We’re just over a month out from the release of The Witcher: Blood Origin, a prequel series set some 1,200 years before The Witcher, before humans and monsters had ever set foot on the Continent. The series will depict the lead-up to the Conjunction of the Spheres, a celestial alignment where worlds merged and created the land we know from the mothership series. It will also include the creation of the first witcher.
Beyond those details, not very much is known about the actual story of Blood Origin. This is a period of history that Witcher author Andrzej Sapkowski wrote relatively little about, and Netflix has kept the details about their new show under wraps.
The Witcher: Blood Origin trailer dislike-to-like ratio is really bad
Apparently, that strategy hasn’t instilled a ton of confidence in Witcher fans. Eagle-eyed users over on Reddit have pointed out that the latest trailer for Blood Origin, which you can watch above, has around 36,000 likes on YouTube…and 93,000 dislikes as of this writing. So for every four people who rated the trailer, three of them hit the thumbs down.
Of course, none of these people have seen Blood Origin yet. The preemptive bad reaction seems to be a result of Henry Cavill exiting The Witcher proper, something he reportedly did because he wasn’t happy with how the writers were handling the source material. “Henry is a national treasure, the writers room is disposable,” reads the first comment on the page. “Great franchise. It just puzzles me why you had to go and hire writers that actively want to destroy it,” reads another.
And even before that, there were reasons to be wary about Blood Origin specifically. Netflix announced this prequel series after only one season of the mothership show had passed. It’s about a time period that’ll be all but unrecognizable to most fans of the franchise, and with only a month-and-a-half left until its release we know little about it. A few months ago it was reported that Blood Origin was getting reworked because Netflix was unhappy with it, resulting in the prequel being cut from six episodes down to four.
In short, it show give off “I hope you know what you’re doing, Netflix” energy. Spinning off a show when the mothership series is experiencing its own growing pains feels like like an inspired storytelling choice and more like a corporate-mandated desire to create a cinematic universe.
The Witcher: Blood Origin hits Netflix on December 25.
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