by The Witcher: Origin of Blood is a prologue to Netflix’s fantasy series and tells the story of some of the most important events in its universe, or so it is supposed to. The Conjunction of the Spheres is among the plots that arise in this miniseries, but the most important and perhaps the most disappointing is the origin of the most important order in the series: the witchers.
Origin of blood shows us the first Witcher transformation (or at least we think it does?) but it also changes Witcher lore in a big way that challenges the entire universe of the Netflix show – and we don’t even know what the point of the retcon is.
[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for The Witcher: Blood Origin.]
Origin of blood follows the story of Fjall (Laurence O’Fuarain), an elven warrior who lived just before the Conjunction of the Spheres. Along with Éile (Sophia Brown) and a few other elves, including the witch and general magic user Zacaré (Lizzie Annis), try to stop the evil mage Balor (Lenny Henry) from harnessing Chaos Magic to conquer other worlds. But when Balor releases a monster from one of these other worlds, Fjall must undergo the first-ever witcher transformation to defeat the creature and save his friends.
That’s a pretty big departure from the show’s history. Despite Origin of blood dealing with a mostly (but not entirely) unexplored period of the Witcher universe and set in the Netflix universe rather than the books or games, the prequel series still manages to deliver a confusing lore shift that seems totally rewrite who the witchers are.
From what we knew of the creation and origins of wizards, they belonged to a distinctly and exclusively human order. The mutated hunters provided a means for the expanding world of humans to protect themselves and their small villages and settlements in the newly joined worlds. Equally important, their creation was a long and arduous process of humans desperate to find a way to protect themselves from the monsters that loomed in the dark. These early human wizards were tragic characters, part monsters themselves, who were hated by humans and often lacked the control of their own fury necessary to live safely among them. But their enhanced abilities still made them vital protectors of people who hated them.
This makes the circumstances of the creation of the first witcher in Origin of blood disappointing, to say the least. Sure, there’s a somewhat imminent monster threat, and sure, our band of merry elves were definitely going to need more than their usual combat prowess to bring it down, but the details and the risks of the transformation, or where she even came from, are vague at best.
Rather than some arduous new process, or the dangerous combination of several different magics in a desperate attempt to protect people living in fear of monsters, it simply feels like Zacaré is assembling a well-known series of herbs and roots. to make it a special superhero monster. – killer serum. And if we are to believe that this is just the first seed of the witcher idea that humans would later pick up, then Origin of blood never makes the differences clear.
With the first witcher being an elf and the whole thing being an elven creation, it certainly seems like it should say something new and important about the world of Netflix’s Witcher universe. But after two seasons of the show, it’s unclear how much that means, given how human the organization was in Geralt and Ciri’s time. Which begs the question: if none of this matters to the story as a whole, and if Fjall’s transformation doesn’t matter to witchers more generally, then why Origin of blood exist at all?
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