The world of The Witcher is an interesting place, sort of like a fairy tale mash-up where everyone is either sad or having sex crossed with a dystopian Lord Of The Rings where an evil race of warmongering killers called “humans” has replaced all of the beautiful elves and dwarves. The only thing is that the main witcher himself, Geralt, tends to not really give a damn about the larger world, choosing instead to focus on his singular mission of getting paid to kill monsters (even though he’s usually just pretending not to care, because he’s secretly a nice guy). Thankfully, Netflix is stepping in to fill out some backstory with a spin-off of its Witcher TV adaptation that will take place 1,200 years before the events of the show—long before Geralt ever flashed his hideous smile. (This will be Netflix’s second Witcher spin-off, the first being an upcoming animated film about Geralt fighting a werewolf.)
Titled The Witcher: Blood Origin, the six-part, live-action series will be about “the origin of the very first witcher” and the lead-up to a major in-universe event called “the conjunction of the spheres.” In case that name didn’t tip you off: This is going to be some serious fantasy stuff, which could actually give it a surprisingly different tone than most other stories in the Witcher canon. After all, the TV show and video games have always revolved around Geralt, even when focusing on Ciri or Dandelion/Jaskier or Yennefer, so his sourpuss demeanor was always present in some way. Pulling the story so far back from him and having to explain concepts like “the conjunction of the spheres” without his gruff disinterest in fantastical world-building could be a pretty interesting challenge for Netflix.
The Witcher showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich will be executive producing, with Declan de Barra serving as Blood Origin’s showrunner. Andrzej Sapkowski, who wrote the Witcher books that all of this is based on, will be a “creative consultant.” In a statement, he said that this is part of an expansion to the universe that he planned from from the very beginning, adding, “I hope it will bring more fans to the world of my books.” Speaking of, and while Netflix is expanding its Witcher franchise, could we get an extended adaptation of the “Blue Pearl” story from the books? Because it’s the best Witcher thing.