The Witcher saga, as you might expect, is about Witchers, although it’s also about kings, queens, dwarves, elves, mages, and monsters. But viewers of the Netflix series might not know the origin story of Witchers - until now. A spin-off prequel called The Witcher: Blood Origin began streaming a few days ago, and it gives audiences a look at the inception of the iconic monster-hunters. Showrunners Lauren Schmidt-Hissrich and Declan De Barra talked with Collider about how they bridged the thousand-year gap between the prequel series and the main series. Schmidt-Hissrich claimed that telling the story of the first Witcher helped them do this:

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Witchers are humans who have gone through extensive training, rituals, and mutations to give them superhuman strength, reflexes, perception, and other advantages to help them hunt and kill a variety of monsters and otherworldly creatures. The main Netflix series revolves around a particular Witcher called Geralt of Rivia, and its third season is expected to release sometime in 2023.

“So how do we start promising the audience the things that we know that they love about The Witcher? Because obviously, the origin story was going to fit into our world no matter what. But any sort of Netflix data will tell you people like monsters and people like Witchers. And so we knew with this 1200-year time gap that we were never going to be able to tie the worlds as closely together as we would like. And it was Declan who came up with this idea of the proto-Witcher.”

Showunners Explain Why Their Choice of the First Witcher Changed

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Spoiler alert: major story details for The Witcher: Blood Origin are revealed below.

Originally, the very first Witcher was supposed to be Élie, but the showrunners changed their initial plans as the series developed. They decided to have Fjall take her place in an iconic moment of self-sacrifice, which is a core quality of being a Witcher, says Declan De Barra:

The theme of self-sacrifice for a loved one is common, but it’s especially heartbreaking here as Fjall undergoes painful and mind-breaking mutations. De Barra explains that the decision to have Fjall take Éile’s place “wrote itself” as he falls in love with her:

“It [the prototype Witcher identity] shifted around a lot once it was going to be Éile and then the idea of sacrifice. Witchers are always sacrificing themselves, or someone is sacrificing an innocent essentially to become a Witcher, [there] is always this element of sacrifice and sacrifice them. The idea of sacrifice between two lovers where someone co-opts, or steals, the other person’s sacrifice because they love them, without admitting that they loved them, that was something really strong. When we hit on that, that’s when we realized there’ll be a flip.”

The Witcher: Blood Origin began streaming on Netflix on December 25th, 2022. It stars Laurence O’Fuarain as Fjall and Sophia Brown as Éile. Other cast members include Mirren Mack, Joey Batey, Minnie Driver, and Michelle Yeoh.

“You’re kind of playing it, so the audience believes it’s going to be Éile and Éile believes it’s going to be Éile, everybody believes it’s going to be Éile, but then he can’t let her die because he sees that she’s got this power in her music that’s going to have a massive effect. And he doesn’t see anything other than himself, other than a killer. And for him, it’s better that he sacrifices himself even though it’s going to p*** her off because she will live on. And whether he admits it at that point or not, he’s sort of fallen for her. It kind of wrote itself once that idea of sacrifice came up.”