The Witcher: Blood Origin offers a new take on the idea of a witcher with the introduction of what creator and showrunner Declan de Barra calls a “prototype witcher,” a concept that deviates from the source material and explores a previously untouched idea as far as Witcher lore goes. In a recent video discussing Blood Origin, de Barra talked about the “wonderful and terrifying” feeling of pursuing something original like this while still saying that the team’s looking to make sure fans are satisfied.
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In a video shared on Saturday, de Barra talked about the idea of the first witcher. That’s something that’s been alluded to in Andrzej Sapkowski’s books in regards to how the first witchers were created, but no one person has been named in the novels as the original witcher. When Blood Origin comes to Netflix on December 25th, we’ll have a (non-canonical?) answer to the question of the first witcher’s identity.
“We know in the books to a certain point how the witchers were created. The reason we call it Blood Origin is because we’re telling the tale of the first prototype of a witcher,” de Barra said. “This witcher is not the witcher we know who’s humanlike and, you know, can take potions and have powers. It’s 1.0. But it’s the origin of what enables witchers to exist in The Witcher world in Sapkowski’s books.”
He continued to talk about the conflicting emotions that go into making something original like this when it comes to adapting source materials while also creating something new.
It’s wonderful and terrifying at the same time because you want to pay homage to the books and the lore and satisfy all of those fans,” he continued. “But also, you want to create a whole story that exists, that would be worthy of a Sapkowski book, that lives on television and is self contained. And getting to build that world and explain how everything came to be with The Witcher, it’s just, that’s like a golden opportunity, couldn’t get better than that.”
Comments left on the video both on YouTube and on Twitter expressed sentiments less enthusiastic than those held by de Barra. Commentors questioned the show’s creators’ knowledge of the books while some were hesitantly interested to see where the show would take this prototype witcher concept. As was the case with the last trailer for Blood Origin, plenty of people were just subverting the conversation to ask for Henry Cavill to come back as Geralt, too.
The Witcher: Blood Origin will premiere on Netflix on December 25th. You can check out our review of the show here.
