Destiny calls this Christmas — and The Witcher: Blood Origin will answer. Stars Michelle Yeoh, Sophia Brown and Laurence O’Fuarain graced Tudum 2022, Netflix’s annual global fan event, with their presence to reveal their Witcher spin-off series will premiere on Sunday, Dec. 25.
Creator Declan de Barra is spilling many more Blood Origin secrets, which will take place 1,200 years before the time of Geralt (Henry Cavill), Yennefer (Anya Chalotra) and Ciri (Freya Allan).
“Viewers will be surprised because they’re going to see a story told about a period of elven history that was buried by the humans after their arrival and eventual conquest of the continent,” de Barra exclusively tells Tudum. “We get to tell a tale about the elves when they were at their height, like all great societies before their fall.”
And fall they inevitably will, as Witcher viewers — and readers of Andrzej Sapkowski’s Witcher books — know well. Blood Origin will follow the history of that collapse, through the eyes of a team of underdogs. Yeoh, Brown and O’Fuarain play three of those heroes: Scian, Éile and Fjall, respectively. Through their vengeful journey — and the perspectives of their enemies — fans will unravel the truth of the first prototype witcher, the Golden Age of the Elves and the oft-mentioned, Continent-changing Conjunction of the Spheres.
De Barra is ready to be your guide into the stories, characters and “evolution of magic” on the horizon. Blood Origin is clearly no Child of Surprise.
How does Blood Origin affect the characters fans love from The Witcher?
Blood Origin sets up certain core characters and fan favorites from the books in the later Witcher series. There are items and discoveries that are made in this world that play off in later seasons of The Witcher and have critical effects on the storyline. Witcher creator Lauren Schmidt, the producers and I spent a lot of time seeding new Easter eggs and answering older Easter eggs from other episodes and series. We’re weaving a complex spider web of delicious story that stretches over thousands of years.
Blood Origin promises to explain the creation of the “prototype” for the witcher. What does that mean?
The first official witcher didn’t happen until way after the arrival of the humans, with the creation of various witcher schools, etc. But the actual initial mechanics for that witcher, and the Trial of the Grasses, that was open [to explore]. It’s like, “How did that come about?” So, that’s what we delve into: What is the prototype of the witcher? Say, Geralt is version 13.0, the upgrade. Ours is the 1.0, rough and ready — the concept of a witcher. It’s the [original] model. What was the story there, and how did that get lost? And who found that critical element later?
This story takes place during the Golden Age of Elves. How would you define that era? It is obviously hard to be an elf during the Witcher timeline.
In The Witcher they’re not doing well — because they’ve been colonized [by humans]. This is the lead up to that story of colonization, and we explain that in a very nuanced way. I’ve always been fascinated with societies at their height right before they fall. And the stuff that’s lost in that fall. For instance, the strongest concrete we have ever come across in the world is from Roman times. You still can’t reproduce it properly. We forgot how to make it. That [perspective] is what I wanted to apply to this story. This is a world where elves are not the underclass, they’re the overclass. In many ways, this world is way more advanced than the world of The Witcher.
And what comes with that advancement?
Elves have got their stuff locked down right before cataclysm. It’s still a gray world, there’s no black and white, good or bad people in this world, including the elves themselves. It’s not a perfect society despite it being elevated. It’s a very classist society. If you’re born into a warrior class or you’re born into a lowborn class, or highborn class, that’s where you stay. It’s like a caste system.
The Witcher plays with timelines a bit. Should people expect a similar approach, or is this a linear story?
This is more of a straightforward linear run. It’s the same timeline, so you don’t have to worry about that part when you’re watching.
Blood Origin will run for four episodes. Tell me about the decision to make it that length.
This felt like a two-part movie. You never want to be watching a movie going, “I love this movie.” And then you start to look at your watch going, “Oh, please end soon,” I never wanted there to be any moment where we’re just stringing the audience along to have an episode. It always had to feel logical and right from a natural storytelling point of view and we of course had the advantage of not being a network show with no set rules for times or episode count. So, when we were in the edit room, that [four-episode structure] is what happened organically, the shaping into four episodes from all the footage we shot. Optimum story flow. I wanted it to be a punch in the face, so that you can’t take your eyes off it.
During the Tudum event, viewers met lead characters Eile, Fjall and Scian. What should fans be thinking about with these characters?
In the writers’ room we didn’t want the audience to know these characters straight off. They’ll be peeling away layers of the onion as they go on. They’ve all got these very complex back stories, which all interweave. But the one thing you will get from the beginning is that none of these people, if they weren’t bound by the same desire for revenge and justice, would be on the same team. Because they’re like oil and water, they’ve all got beef with each other. We put together a team of disparate people to fight for what they believe in.
Michelle Yeoh plays Scian. How did she inspire you while writing that character?
You write to the strengths of that actor. You know what they’ve done, so you also know she wants to do something fresh. You don’t want to repeat the same things. That had a lot to do with this character, and how we wrote her. And then having chats with Michelle.
She thought Scian wouldn’t swear, based on what her history was. I went back and went, “That’s right, actually.” Her tribe was very separated from the rest of society. It was a very elevated separation and she carries herself differently than all the other characters. Even though she’s part of the team, she feels very otherworldly. Not aloof but elevated.
And Minnie Driver was just announced as a cast member. What is her character like?
She plays a Seanchaí, a shapeshifting storyteller that can travel between worlds and times. She’s essentially a collector of stories that are forgotten. She believes this story needs to be told again in the modern Witcher world for progress to be made in the future.
I’m so excited to see Mirren Mack here as Merwyn, after her appearance in Sex Education Season 2.
Mirren auditioned for a different little part. She got about four lines in, I went, “Stop. Please give her the audition sides for Merwyn, she’s amazing.” Merwyn is a princess. Because of the part of the Continent she lives in, she lives in a patriarchal monarchy. She’s born into a monarchy, but all she is really is a vessel for birth and a piece to be traded in the future. It must be a horrible existence growing up, knowing from birth that you’re nothing but a broodmare and something to be sold by the people that you think love you. But she has a fire in her — she wants more in life.
Because she was locked away in this palace, devoid of real friends, she found solace in books. Merwyn just adored the stories of the elves arriving in the Continent with this famous conqueror, Solryth. She was a female warrior who conquered the dwarfs and took over the Continent and brought high elven art and culture to the place. Merwyn would love to do that, but she’s hamstrung.
Chief Sage Balor is looking very formidable in the first photo we’ve seen of him. What should viewers expect from him?
He’s a product of class in society. A little bit of backstory that people might not know is he was found abandoned as a lowborn child, but he was taken in because flowers had grown up all around him on this patch of ground where he was abandoned. It was like, “The magic is strong with this lad.” It turned out to be true, but he was never going to be more than lowborn.
Balor would not accept this. He has this huge chip on his shoulder about that. So, he used his talents to work his way up and eventually become the right hand of the king, the advisor, the second strongest person in there. But Balor knew that everybody still looked down on him, even though he was above them on paper. That’s his motivating factor.
Syndril and Zacaré are two of our heroes and “celestial twins.” What does that mean?
There’s a different type of magic in this world. In the timeline of The Witcher, chaos magic reigns. Blood Origin has an early elven form of magic. It’s more earthbound and has more to do with the elements. Syndril and Zacaré were born in the same village, under the same comet that had appeared in the sky. They were bound by that essentially as celestial twins, although they had different mothers. They had the same powers and the same connection.
And then there was a calamitous event that drove them apart. They’re forced back together by the circumstances of this story. They have to work together and use their magic together to survive and to save the world.
Prophecies are huge in The Witcher. Are they as big in Blood Origin?
Prophecies are very important in this world. We have a character who’s crucial in the books in terms of their prophecies. They mention a prophecy that becomes very important in the world of Sapkowski’s books. The things they prophesize do come true — just not in the way you expect. Like all good prophecies.
The Conjunction of the Spheres — when monsters and humans entered the Continent — is an integral plotline of Blood Origin. What is it like to explore this important (and mysterious) time period?
We’re going to explain how it happened and the reasons it happened. The [mystery of the] Conjunction Spheres led to this whole show because I was working on The Witcher Season 2, and we had a story point we couldn’t fix because we needed to know what happened. What was the world before the Conjunction? Before the humans came? Before there were monsters, what was this world like? What was the world of the elves? So I sketched it up on the white board. It was the most logical thing that made sense to me from a fantasy point of view and from Sapkowski’s books. [The results] basically became Blood Origin when I pitched it.
After Season 2, monoliths obviously play a huge part in The Witcher. Will monoliths influence this show?
We learn the origin of the monoliths here. Who first made these monoliths? Why? And then we kind of understand how they became so important in the world of The Witcher later and the power that was bestowed upon them and how that came about. They’re the catalyst for a lot of what goes wrong in this world.
The kingdoms and geography are so important in The Witcher. What can you say about the map of Blood Origin?
It’s the same Continent. But the cities have elven names; they’re pre-colonization — apart from Xintrea, which people will recognize because that was the elven name for Cintra. Xintrea plays a central character in this world. That’s our North Star, but we travel from the far Northern islands down south to Xintrea in this story. The dwarves pretty much have been driven out to the mountains of the east as per the map. And the rest of the world is largely controlled by elves.
It is a fractious world. It’s a Golden Era for Elves, but there’s still war. There are still three kingdoms, and they’ve been at war for 1000 years. The war started after the first Great Golden Era, when Solryth died. as with a lot of empires, her empire split into three kingdoms. They’ve been warring ever since.
What is the political atmosphere? The Witcher is a bit of a political drama itself.
The same stories repeat. Elves want things as much as humans want things. And the elves have an advantage; 1000 years sounds like a long time, but they also live a lot longer than humans. So, it’s a different concept of time. But at their core, the same petty jealousies, the same petty wants, the same loves, the same desires, all play in this cauldron that ends up with elves going to war over wanting more.
