Witcher: Blood Origin review: A Netflix spinoff in need of Henry Cavill

Around this time last year, Netflix’s Witcher universe was on a hot streak: Even with some missteps in season 2, the series produced one of its best episodes ever, made smart work of even the franchise’s more twisted reveals, and teed up spinoffs galore. It was announced last month that Henry Cavill (the real Superman) would be being replaced by Liam Hemsworth in the Hunger Games role.

It seemed impossible, but it was possible, just like many other shows. The Witcher could live on — after all, what was a single actor to a multiverse, especially one with a highly touted prequel just over a month away? But the intense scrutiny makes each new step in the Witcher universe feel heavier (even if there’s already been a first foray outside of the original show with Nightmare of the Wolf, the animated movie about Geralt’s mentor). And, unfortunately. Blood Origin: The Witcher is the worst-case scenario: a profoundly messy and unappealing series that casts doubt on the world of The Witcher’s potential in a post-Cavill era.

Set 1,200 years before Geralt and Ciri’s unorthodox father-daughter relationship, Blood Origin covers some of the universe’s most important events, like the creation of the first Witcher and the Conjunction of the Spheres, “when the worlds of elves, men, and monsters merged into one.” For those less invested in Witcher lore, its trailers also promised Michelle Yeoh as a sword master, which should drastically improve the potential of almost any property.

This is the real thrust of Blood Origin’s story lies elsewhere, though. Éile (Sophia Brown) is an elite elf warrior from the Raven clan who’s turned her back on her life of fighting in favor of being a wandering bard. But trouble on the Continent pulls her back to the blade, throwing her together with Fjall (Laurence O’Fuarain), a warrior elf from the rival Dog clan. As the two untangle the larger war they’ve stumbled into, they pull together a band of merry adventurers, including Meldof (Francesca Mills), a dwarf with a hammer and a proverbial ax to grind; Brother Death (Huw Novelli), a warrior with a bloodied past; and Yeoh’s Scían, an unrivaled fighter who wants to retrieve a sword sacred to her people. The villainous Chief Sage Balor, (Lenny Henry), is waiting for them in the capital. He seeks out more powerful magic to conquer other universes and Princess Merwyn(Mirren Mack), who is an elf ruler, desperate to escape the constraints of patriarchal monarchy.

Photo by Lilja Jonsdottir/Netflix

Photo: Susie Allnutt/Netflix

Photo: Susie Allnutt/Netflix

Also, Blood OriginThere is a lot to do, even though there are only four episodes. This order was cut from six planned. And yet, Élie and Fjall are the heart of the story, and where its seams start to show, if not fully come apart: As we watch their relationship grow from uneasy allies to comrades in arms, it’s clear the series has no time or care for meaningful stakes or emotions. We don’t know anything about these characters at all, and once backstory gets filled in it feels sloppy and late, so removed from the throughline of their narrative as to reveal how little any of the details actually matter to the show. When someone close to Élie gets threatened or Fjall thinks back to the woman he loves, the sentiment is supposedly vital to their story but also instantly forgotten, leaving no lasting impression on their arc or character at all.

What is the most surprising thing about? Blood Origin. The series is — maybe more than anything I’ve ever seen — profoundly moored in exposition. But, not a single thing is explored or explained; every detail is tossed around and dismissed with equal care. Fjall and Éile’s warrior clans have no distinguishing traits that separate them from each other. There’s a class conflict that keeps getting hinted at through a song Élie is famous for, but there’s never much consideration of what that actually means, in-universe, beyond “lower-class folks are hungrier than their elite counterparts.”

The band of warriors the duo recruits to their cause each come with their own backstory too, but often those seem to exist purely to… tell the audience about, and that’s it. Magical twins Syndril and Zacaré (Zach Wyatt and Lizzie Annis) cry over a tragic event in their past and that’s the extent of its impact. When Élie promises Scían the chance to reclaim the sacred sword of her people, it’s introduced in the conversation with no explanation for how Élie would’ve even known it was gone. Meldorf’s whole quest is satisfied in her first two introductory scenes (and it could’ve been done in just one).

In a stronger show, these could be fascinating implications of the larger world and the histories we don’t see, or telling details about how insubstantial these conflicts really are, or even just a slight error to hand-wave away. These all seem like clear mismanagement. This is a signal of how many things were confoundingly cut out in order to push the story towards its conclusion.

A franchise does not need to die from any of these. The Star Wars prequel series has its defenders, who appreciate the interesting ideas one can unearth in George Lucas’ messy execution. But Blood Origin doesn’t offer the same pleasures, even from a prequel perspective. The story is so focused on telling, it neglects to explain why big events in the Witcher universe are important. Many of the revelations it makes are stripped away or cut to shreds. This forces the story’s beats to be told through Jaskier (Joey Batey). The Witcher’s timeline. The result is that characters can’t make the case for themselves, and the bigger prequel implications never add anyThing new or substantive about the world we’re supposed to be seeing the origins of.

Worse still, it highlights just how little the audience needs any of this, and how detrimental it can be to too deeply mine the franchise’s nooks and crannies — how thin the universe of The Witcher’s high fantasy can feel when not anchored by some larger intensity. Sure, there’s elves and dwarves and goblins and mages. There are terrifying monsters out there that will eat you and magical prophecies. There are many ways to get in. The WitcherWe get the feeling that our knowledge of these subjects is not sufficient to fully understand the rest. They’re a smaller piece of a larger, more expansive world, suggesting a richer story if only we had the time to look that way.

Photo: Susie Allnutt/Netflix

However, when? Blood Origin’s creators use elves interchangeably with humans, its corner of the universe loses any remaining distinction. What is the difference between an elf and a human in The Witcher — magic? Strength? Ears? Intimate Blood Origin it seems to be… nothing. And if there’s nothing fundamentally different about these creatures, their world, or their problems, then what does it matter that their sphere gets conjunction-junctioned with that of the main world?

Perhaps there are more answers within the larger Witcher lore. Blood OriginIt is so keen to be a standalone story, it appears to actively resist the possibility of being placed next to other properties. Although Nightmare of the WolfWhen compared to them, felt somewhat insubstantial The Witcher’s consideration of monstrosity or Yennefer’s longing for motherhood, it still coherently wrestles with the deeper conundrums of Witcher lore. And it does provide some insight into a significant chapter in the Witcher history.

Blood OriginHowever, he seems to be unable to have that conversation well at all, and may even break the rules of The Universe. In a fantasy world like The Witcher’s, those bounds are what set it apart; we need to know that chaos magic comes at an extreme cost. However, nothing is in the text. Blood Origin elucidates what makes Balor’s invocation of it different from what he was doing before. While his grander ambitions of conquering other cultures are standard enough, the finer points of his perspective fall by the wayside, flattening his — and everyone else’s — battles.

Photo: Susie Allnutt/Netflix

Whatever there is to say about power and who wields it just can’t be considered all that deeply because Blood OriginIt is so full of meaningless background and backstory that it feels like it’s stuffed to the limit. There’s clearly grander ambitions there — like the way Merwyn feels trapped in her role — but they can’t amount to much when every scene is tasked with at once introducing and delivering on new motivations. Merwyn claims to be a power player. But she doesn’t feel it because her choices seem flimsy. Every story is built on this incoherent and skittering pace. There’s no time to indulge the calmer, sager moments that define the Witcher universe’s best scenes.

So the conflict of Blood OriginThey become almost frictionless and move dizzyingly along tracks, just because the story requires it. They make conflict seem insurmountable. The Witcher proper look silly, and at worst — well, it makes you doubt there’s much steam in widening this on-screen universe at all (a ridiculous thing to feel about a story that’s propelled decades of books, short stories, and video games!).

It is inherently experimental art, so experiments may fail. However, Blood OriginThe thuds sound resoundingly with every echo being more alarming than the previous. This show doesn’t have to answer for whether The Witcher can exist without Henry Cavill — but it’s a troubling look at what the universe could be without a steadying presence like his. Cavill isn’t the only thing that makes The WitcherHe is not the only one who makes the universe so fascinating. It is his character who makes the show special. He’s a passionate fanboy, and he finds so much in him that you would find it hard to make them boring. As our perspective character, he (or the people who care about him) set the series’ tone, and the poignancy he establishes radiates out into stories he’s not even in.

Blood Origin exists as the opposite of that: a world with no defining fantasy characteristics, a multiverse even Michelle Yeoh can’t rescue. It’s a world without texture, populated with archetypes who are trying to reach the same goal. There is more to the problem than not having a Star to anchor it all. Blood Origin: The WitcherThe ultimate victim of the risks any multiverse runs (and there are many), when it grows too fast, losing everything that makes it unique. Blood OriginThere is no way to know what makes The Witcher universe special or meaningful. It’s just an attempt to make more Witcher stuff. If there’s hope for The Witcher to survive losing a star and build itself into a bigger universe, it’s going to have to make a better case than this.