‘The Witcher: Blood Origin’ Gets a Christmas Release Date but a Shorter Season — Here’s Why
The Witcher universe gets a new story to tell, years before the adventures of Geralt of Rivia. Netflix’s spinoff series, The Witcher: Blood Origin, will take fans 1200 years into the past and catalog the creation of the first witcher and what led to the Conjunction of Spheres. The Witcher: Blood Origin gets a set premiere date for 2022, but fans will be surprised to learn the season is shorter than expected.
‘The Witcher: Blood Origin’ will be released on Christmas 2022
Netflix’s 2022 Tudum event realizes a few tidbits of what can be expected from the streaming platform. Not only did fans learn from Henry Cavill that The Witcher Season 3 will premiere in the Summer of 2023, but Michelle Yeoh, Sophia Brown, and Laurence O’Fuarain gave fans what they wanted to hear.
The Witcher: Blood Origin will premiere on Christma day, Dec. 25. The series’s premise is to set up the common lore, character, and history that fans love in the original series. But unlike The Witcher, the spinoff series will focus more heavily on the elven people before their demise.
Creator Declan de Barra explains to Netflix, “Viewers will be surprised because they’re going to see a story told about a period of elven history that was buried by the humans after their arrival and eventual conquest of the continent.”
The series has an impressive cast list in the roles of characters from the original book series by Andrzej Sapkowski. Sophia Brown stars as Éile. She was once a warrior in the Queen’s guard who gave it all up to become a traveling musician. Michelle Yeoh graces the small-screen as Scian. Scian is the last of her tribe and seeks to retrieve a blade stolen from her people. The third leading actor is Laurence O’Fuarain as Fjall. His character was born into a warrior clan to protect the king. Instead, he seeks vengeance.
‘The Witcher: Blood Origin’ will have a drastically short season – for a reason
When Netflix originally announced the spinoff series, it was detailed to have six episodes in its first season. But will The Witcher: Blood Origin well underway and close to its premiere, Netflix announced the creator cut the season even shorter.
Instead of six episodes, the series will only have four. For fans, it seems too short to tell the complex and detailed stories of the elven people and their history. But De Barra explains he wanted the series to not feel like a dragged-out movie.
“This felt like a two-part movie. You never want to be watching a movie going, “I love this movie.” And then you start to look at your watch going, ‘Oh, please end soon,’ I never wanted there to be any moment where we’re just stringing the audience along to have an episode,” explained the creator.
He admits the beauty of The Witcher: Blood Origin not being a network series is freely changing the time count or episode count. “So, when we were in the edit room, that [four-episode structure] is what happened organically, the shaping into four episodes from all the footage we shot. Optimum story flow. I wanted it to be a punch in the face, so that you can’t take your eyes off it,” said De Barra.
How will the spinoff series flesh out storylines from ‘The Witcher’?
The Witcher: Blood Origin sets out to cover a lot of groundwork in its first season that fans are familiar with from The Witcher. Within four episodes, De Barra explains fans will get to know the backstory of the monoliths, the reasoning for the Convergence, and a major prophecy from the books.
As fans are aware, in The Witcher, humans were not always part of the magical world ruled by elves. It was only after the Convergence that they appeared. “What was the world before the Conjunction? Before the humans came? Before there were monsters, what was this world like? What was the world of the elves?” explained De Barra.
The creator also explains the short season will dive into the history of the first Witcher. Geralt of Rivia is one of many generations after the original. “Ours is the 1.0, rough and ready — the concept of a witcher,” explained De Barra. The Witcher: Blood Origin will have fans excited to learn how the world of the original series came to be.
