It’s time to head back to the Continent: Netflix’s new live-action spinoff of The Witcher has arrived! The Witcher: Blood Origin is set 1,200 years before the adventures of Geralt of Rivia, long before monsters or humans had ever set foot on the Continent. Whether you stan anything Witcher and are excited for Blood Origin or you feel like it’s the Christmas present no one asked for, we’re here to talk about each episode of the show and point out the things you might have missed.
Obligatory warning that there will be SPOILERS for The Witcher: Blood Origin beyond this point.
The Witcher: Blood Origin Episode 1: “Of Ballads, Brawlers, and Bloodied Blades”
The Witcher: Blood Origin begins with a long upside-down shot of a battle that clues us in to one very important aspect of this show: it abides by the rule of cool. Whether you think this shot is cool or not, someone on the production team did, so it’s happening whether it makes sense or not.
That said, the opening scene of the series is actually one of its best, as we catch up with Jaskier (Joey Batey) in the middle of a nighttime battle in a forest. As an axe swings straight for his face, everything around him freezes. A mysterious doppelgänger appears that looks exactly like Jaskier, but is clearly some otherworldly being.
We’re then introduction to the narrator of Blood Origin, SeanchaÍ (Minnie Driver). Despite the fact that Blood Origin is about a previous era of The Witcher history, this particular segment clues is in on a few things about what’s happening in the mothership show between seasons 2 and 3. This battle came about because the Scoia’tael (elven guerrilla fighters) attacked a Temerian camp that had captured Jaskier, who was smuggling elves out of Oxenfurt during season 2. SeanchaÍ is impressed with Jaskier’s efforts and wants to tell a story that will inspire the Scoia’tael to survive the challenges ahead. She settles on one about how seven warriors united to overthrow an “unstoppable empire.” Her story also involves the creation of the first witcher.
Driver and Batey are both pretty solid in this scene. And there are some great lines, such as when Jaskier ruminates on how much it will piss off Geralt to learn that the first witcher was in fact a “badass elven warrior.”
However, the presentation here is goofy. Jaskier decries SeanchaÍ’s story as fairly standard until she gives him more details about it and win him over, which almost feels like Netflix trying to convince viewers that this won’t be as boring a show as they expect. Unfortunately, The Witcher: Blood Origin is pretty much exactly as generic as it seems.
To drive that point home, once Driver begins narrating, we get an artsy opening credits-style montage that introduces us to each of the seven warriors who will eventually come together to fight the ancient elven empire. I won’t list their names here; half of them we won’t meet until deep into Episode 2. despite only running four episodes, The Witcher: Blood Origin has an overlarge cast to keep track of. This opening is but the first of many cringe-worthy moments to come.
The Lark sings a song, Fjall Stoneheart bangs his way out of a job
Following the first narration segment from Driver, we’re into the show proper. Blood Origin’s story-within-a-story begins by acquainting us with the two main heroes of the tale: Éile (Sophia Brown) and Fjall (Laurence O’Fuarain). When we begin, they’re in different parts of the map.
First we get to know Éile, a warrior who turned her back on the way of the blade to become a wandering bard who goes by the name of the Lark. She’s set up shop in a small village to play her tunes for the local tavern patrons, but things get complicated when one of them gets handsy with Ithlinne (Ella Schrey-Yeats), a young serving girl. Éile dispatches the bad guys, chugs an ale, and gets back to singing while the crowd cheers their approval.
Schrey-Yeats does a good job as Ithlinne, but I don’t love that Blood Origin portrays this extremely important figure in The Witcher mythos as basically a carbon copy of Ciri, especially considering that the two aren’t even related. Ithlinne is a famous elven prophetess who has never before appeared onscreen, and it feels like the show should do more with her.
Fjall, meanwhile, is the fiercest warrior of Dog Clan, a group of elves serving as the personal guards to Prince Alvitir (The Last Kingdom’s Mark Rowley). There’s a bit of unrest in Alvitir’s capital city, which leads to an assassination attempt which Fjall and his cohorts swiftly thwart.
But then, just when it seems everything is going fine, we learn that Fjall and Princess Merwyn (Mirren Mack) have a history. They consummate their forbidden love only to be discovered by Fjall’s father and sister, both of whom are also Dog Clan warriors.
Though sleeping with the princess is an offense punishable by death, Fjall is instead banished from the kingdom and clan to keep the scandal quiet. O’Fuarain recalls Cavill’s Geralt just a bit in how he constantly grunts and swears, and you know what? It works just fine.
The Witcher: Blood Origin has decent fight scenes
Fjall’s off-screen misadventures lead him the very same village where Éile is performing, at least until the tavern patron she roughed up rats her out to the town guards. She’s tossed in jail and Fjall is her cellmate.
While Blood Origin has plenty of rough spots, the chemistry between Brown and O’Fuarain works. The two are a lot of fun to watch as they shoot insults back and forth, since their respective clans are sworn enemies.
Of course, neither stays in the cage all that long. Fjall is sprung by a former comrade who wants him to return and help defend the prince and princess at a peace summit where Merwyn will be married to the King of Pryshia. The elven warrior declines, opting instead to go to a brothel only to discover that Éile had stolen his last bit of silver.
Éile is freed by her sister Niamh, who convinces Éile to go with her to the very same peace summit. Suddenly, the pair are ambushed, Niamh is killed, and Éile is forced to take up her knives and go back to being a warrior.
The following fight scene emphasizes what may be Blood Origin’s single greatest strength: the choreography in its action scenes is often pretty good. Éile’s fight with the assassins is fantastic and only gets better when Fjall comes to her aid. The two make a temporary alliance, realizing that something is amiss at the peace summit and resolving to head there to ensure their clans’ safety. Alas, they never quite make it to the palace.
Nothing like a coup to launch a new Golden Empire
The other big plot thread in the premiere episode revolves around Princess Merwyn, Chief Sage Balor (Lenny Henry), and Captain Eredin (Jacob Collins-Levy). That last name should sound familiar to any fan of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, since Eredin is the leader of the Wild Hunt and that game’s primary villain. He also features in The Witcher novels by Andrzej Sapkowski, albeit in a smaller role than he played in the game.
You might think that Blood Origin will build up the character into the maniacal villain he will one day become, but the show never really does anything with him. Blood Origin sidesteps as much of the established Witcher lore as it can in favor of just making up a totally random story that only tangentially ties into anything from Sapkowski’s books.
But I digress. Much of the palace plotline centers on Fjall’s former lover Princess Merwyn, who is told in the wake of her dalliance with the disgraced warrior that she will have to marry the ruler of the neighboring elven kingdom of Pryshia to secure a new alliance for her people. Merwyn is visibly distraught by this news, since she dreams of taking a more active hand in her kingdom’s governorship, on her own terms.
Merwyn’s push and pull is interesting, especially in the leadup to the peace summit coup. While she appears to go along with everything, there are hints that she’s holding out for a different path to appear before her. We aren’t privy to how it all comes together, but by the time the King of Pryshia and various other parties — including both Fjall and Éile’s respective clans — have gathered for the betrothal, Merwyn’s plans are already underway.
Merwyn excuses herself, slitting the throat of her escort while Captain Eredin bars the doors with the elven leaders of three different clans inside. Then a giant flying monster swoops in and zaps them all to dust. Merwyn is now Empress of a new Golden Empire. But in reality, it is Chief Sage Balor — the one who controls the monster — who holds the power.
The visual effects for “Balor’s beast” leave a lot to be desired, as do the effects when he steps through a monolith portal. In general, Blood Origin’s visual effects look like straight out of a ’90s Syfy Chanel Original. They’re a significant step back from The Witcher season 2, and probably even from the show’s first season.
ScÍan burns the house down
News spreads fast about Merwyn’s Golden Empire. Fjall and Éile learn of it while on the road to Xin’trea, as Golden Empire guards are now roving about causing problems in smaller villages.
After working through some shock over Merwyn’s coup, the pair set off to find Éile’s former swordmaster in hopes that she’ll be able to help them assassinate the Empress and overthrow the empire. Enter Michelle Yeoh, who plays a lone warrior who’s the last surviving member of the Ghost Tribe, legendary sword elves mostly wiped out in days long gone.
ScÍan is reluctant to help until Fjall reveals he knows a secret way into the palace. And of course she tests the skills of Fjall and Éile in a cool fight scene. Yeoh is fantastic so it’s easy to enjoy her scenes. Her makeup also deserves a special nod; it’s mesmerizingly cool.
Ultimately, the three set off on their quest and we cut to credits. As they do, they burn ScÍan’s house down behind them, I guess because she knows she’s not coming back? Remember, Blood Origin abides by rule of cool (to someone), and in this instance that means having our heroes walk away from a burning tent!
The Witcher: Bullet Point Origin
- In the opening sequence Jaskier finds a new lute, mysteriously left for him by SeanchaÍ. His own lute was smashed during The Witcher season 2.
- We very briefly meet Syndril (Zach Wyatt), who was being held captive to help Balor open rifts to other worlds. Still can’t get over the fact that he’s wearing a literal white tank top.
- The costuming and sets are wildly inconsistent. Some are gorgeous, others are outrageously bad.
- The Dog Clan guard whose throat Merwyn slits was Fjall’s sister Ket.
- This episode features our first glimpse of Huw Novelli as Brother Death. He’s in the tavern where Fjall and Éile overhear the news about Balor’s coup and seems to be the only one who notices them.
- ScÍan was banished from the Raven Clan for introducing Éile to music, which obviously didn’t go over well once she abandoned fighting to become a bard.
- The bit where Scían saves Éile from getting her head accidentally chopped off by Fjall’s axe was a very cool touch.
Verdict
“Of Ballads, Brawlers, and Bloodied Blades” kicks off The Witcher: Blood Origin on a relative high note. This is easily the most coherent episode of the season, mostly becomes it hones in so heavily on Fjall and Éile. Cameos by Jaskier and Minnie Driver’s SeanchaÍ also add spice to the gumbo. It’s the longest episode of the show and a lot happens in it; sometimes it’s conveyed clearly, at other times you just have to kind of shrug and go along with it.
Episode grade: C
Episode 2: “Of Dreams, Defiance, and Desperate Deeds”
After spending nearly the entirety of the premiere with Fjall and Éile, Episode 2 gets us acquainted with the rest of the seven warriors destined to overthrow the elven empire. We start with the dwarf Meldof, played by Francesca Mills. “Of Dreams, Defiance, and Desperate Deeds” begins with her raiding a pleasure house in her hunt to exact vengeance on a Golden Empire sergeant. That sergeant, we discover later, raped and murdered Meldof’s partner Gwen.
Mills’ performance as Meldof is easily one of the best on the show. She doesn’t have a whole lot to do in “Of Dreams, Defiance, and Desperate Deeds,” but what bits we do get are strong, from her off-screen rampage through the pleasure house to her unhinged discussions with her hammer (also named Gwen). By the end of Episode 2 she’s exacted her vengeance in a haunting scene where she paints the walls with the blood of her enemy while filling in the audience about how he killed Gwen.
The story feels a bit disconnected from everything else in the show, but that’s easy to forgive since it’s generally entertaining and Mills is perfect in the role. It left me looking forward to seeing her team up with the rest of the cast.
Things go off the rails in Xin’trea
Blood Origin’s cracks really start to show through the plotlines revolving around the characters in Xin’trea. As Merwyn walks down a hallway of the palace, Minnie Driver’s narration kicks in to let us know about the princess’ inner turmoil; she’s unsettled over Chief Sage Balor using her as a pawn. Blood Origin often uses narration to tell us very obvious things that could have easily been conveyed by the actors. Were this the only time it happened it could be overlooked, but the show is full of this stuff. This is one of the first times it makes you want to facepalm.
Merwyn is attacked in the hallway by a peasant, who tries to kill her because he and the other “lowborn” are starving. Merwyn is saved by an apprentice magician named Avallac’h (Samuel Blenkin). He’s a very important character in The Witcher mythos and we will see him again in the mainline show, but Blood Origin’s take on him is just kind of weird. In The Witcher novels, Avallac’h is an enigmatic elven sage who helps Ciri even as he tries to use her for his own ends. Blood Origin portrays the younger Avallac’h as the butt of a great many jokes.
Gripes about Avallac’h aside, Blenkin is certainly entertaining to watch. The script is entertaining, too, but not in a good way. When confronted by Chief Sage Balor and Captain Eredin about the attack in the hallway, Merwyn mutters that the assassin “said something about…starving?” I laughed out loud at how unnatural the dialogue sounded.
Then, later on, Merwyn enlists Avallac’h to help her figure out how Balor is using the monoliths, since that’s what gives him his so much magic power and access to the beast. While Blenkin and Princess Merwyn takes Avallac’h’s cape, then waltzes out the front door to blend in with her people, convinced the hat is enough disguise. This is a well-worn trope, and the way it’s handled here feels lazy and ridiculous.
Blood Origin continues to cut corners as Merwyn heads into the city proper. We’re told how awful things are, but we really don’t see much to back that up. Instead Merwyn walks down a city street filled with people and it looks just like any other fantasy metropolis, except we hear people shout things off-screen like “Please, I’m starving!” and “Murder!” It just doesn’t quite work.
By pure coincidence, Merwyn bumps into Eredin in the streets, and after following him learns that he’s having a sordid affair with a merchant. Later she blackmails Eredin into helping her oust Balor. The logic there — that Balor is lowborn and that he hates Eredin and Merwyn for being highborn — is kind of baffling. I will never understand Blood Origin’s choice to pull away from the two distinct elven groups set up in Sapkowski’s works — Aen Sidhe and Aen Elle, elves of a different world and of the Continent, respectively — and instead make up a cookie cutter social strata. We’re going to talk about this a lot more when we get to the season finale, but for now it suffices to say that I have some beef with the lowborn/highborn dynamic.
Of bank battles and creepy visions
As in the premiere, Episode 2 concerns itself mainly with Fjall and Éile, who are now being guided in their quest for revolution by Michelle Yeoh’s ScÍan. After heading toward a nearby city and finding it under siege by the Golden Empire, the trio decides that their only hope is to raid a village known to have a well-stocked bank so that they can hire sellswords.
However, when they arrive they find that the place has already been looted. They’re trapped by Golden Empire soldiers, who come spilling into the bank to take down the three wandering warriors on order of Balor and Eredin to prevent tales of their deeds from spreading. That they haven’t accomplished any real deeds yet is beside the point; Balor doesn’t want to give them the chance to rile up the people against the empire.
The battle in the bank might be Blood Origin’s single best fight scene. It’s claustrophobic and intense, and it emphasizing how comfortable the characters are working as a team. Éile is the weak link in the group since she’s spent so long off on her own. When she’s overcome with bloodlust and attacks a soldier on her own, it results in ScÍan getting injured.
The trio eventually escapes their predicament, but ScÍan’s festering wound makes things difficult. As Fjall and Éile search for herbs to try and help their friend, they cross paths with Callan, also known by the nickname Brother Death. Brother Death’s introduction is well-done, in no small part thanks to Huw Novelli’s solid acting. He considers turning the others in for their bounties, but upon finding out that they’re trying to overthrow the empire he decides to join them, since the empire recently slaughtered a bunch of villagers who had once taken him in.
Brother Death claims he knows a mage who can help ScÍan, and leads the group deeper into the forest where they’re afflicted with terrifying visions: Fjall’s sees how his brother dies before Merwyn vomits a bunch of black goop onto his face during sex; and Éile pulls a lark out of her stomach. It calls back to the horror elements in the mainline Witcher show.
When they wake, we’re introduced to two more of the seven warriors destined to overtake the empire: Zacaré (Lizzie Annis) and Syndril (Zach Wyatt). The two mages are “celestial twins,” meaning they were “Born at the same time, in the same village, under the same burning star” and “Gifted with the same magical talents.” The idea of Celestial Twins is not something from Sapkowski’s novels, although it’s a cool idea.
Zacaré successfully heals ScÍan and the group agrees to try and infiltrate the castle by using a monolith gateway. It’s here we get one of our first real info drops about what is going on with the monoliths: Syndril figured out how to use them to open gateways to other worlds, but was horrified to find only a blasted plane with monsters on it. He used that to escape Xin’trea, and believes he could use portals to similarly lead everyone straight into the palace.
Syndril’s escape feels like it got left on the cutting room floor. Before his appearance in Zacaré’s nest-house, Syndril had only been seen locked up in a prison cell in the palace, and since it was lined with dimeritium, he presumably couldn’t do magic there. We have no idea how he actually escaped, but there’s nothing for it but to shrug and move along.
The plan to use a monolith quickly goes awry, because the world Syndril leads everyone to is a different one than he expected, with two moons and an eerie landscape. The episode ends with a giant worm/angler fish monster attacking Éile. I’ll say one thing for Blood Origin: it does end episodes in a way that makes it very easy to keep watching.
The Witcher: Bullet Point Origin
- Meldof says that Gwen smelled of winterberry and lilac; this is a nod to Yennefer’s trademark scent in The Witcher.
- Syndril says that Balor can now access other worlds because he took Syndril’s “book of monoliths.” So…I guess that one tome was all that was needed?
- Zacaré lives in a nest! That’s fun.
- The costumes for Zacaré and Syndril feels very incongruous with the outfits worn by the rest of the people they’re traveling with. It’s weird to watch.
- Balor tries to get more power in this episode by sacrificing a couple of kids to the spirit living in the other world he’s accessing with the monolith. It only gives him a taste though; for something more substantial he’ll have to sacrifice something he actually cares about. This is another moment where Blood Origin could have let us come to our own conclusions but instead awkwardly spelled it out for viewers with narration.
- The bit with ScÍan’s poisoned wound felt cut right out of The Fellowship of the Ring or the opening episodes of The Wheel of Time. Blood Origin plays the greatest fantasy hits and ends up feeling generic.
- Bear McCreary’s music remains a highlight, and recalls both The Witcher games and his work on Black Sails.
Verdict
Despite having a few solid scenes, “Of Dreams, Defiance, and Desperate Deeds” is a step down from the premiere. The Xin’trea plotline in particular made me groan out loud several times. But at least we got to meet more of our band of heroes in this episode; some of the performances are enjoyable, and the action scene in the bank was awesome.
Episode Grade: D+
Episode 3: “Of Warriors, Wakes, and Wondrous Worlds”
“Of Warriors, Wakes, and Wondrous Worlds” throws us back into the action with its opening scene as Éile runs screaming to a portal while being chased by the angler fish-worm monster. This creature design is pretty cool, but we don’t spend much time with it; as soon as Éile is back through, Syndril pulls the plug on the portal, slicing the beast in half mid-lunge as it tries to devour her.
We discover that the party is much closer to Xin’trea than they were before, close enough to conveniently put them right next to Meldof, who uses a classic Terminator line and tells them to follow her if they want to live.
The majority of Episode 3 takes place in and around Meldof’s hidden cavern abode, where a plan is quickly hatched to use the angler worm monster’s heart and some dark magic to turn one of our heroes into the first prototype witcher. There’s some debate over who it will be: Syndril volunteers to become a “monster” in order to fight the other monster, but Fjall and Éile determine it has to be one of them since they’re warriors.
There is one particularly irksome plothole here, which is that Syndril and Zacaré know how to make a monster because they tried to use it to bring their mother back to life…however, since the process requires a monster heart and monsters had never been on the Continent before Blood Origin, how did they come up with the spell in the first place? Another one of those moments you just have to shrug and go along with.
A witcher’s wake
Despite Fjall’s insistence that it should be him, Éile insists right back and decides it is her who shall undergo the painful transformation. But since it’ll take all night to prepare for the ritual, the group decides to get well and truly smashed first by holding a wake for her.
The wake is really the heart of the episode, and features a lot of nice character moments. Meldof’s explanation of how she mixed Gwen’s ashes together with the ore to make her hammer stands out. There are still weird moments, like how no one but ScÍan seems alarmed by the revelation that Fjall was lying about there being a secret passage into the castle, but on the whole the wake is one of the better sequences in the show. The bit where Éile sings again for the first time since the premiere is probably one of the best scenes in the entire series.
That leads to a cute moment between her and Fjall where they kiss and fall asleep in the woods together…which is swiftly ruined when she wakes up to realize that Fjall has already taken the first witcher elixir to keep her from doing it herself, since it’s basically a death sentence.
Onto the ritual itself: the CGI is a bit wonky, and Zacaré’s chanting feels pretty goofy. Sophia Brown and Laurence O’Fuarain’s acting does most of the heavy lifting, but it’s undermined by funny choices, like the melodramatic wailings from Syndril when it seems that Fjall has died.
But lo! Ultimately, the first prototype witcher is created. His very first act is to do the dirty with Éile, because if there’s one thing we know about witchers it’s that they slay monsters and have an outsized libido. Sapkowski would probably approve.
The following morning, ScÍan returns from a secret trip to the castle. We’re led to believe she’s selling out the heroes, but really she uses the funds she was paid to bring in Fjall to buy sellswords in order to ambush the soldiers sent to help her with all the backstabbing. The battle scene is quick and sets the stage for the seven warriors plus their sellswords to sneak into the castle wearing pilfered armor, which is how the episode ends.
We know that a lot of content was cut out of the original Blood Origin, with the episode count dropping from six to four. It’s really noticeable here; this should be the point where the stakes are raised, but we simply haven’t learned enough about most of the characters to care. The group generally feels more like a Dungeons & Dragons party than anything else, right down to Zacaré’s awestruck, “did we just win?” exclamation after the skirmish in the canyon.
But it’s with the palace plotline that Blood Origin’s biggest problems start to become impossible to ignore.
Blood Origin’s lowborn/highborn dynamic is problematic and careless
As with the wake, there’s a feeling that we’re missing pieces of the puzzle as we quickly skim through various scenes with Merwyn, Avallac’h, Balor and Eredin. First Avallac’h discovers Balor’s book of monoliths in his room and steals it. Then Balor comes and tries to kill him for it, only to be betrayed by Eredin and locked up along with his apprentice Fenrik (Amy Murray).
From there we cut to Avallac’h trying to open a portal only for it to fail. Eredin immediately balks when it doesn’t work on the first try. The passage of time just feels a little weird, especially since it’s set against the wake, which is all occurring in one prolonged evening.
Things get really dicey when Merwyn goes to persuade Balor to help her in her mission to colonize other worlds. Balor chafes at Merwyn’s offer, telling her that she only sees him as a “lowborn who’s risen far above his station,” and she snaps back that he sees himself that way; she sees him as a singular genius.
The first time I heard that line I literally paused Blood Origin because I was so taken aback; how did that line made it through multiple rounds of edits and into the final show? Netflix’s Witcher franchise has generally been really bad in how it’s handled the story’s overarching themes of prejudice, from leaning into things like the “evil doppler” in season 1 (something which was clearly meant as a stereotype in Sapkowski’s books) to justifying a pogrom against the witchers in The Nightmare of the Wolf. But the class dynamics introduced in Blood Origin take things to a whole new level.
The lowborn/highborn elven classes introduced here are not something from Andrzej Sapkowski’s books, but created by Netflix specifically for this prequel. There is a throughline in the limited series of Balor feeling like everyone is talking down to him, which is spun multiple times to say that, really, it’s Balor who’s looking down on the highborn and causing his own internal struggle.
Saying it’s problematic feels like a gross understatement. Maybe if it were done with far more nuance and care it would have actually been a fascinating mental dilemma to examine. But Blood Origin uses the broadest of strokes and it comes off as tone-deaf and thoughtless. It’s even more baffling when you consider that there are two distinct groups of elves who emerge because of the Conjunction of the Spheres — the Aen Seidhe and Aen Elle — who are not explored in the spinoff. Instead, Netflix make up as generic a class structure and explores it in the most hamfisted way possible.
Ultimately, Balor agrees to help and leads Eredin’s forces into another world. He’s obviously serving his own agenda and it’s hard to imagine why anyone other than a total moron would trust him, but it’s what was needed for the finale to start, and so we must simply shrug and go along.
The Witcher: Bullet Point Origin
- Fenrik dissing Merwyn with sign language in the prison cell was hilarious. I don’t know if I laughed at the show or with the show, but I laughed.
- Fjall’s revelation that there’s no secret entrance to the palace feels like it should have gone over way worse than it did. Aside from ScÍan, no one else even seems remotely concerned about this despite the fact that it kind of derails their entire plan.
- During Callan’s long monologue at the wake, I started wondering why exactly we were getting this deep look into his psyche. Then we see that Meldof has fallen asleep during his story. The Witcher: Blood Origin continues to show it’s not afraid to make jokes at its own expense, and you know what? I laughed at it.
- Meldof’s scene where she reveals the monoliths were made by dwarves and that she’ll help kill the empress was really good, largely because of how solid Mills and Novelli’s acting is. It did still feel like something was missing though, because we’ve only just met Meldof and her claims that she now feels empty because of not having anything else to do after avenging Gwen haven’t had time to percolate.
- Minnie Driver’s narration reached a whole new level of ridiculous in this episode, describing things like the way the air felt around Fjall when he came out of the cave. Driver is wonderful, I’ve seen her in enough to know it’s not her fault. The narration is unneeded at best and cringeworthy at worst.
Verdict
“Of Warriors, Wakes, and Wondrous Worlds” felt like a shorter episode than those preceding it, largely because it’s so focused on our group of heroes getting to know one another and Fjall’s transformation into the first prototype witcher. While there are some good bits at the wake, on the whole this episode was pretty rocky, especially where the palace segments are concerned. This was the episode where I fully embraced the fact that The Witcher: Blood Origin is far more concerned with telling a D&D-type ensemble adventure rather than anything even tangentially related to Sapkowski’s Witcher.
Episode grade: D
Episode 4: “Of Mages, Malice, and Monstrous Mayhem”
The finale of The Witcher: Blood Origin is all about the battle at the palace in Xin’trea. It’s the shortest episode of the limited series and feels like it. Perhaps we can call it mercifully quick.
Episode 4 starts with Balor finally deciding to sacrifice his apprentice Fenrik in order to permanently gain access to Chaos magic. He promptly uses it to banish Eredin and all his soldiers to another world, setting up their eventual transformation into the Wild Hunt.
There’s an uprising in Xin’trea, but we still don’t know how anyone will eat dinner
The uprising in the palace hits all of the show’s usual highs and lows. The action scenes are largely solid, but make little sense. After liberating an imperial grain store, they discover it’s empty. The Empire has been hoarding food…but not really because they also have no food.
This raised a huge question for me: the primary reason that Merwyn talks about colonizing other worlds is because there is famine on the Continent, and she wants to use world-hopping to feed her own people. She also wants to “civilize” those other worlds, which is obviously bad, but the question of where everyone will get food if Merwyn’s plan is thwarted is never touched on. We’re just supposed to expect that if the bad empire is overthrown, suddenly everyone can eat. Shrug and move along.
Fortunately, Éile’s great at giving speeches, and since everyone likes her music they decide to riot anyway in spite of their empty bellies.
There are a lot of quick beats in the climactic sequence; ScÍan, Meldof, and Brother Death have a cool fight in a hallway, Fjall gives in to his monster side and fights Balor’s beast, and Éile comes face-to-face with Empress Merwyn. Éile and Merwyn’s showdown is kind of silly despite a solid effort from both actors; the script is too cheesy to take most of it seriously. That gets worse when Éile stabs Merwyn, leaving her to either remove the knife and bleed out or find a physician to heal her. Instead, Merwyn limps her way to her throne room, sits on the throne and puts on her crown, then mutters “remember me” to literally no one as she pulls out the knife and a mob of lowborn rush to kill her. Though it’s supposed to be a dramatic sendoff for the character, it comes off as funny.
This show is not about the Conjunction of the Spheres…until the last 5 minutes
Meanwhile, Fjall completes his transformation into a pseudo-monster and fights the beast. O’Fuarain’s turn is compelling to watch, especially in the first scenes where he decries Merwyn’s actions while he breaks free. The actual fight is surprisingly brief; it almost feels like an afterthought to all the other things going on in the palace. The CGI in this episode is noticeably better than the previous three though, which is good considering how much of it there is. The choices though…
After Fjall and the beast crash through a window onto a balcony, Éile arrives and throws a knife into its eye. The beast swats her, then takes to the air while Fjall turns into a witcher-version of the incredible Hulk, becoming huge and beefy and punching a broken statue arm so that he can take its giant ornamental sword and hurl it into the beast’s face. That’s it; all they needed him for was to throw that sword and the beast is dead. It feels anti-climactic, but the sword throw is a nice callback to the battle in the first episode where Fjall threw his axe.
Things quickly get much more real as Fjall turns on his allies, ripping the unfortunately named Uthrok One Nut (Dylan Moran) in half before punching Brother Death’s face so hard he loses an eye. I’ll admit, that moment where Brother Death went down had me on the edge of my seat.
But The Witcher: Blood Origin quickly reminds us that we don’t need to worry about anything too much. Éile sings to relax Fjall, then gets close enough that the two can profess their love to each other one last time before she stabs him in the heart. This is supposed to be the big emotional climax of the series, but due to a few weird shots I found myself laughing throughout the entire thing. Something just didn’t click.
But the final blow falls when Balor emerges from the portal and promptly toasts a guard with his newfound fire magic. He goes on about how all his life everyone dismissed him, which would have been way more effective if we had ever seen even ONE person dismiss him over the course of the series.
To stop Balor’s rampage, Syndril claims he needs to merge his power with Balor’s and then use it to destroy the monolith. He manages this with Zacaré’s help, eradicating himself, Balor, and the monolith in the process.
And then the Conjunction of the Spheres happens. Ever since Netflix announced The Witcher: Blood Origin was a show set during the Conjunction of the Spheres, the marketing has made it sound very much like this is something that would be explored in the show. But in reality, the Conjunction happens literally five minutes before the end and is entirely explained by Minnie Driver’s narration.
The Conjunction of the Spheres is a celestial event that strands humans and monsters on the Continent; we do see humans show up right at the very end of the show, but the fallout isn’t explored at all, beyond a woman hanging up a help-wanted poster for a monster slayer outside her inn.
Driver’s narration carries us right through to the final scenes as a montage reveals the fates of our remaining heroes. ScÍan is reunited with her clan’s lost sword Soulreaver, Brother Death survives but is missing an eye, Zacaré builds a cairn for her dead celestial twin ScÍan, and Éile burns Fjall’s remains.
The most absurd bit comes when we see Eredin’s merchant lover mourning the fact that he has gone missing. We then get a final shot of Eredin on the blasted plane where we saw the Wild Hunt in The Witcher season 2 finale. As he kneels, bearded and shabby in the dirt, he sees a skull half-buried before him…which he takes out and puts on his head like a helmet. Okay, sure, why not? It’s clearly meant as the origin of the Wild Hunt, but comes across as a laughable afterthought.
The final scene skips forward “six moons” to reveal that Éile is pregnant (because Minnie Driver literally tells us before we have a reasonable chance to notice). As she sits with Meldof and Ithlinne in a tavern, she asks for the young prophetess to try and foresee her child’s future. Ithlinne suggests that Fjall and Éile’s child will start the lineage that will one day lead to the birth of an important person in the mothership Witcher saga. The strong implication is that it’s Ciri, since her song will “end all times,” and we know from the books and games that she has a particular ability to travel through space and time. I guess the whole “witchers are sterile” thing didn’t apply to prototype Fjall.
We don’t learn for certain who Ithlinne is referring to, because as she recites the final words of her prophecy Minnie Driver takes over and the scene cuts back to Jaskier. The bard is still in the forest jotting down the last of her words. As he shouts for her to tell him who she means, the scene suddenly shifts, and Jaskier is still drenched in blood in the middle of the battlefield where the Scoia’tael came to rescue him at the beginning of the series. As rain pours around him, he walks off with the elven guerrilla fighters and the credits roll on The Witcher: Blood Origin.
Was it a good journey? I suppose your mileage may vary. Blood Origin was a chaotic mess at the best of times, and often humorously bad. Netflix had an entire spinoff which they could have devoted to exploring some of the earlier parts of Sapkowski’s lore, and instead tacked on a few small things to the end of a totally unrelated story that actually undermined important parts of the mythos.
That said, Blood Origin is so unconcerned with its source material that it’s harder to be mad about it than it is to be mad about, say, The Witcher season 2. It feels clear that Netflix was really shooting to make a short little fantasy show that capitalized on The Witcher name while being as free from the actual lore as possible.
The Witcher: Bullet Point Origin
- There is a post-credits scene which reveals that Avallac’h was actually in Cintra watching Ciri during the first season. Since season 1 of The Witcher played up the idea that Geralt was watching Ciri in the very same scene, now having Avallac’h be there almost undercuts what we’ve already seen.
- Ithlinne says the Aen Seidhe are lost in time, alluding to the idea that Avallac’h succeeded in figuring out how to use the monoliths to time travel. It’s not clear how much time has passed for him between Blood Origin and The Witcher season 1.
- Meldof is just fun to watch; props to Francesca Mills for how much she made that character pop. Her back and forth with ScÍan this episode was a highlight.
- “I was a fertile thing to be traded. I was unseen Fjall,” Merwyn tells her former lover after she chains him up in the hopes of making him her baby daddy. There’s a compelling irony there, but it’s hard to tell if The Witcher: Blood Origin did it intentionally or not.
- It’s hard to be certain about the passage of time in this show, but it seems like the “unstoppable” Golden Empire may have ruled for a few weeks to a month in total?
Verdict
The final episode of The Witcher: Blood Origin wraps up the series with all the inconsistency we’ve come to expect. But since the episode was so short and so focused on the battle at the palace, it felt even less put together than the rest of them. Blood Origin started with its strongest episode and ended with its weakest.
2022 has been a year filled with quality fantasy and sci-fi shows. The Witcher: Blood Origin is not one of them.
Episode grade: D-
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