You’ll have another chance to toss a coin to your witcher as Netflix today announced it is making a prequel series to The Witcher called The Witcher: Blood Origin. The limited series will be six episodes long and take place 1200 years before the Henry-Cavill-starring original series. Declan de Barra will act as executive producer and showrunner with Lauren Schmidt Hissrich as executive producer.
1200 years before Geralt of Rivia, the worlds of monsters, men and elves merged into one, and the first Witcher came to be.
Announcing The Witcher: Blood Origin, a 6 part live-action The Witcher spin-off series from Declan de Barra and Lauren Schmidt Hissrich.
— NX (@NXOnNetflix) July 27, 2020
The story is an origin of sorts but more for the universe than for Cavill’s character of Geralt of Rivia. It will take place in the world of elves and detail the creation of the witchers in a time before the worlds of men, elves, and monsters joined together. It’s pulling at some truly deep lore that hasn’t been unpacked much in the books or video games and could give the show a unique slant on the world. Despite the first season of The Witcher jumping all over the place with timelines, this series will probably not intersect with it.
Declan de Barra explained the following about the series:
As a lifelong fan of fantasy, I am beyond excited to tell the story The Witcher: Blood Origin. A question has been burning in my mind ever since I first read The Witcher books – What was the Elven world really like before the cataclysmic arrival of the humans? I’ve always been fascinated by the rise and fall of civilizations, how science, discovery, and culture flourish right before that fall. How vast swathes of knowledge are lost forever in such a short time, often compounded by colonization and a rewriting of history. Leaving only fragments of a civilization’s true story behind. The Witcher: Blood Origin will tell the tale of the Elven civilization before its fall, and most importantly reveal the forgotten history of the very first Witcher.
De Barra’s previous writing and producing credits include Iron Fist and The Originals, neither of which is that high-quality of a show, but they give him experience in both the realm of fantasy and superheroes, of which The Witcher series has aspects of both. Hissrich, on the other hand, is a long-time producer of a long list of quality shows including Daredevil, The Umbrella Academy, and The Witcher itself.
There’s no release date yet, but this isn’t the only witcher action we have to look forward to. Netflix greenlit a second season of The Witcher a long while ago and also is working on an animated prequel, The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf, which focuses on Vesemir, the man who trained and mentored Geralt.
