After premiering the first footage in the credits for the mainline show's season 2 finale, Netflix has revealed the official first The Witcher: Blood Origin trailer. The action-packed teaser offers a new look at the upcoming prequel series, teasing Michelle Yeoh's Elven warrior Scian going to war to retrieve an ancient blade stolen from her people.
The Witcher: Blood Origin hails from Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, showrunner of Cavill's mainline Witcher series, and Declan de Barra, who not only penned two episodes of the previous show, but also wrote four songs for it and performed three of them. The prequel show was announced in mid-2020 as one of multiple projects Netflix was putting into development to expand the fantasy series into a full franchise, including the animated prequel movie The Witcher: Nightmare of The Wolf, which acted as an origin story for Geralt of Rivia's mentor, Vesemir. Though not the first to be cast in the show, Yeoh's attachment to The Witcher: Blood Origin became a major point of anticipation for audiences eager to see her return to an action-based story after her recent turns in Star Trek: Discovery, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and Gunpowder Milkshake.
Interestingly, the show was previously stated to be a six-part miniseries, though the Witcher: Blood Origin trailer now reveals it to be a four-part project. Given Netflix has recently experimented with longer runtimes for Stranger Things season 4, it seems possible the creatives behind the series and the streamer have taken to merging elements of the original six-episode plan to trim it down to a shorter episode count. However, without the runtimes revealed for the show, it seems just as possible de Barra, Hissrich and Netflix found The Witcher: Blood Origin was running the risk of padding its story with more episodes.
Exploring everything from the creation of the first Witcher to the demise of the Elven civilization and the Conjunction of the Spheres, The Witcher: Blood Origin is said to be set 1200 years before the events of Cavill's series, making it chronologically the first series in Netflix's Witcher timeline. Interestingly, given Andrzej Sapkowski's novels states that the first Witcher came 300 years before Geralt, this adds 900 years to the overall timeline, seemingly opening the door to a large variety of other Witchers to the canon that could lead to other spinoffs, or a Witcher: Blood Origin season 2, which de Barra has previously teased could happen if the show's a success. Only time will tell how the show expands on The Witcher timeline when The Witcher: Blood Origin premieres on December 20.
