Netflix Announces Witcher Prequel Series, Blood Origin

There’s only been one short season of The Witcher on Netflix, and we have no idea of when season 2 might arrive, but that hasn’t stopped the world’s largest streamer from doubling down on the fantasy world of the series, if not on Geralt himself. Earlier this year, Netflix announced that it was developing an anime feature film set in The Witcher’s world, which will reportedly be called The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf, following Geralt of Rivia’s mentor/father figure Vesemir. And today, the company made an even bigger announcement: A six-part, live-action limited series entitled The Witcher: Blood Origin that will delve back 1,200 years to the origins of the first Witcher.

This will obviously be a prequel series, and one that will take place in an elven kingdom before a catastrophic merger brought the worlds of elves, monsters and men together for the first time. The show will be run by Declan de Barra, with The Witcher’s own showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich on as executive producer and Witcher book series author Andrzej Sapkowski contributing as a creative consultant.

“A question has been burning in my mind ever since I first read The Witcher books,” de Barra said. “What was the Elven world really like before the cataclysmic arrival of the humans? […] 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.”

It’s fair to ask whether the series has really done enough to justify BOTH an upcoming animated feature and an entire spin-off series, even if it is limited in scope. With COVID-19 having shut down production of the core series’ season 2, which is scheduled to resume in August, it’s hard to say when in 2021 we’d even be hoping to see new episodes with Henry Cavill as Geralt, much less these spin-offs. Regardless, The Witcher: Blood Origin will plan to shoot in the U.K. Check out Netflix’s announcement tweet below.