Why is The Witcher: Blood Origin only 4 episodes?

We may not get any new adventures with Geralt of Rivia in 2022, but soon we’ll be returning to the world of The Witcher. The prequel series The Witcher: Blood Origin is set some 1,200 years before the mothership show and tells a story set during the lead-up to the Conjunction of the Spheres, a celestial event when planets merged to create the Continent as we know it.

Relatively little is known about the exact plot of Blood Origin, but we do know about the format. The Witcher: Blood Origin will premiere as a four-episode limited series.

If you’re wondering why there aren’t more episodes, or if there will be more seasons after this one, you’re in the right place. Let’s go over what we know.

The Witcher: Blood Origin episode count

Unlike the mainline Witcher series, Blood Origin was designed to be a standalone limited series. It will tell a full story, one which is not essential to understanding the original Witcher show but could add new context for some of its characters and plotlines.  As such, The Witcher: Blood Origin is a complete, four-episode story; there won’t be any more seasons beyond this first one.

Originally, The Witcher: Blood Origin was planned as a six-episode limited series. The show went through an overhaul during the summer of 2022, reportedly due to Netflix being unhappy with how it had turned out. As a result, Blood Origin was cut down to four episodes.

As The Witcher author Andrzej Sapkowski wrote both full novels and short stories about Geralt’s adventures, so too has Netflix experimented with different kinds of Witcher stories. In addition to Blood Origin, it’s also made the animated movie Nightmare of the Wolf.

The Witcher: Blood Origin drops on Netflix on December 25.

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