Ahead of The Witcher season 2 resuming filming in August, Netflix has announced a new series called The Witcher: Blood Origin. It’s a six-part prequel spin-off set 1200 years before Geralt of Rivia’s time, and you can expect it to have an entirely new cast and story.
This series comes from Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, responsible for Netflix’s adaptation of The Witcher, and Declan de Barra, who wrote an episode of the show.
The plot of The Witcher: Blood Origin is about the first ever Witcher, and how their story panned out as the “worlds of monsters, men and elves merged into one,” in Netflix’s words.
It’s not the only Witcher spin-off coming from Netflix. The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf is an animated special that was announced earlier this year. A now-deleted synopsis on Netflix said that’ll focus on Vesemir, a key character coming up in The Witcher season 2, to be played Kim Bodnia of Killing Eve fame.
That’s a lot of Witcher coming up. Here’s the announcement from Netflix:
1200 years before Geralt of Rivia, the worlds of monsters, men and elves merged into one, and the first Witcher came to be. Announcing The Witcher: Blood Origin, a 6 part live-action The Witcher spin-off series from Declan de Barra and Lauren Schmidt Hissrich.July 27, 2020
Why Netflix is doubling down on The Witcher
The Witcher was among the 10 most watched Netflix shows of 2019 in the US and the UK, despite only releasing in mid-December, which offers some idea of why the streaming service wants to double down on it.
The show has a long turnaround on production, too, due to its effects-heavy nature. Combined with the coronavirus shutdown that occurred earlier this year, that means The Witcher season 2 is still a long way away.
There’s surely a big appetite for more stories set in the universe of the books by Andrzej Sapkowski – hence the emergence of these spin-offs.