The Witcher's third season isn't going down well. It has an audience score of 22 percent and the subreddit continues to pick apart everything from costume design to awkwardly modern dialogue. But the big complaint is that the show oversimplifies plot points from the novel, something executive producer Tomek Baginski blames on TikTok and Western audiences.
"When it comes to shows, the younger the public is, the logic of the plot is less significant," Baginski said in an interview with Wyborcza (as translated by Redanian Intelligence).
The interviewer then asked Baginski what is significant for younger people, to which he replied, "Just emotions. Just pure emotions. A bare emotional mix. Those people grew up on TikTok and YouTube, they jump from video to video [...] Dear children, what you do to yourselves makes you less resilient for longer content, for long and complicated chains of cause and effect."
Season 3 in particular simplifies huge parts of The Witcher's lore, focusing more on the main trio. In the Times of Contempt and Blood of Elves novels, the Conclave of Mages is founded by Vilgefortz of Roggeveen who was also named the "Hero of Sodden" due to his leading the mages to victory in the Battle of Sodden. This caused the Nilfgaardian forces to retreat out of the Northern Kingdoms, ending the First Nilfgaardian War. However, the show sees Yennefer lead the victory in the Battle of Sodden and form the Conclave, sidestepping Vilgefortz who earns the title because of vague political reasons.
Vilgefortz is an antagonist in the books, hunting down Geralt with the intent to kill him. This ultimately leads to Geralt beheading the Conclave founder, a hero renowned for driving out the Nilfgaardians. Obviously, this won't happen with Yennefer in the show, painting a much more black-and-white story of good and evil, something Baginski says is intentional.
"Americans [...] grew up in a different historical context, where everything was arranged: America is always good, the rest are the bad guys. And there are no complications," Baginski said. "When a series is made for a huge mass of viewers, with different experiences, from different parts of the world, and a large part of them are Americans, these simplifications not only make sense, they are necessary. It's painful for us, and for me too, but the higher level of nuance and complexity will have a smaller range, it won't reach people. Sometimes it may go too far, but we have to make these decisions and accept them."
Of course, this is despite The Witcher 3 winning Game of the Year (an American award) and selling over 50 million copies worldwide.