part 2 releases on July 27th and will have three episodes, which I will review separately.

Cavill and Chalotra were the highlights of the season for me, though I am sad that Season 2 so badly disrupted their arc. I like Joey Batey as Jaskier, and he and Ciri have a wonderful scene where they narrate what Geralt and Yen are saying to one another from afar. Truly, one of the most endearing scenes in the entire series.

There are some great fight scenes as well, with Geralt’s distinct sword-fighting style on full display. There’s one monster fight that feels more like Elden Ring than The Witcher, and it’s super creepy and weird.

I very much enjoyed the scheming of Dijkstra (Graham McTavish) and Philippa Eilhart (Cassie Clare) as well, though I have mixed feelings about the Redenian court in which they do most of it. I find that few of the kings in this show are presented quite how I would picture them, and that’s true of the hapless Vizimir (Ed Birch) as well.

There’s also often a sense of distance and travel, which I like, with them riding over long distances or taking a “chain ferry” and so forth. This is inconsistent, however. Other times vast distances are shaved to nothing. But when it’s there and people aren’t just fast-traveling, it’s great!

Overall, I’d say that there were many engaging moments throughout the season, and there are enough good actors and material to make something great out of it all. I was entertained much of the time. Alas . . .

We’ll have to break this up into sub-sections, but I’ll start with the final episode of Part 1. Episode 5 is the worst episode of The Witcher ever, and it’s not even close. The episode is told in flashbacks that Yen and Geralt are having as they discuss the ball at Aretuza. These flashbacks drip-feed new revelations to viewers. We see certain things happen and then later learn, through new dialogue or scenes, why they happened. This lends an air of mystery to the events. There’s even a song being played by a group of very annoying musicians that repeats, over and over, that not everything is as it seems. Oh thank you, Netflix, for setting that right on our noses.

In any case, what goes very wrong here is that the flashbacks repeat a ton of footage and dialogue each time. Instead of just showing us one line to let us know that we’re back at that particular moment, they play out entire season over and over again. It’s jarring, baffling and at one point I quite literally wondered if the episode had just started over by mistake. The structure isn’t the problem here, it’s the execution and the truly awful editing. If I were Netflix I’d have them redo the episode with tighter editing even now, even after release.

This all means that the big revelations at the end—the twist we all saw coming quite literally since the end of Season 1—is rushed and too easy for our heroes. The misdirect employed is also wildly obvious. The whole thing is trying to be too clever and fails at every twist and turn. I am honestly a bit annoyed I stayed up late just to finish the whole thing yesterday.

What else? Let’s list off a few things:

Aesthetically, the show feels like it’s taken a step backwards. Costumes seem worse than even in Season 2, with many quite cheap-looking.

Season 2 also had great establishing shots—big overhead shots of lots of different cities and places. There’s a bit of that here, but not much. Aretuza gets a few, but it feels meager compared to what we’re used to in fantasy.

I assume we’ll get the big new Jaskier song in Part 2, but if not that’s awfully disappointing. Toss A Coin To Your Witcher was great, but Jaskier is a one-hit wonder in my book. The addition of new bards who play at least one song that feels like nothing you’d ever hear in a Medieval setting was more grating than anything, though I enjoyed a bit of petty artistic rivalry.

The strong start this season quickly tapered off into a series of confusing moments and strange choices and while I still enjoyed myself—the leads do a lot of heavy-lifting here—I can’t help but feel a heavy sense of disappointment. This story needed more time to unfurl and this show in general needs more quality control, from scripts to editing to CGI. It also needs a tighter focus on its main characters. I really wish we’d gotten a show that understood its own fan base and tried harder to create a fantasy world that felt more specific and less generic as well.

Cavill is great and will be missed. I would watch him as Geralt even if it was nothing more than a Monster Of The Week style show, with no over-arching plot whatsoever. Geralt, Yen, Ciri, Jaskier, Yarpen, Eskel, Vizimir, all the grand castles and fortresses, all the forests, fens and bogs of the Continent, all the griffons, harpies and kikimore. There is such a wealth of content to plumb, even if you never told a single story from the books, it’s remarkable that we’ve gotten such a scattered mess of overly-complicated court intrigue that’s transformed Ciri into little more than a MacGuffin and this world into little more than another modern generic fantasy with no sense of its own identity.

More thoughts to come.

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