The Witcher: Origin of the Blood is a prologue to Netflix’s fantasy series and tells the story of some of the most important events in the universe, or at least it’s supposed to. The conjunction of the spheres is one of the storylines featured in this miniseries, but the most important and perhaps most disappointing is the origin of the most important order of the series: the witcher.
origin of the blood shows us the first Witcher transformation (or at least we think so?), but it also alters the Witcher lore in a big way that challenges the entire universe of the Netflix show – and it’s not even clear what the point is of the retcon is .
[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for The Witcher: Blood Origin.]
origin of the 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 several other elves, including the sorceress and general magician Zacaré (Lizzie Annis), she tries to stop the evil magician Balor (Lenny Henry) from using chaos magic to conquer other worlds. But when Balor unleashes a monster from one of those other worlds, Fjall must undergo the first-ever witcher transformation to defeat the creature and save his friends.
This is a pretty big departure from the series’ story. In spite of origin of the blood Dealing with a mostly (but not quite) unexplored period of the Witcher universe, and set in the Netflix universe rather than the books or games, the prequel series still manages to create a confusing lore change that seems to completely rewrite who the witchers are.
Based on what we know of the creation and origins of the witchers, they were a distinctly and exclusively human order. The mutant hunters offered the expanding human world a way to protect themselves and their small villages and settlements in the newly connected worlds. Equally important, their creation was a long and arduous process of desperate people trying to find a way to protect themselves from the monsters that appeared in the dark. These early human sorcerers were tragic figures, sometimes monsters themselves, who were hated by humans and often lacked the control over their own anger necessary to live safely among them. But their enhanced abilities still made them vital protectors of the people they hated.
This clarifies the circumstances of the first witch exhaustion origin of the blood disappointing to say the least. Sure, there’s a somewhat imminent monster threat, and sure, our group of happy elves would certainly need more than their regular combat skills to defeat them, but the details and risks of the transformation, or where it even came from, are vague at best.
Rather than an arduous new process or the dangerous combination of several different magics in a desperate attempt to protect those living in fear of monsters, it just feels like Zacaré is throwing together a familiar array of herbs and roots to make her special Creating Superhero Monsters – Killer Serum. And if we believe that this is only the first germ of the witcher idea that people would later pick up, then then origin of the blood never makes the differences clear.
That the first witcher is an elf and the whole thing is an elf creation certainly feels 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 not clear if it even means much given how thoroughly human the organization is in Geralt and Ciri’s time. Which begs the question: if none of this matters to the larger story, and if Fjall’s transformation isn’t important to witchers in general, then why? origin of the blood available at all?
