The Witcher: Blood Origin will show us a pre-colonized world of elves

The second season of The Witcher will reach the Netflix streaming service on December 17th, and beyond that we have not only a third season of the show and another animated feature (following in the footsteps of The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf) to look forward to, but also a whole other show, the prequel series The Witcher: Blood Origin. Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Blood Origin showrunner Declan De Barra and The Witcher showrunner Lauren Hissrich revealed how the prequel series came about and discussed the fact that it will allow them to explore a pre-colonized world of elves.

De Barra said the idea of The Witcher: Blood Origin first occurred to him during a story meeting for The Witcher season 2, when the writers reached an impasse:

We were trying to understand what the world was like for elves right before the Conjunction of the Spheres. It’s very vague in the books as to what happened. I got out a whiteboard and sketched out this plan of what I thought.”

What De Barra wrote on that whiteboard eventually led to the creation of the prequel series:

I just was fascinated with the idea of what a pre-colonized world would look like for the elves. (The Witcher author Andrzej Sapkowski) reinterprets folktales and history. And when you look at our own history, societies that had been at their height, like the Roman Empire or the Mayan Empire, that’d be right before the fall and then we’re in dark ages again. That fascinated me to wonder what that world could have been: what society would have been like and what elves wanted. That’s what we’re going to explore here.”

Hissrich added:

We have obviously heard in the Witcher show that humans brought civilization to the elves. They’re the ones who showed them what it was like to be civilized. And in fact, what we’re seeing in Blood Origin is that’s exactly opposite of the truth. The world was much more of a Golden Age than what we see in The Witcher years later.”

Set in “an elven world” 1,200 years before the events we saw in the first season of The Witcher, The Witcher: Blood Origin is a six-part series that will tell

a story lost to time – the creation of the first prototype Witcher, and the events that lead to the pivotal “conjunction of the spheres,” when the worlds of monsters, men, and elves merged to become one.

Blood Origin will star Laurence O’Fuarain as Fjall, who was born into a clan of warriors sworn to protect a King and is now on a quest for redemption; Sophia Brown as Éile, an elite warrior who left her clan to become a nomadic musician; Michelle Yeoh as Scían, the last from a tribe of sword-elves; Lenny Henry as a character named Balor; Mirren Mack as Merwyn; Nathaniel Curtis as Brían; Dylan Moran as Uthrok One-Nut; Jacob Collins Levy as Eredin; Lizzie Annis as Zacaré; Huw Novelli as Callan, a.k.a. “Brother Death”; Francesca Mills as Meldof; Amy Murray as Fenrik; and Zach Wyatt as Syndril.

Sarah O’Gorman (Cursed) is directing the first, fourth, and sixth episodes of the series. The second, third, and fifth episodes are being directed by Vicky Jewson (Close).

Hissrich and showrunner De Barra serve as executive producers on The Witcher: Blood Origin, alongside Matt O’Toole, Hivemind’s Jason Brown and Sean Daniel, and Tomek Baginski and Jarek Sawko of Platige Films. Sapkowski is involved as creative consultant.