The Witcher: Blood Origin is a prologue to Netflix’s fantasy collection and tells the story of a few of its universe’s most vital occasions, or not less than it’s alleged to. The Conjunction of the Spheres is among the many plotlines that crops up on this miniseries, however crucial and maybe most disappointing is the origin of the collection’ most vital order: the witchers.
Blood Origin reveals us the primary witcher transformation (or not less than we expect it does?) nevertheless it additionally adjustments Witcher lore in a giant manner that throws into query the entire universe of the Netflix present — and it’s not even clear what the purpose of the retcon is.
[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for The Witcher: Blood Origin.]
Blood Origin follows the story of Fjall (Laurence O’Fuarain), an elf warrior who lived simply earlier than the Conjunction of the Spheres. Together with Éile (Sophia Brown) and another elves, together with the sorceress and normal magic-user Zacaré (Lizzie Annis), makes an attempt to forestall the evil mage Balor (Lenny Henry) from harnessing Chaos Magic to overcome different worlds. However when Balor unleashes a monster from one among these different worlds, Fjall has to endure the primary ever witcher transformation to defeat the creature and save his mates.
It is a moderately giant departure from the collection’ historical past. Regardless of Blood Origin coping with a principally (however not totally) unexplored interval of the Witcher universe and happening contained in the Netflix universe moderately than that of the books or video games, the prequel collection nonetheless manages to drag a complicated lore change that appears to completely rewrite who the witchers are.
Primarily based on what we knew of the witchers’ creation and origins, they had been a distinctly, and solely, human order. The mutated hunters offered a manner for the increasing world of people to guard themselves and their small villages and settlements within the newly conjoined worlds. Simply as importantly, their creation was a protracted and arduous technique of the determined people to seek out some method to shield themselves from the monsters that loomed in the dead of night. These early human witchers had been tragic figures, partially monsters themselves, who had been hated by people and infrequently lacked the management of their very own fury vital to securely dwell amongst them. However their enhanced talents nonetheless made them very important protectors of the individuals who hated them.
This makes the circumstances of the primary witcher’s creation in Blood Origin disappointing, to say the least. Certain, there’s a considerably imminent monster menace, and positive, our band of merry elves was definitely going to want greater than their common fight prowess to take it down, however the particulars and dangers of the transformation, or the place it even comes from, are imprecise at finest.
Reasonably than an arduous new course of, or the damaging mixture of a number of completely different magics in a determined try to guard individuals residing in worry of monsters, it merely looks like Zacaré throws collectively a widely known collection of herbs and roots to make her particular superhero monster-killer serum. And if we’re to imagine that that is simply the primary seed of the witcher concept that people would later decide up, then Blood Origin by no means makes the variations clear.
The primary witcher being an elf and the entire thing being an elvish creation definitely feels prefer it ought to say one thing new and vital concerning the world of Netflix’s Witcher universe. However after two seasons of the present it’s not clear that it means a lot in any respect, contemplating how completely human the group is by the point of Geralt and Ciri. Which raises the query: If none of this issues to the bigger story, and if Fjall’s transformation isn’t vital to the witchers extra typically, then why does Blood Origin exist in any respect?
