Netflix's Latest Game-Changer: 'The Witcher' Season 3 Breaks the Mold

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Netflix, the colossal force that forever altered the face of television, is at it once more. Since popularizing the binge-watch phenomenon by releasing entire seasons of shows all at once, the streaming giant has consistently proven to be a game-changer.

Lately, Netflix appears to be tampering with this winning formula, experimenting with different release strategies for their original series. Take for example the upcoming release of "The Witcher" Season 3. Breaking from tradition, the season has been divided into two volumes.

Volume one is set to premiere this week, on June 29th, while the second is scheduled for July. This innovative move was not a premeditated part of the script but was born out of the dynamic nature of the creative process. According to executive producer, Gaub, the idea originated during the editing phase.

He reveals, "That wasn’t written into the script; it wasn’t known when we were shooting. However, we did know what the season was, and there is a significant pivot point." The precedent set by another Netflix favorite, "Stranger Things", which had successfully divided its season, provided inspiration.

Gaub notes, "And it was like, ‘well, that’s intriguing.’”

Resurrecting the Cliffhanger

The motives behind this deviation from binge-releasing are twofold. Firstly, it serves to rejuvenate the anticipation and speculation that typically envelops episodic releases, aspects that are usually diluted in the binge-watching model.

“In a streaming world, cliffhangers don’t really exist because you’re hitting play [right after an episode ends],” says Gaub. “You don’t get that satisfaction of the anticipation and discussion and chatting online.

So we wanted to give that to the fans, and the story was there for us to do it”. Secondly, this approach enables the creative team to leverage real-time viewer feedback and adapt the content accordingly. Tomek Baginski, another executive producer on the series, explains, “Every season, every episode, we learn something new.

We learn a little bit more about the characters, the Continent, what works and what doesn’t work, also on a purely technical level. We are using all of those lessons in season 4, and there are several amazing cliffhangers there, so who knows? It’s an option, but it’s not decided yet”.

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