If You’re A Fan of The Witcher Series, Don’t Bother Watching The Witcher: Blood Origin- Lizzie M.

by Lizzie McGinnis | @overzealous-opinions on Tumblr (https://overzealous-opinions.tumblr.com/)

Everyone loves The Witcher. What’s not to love? Dashing Henry Cavill plays Geralt, a sour monster hunter who finds himself baby-trapped by fate. Anya Choltera gives a stunning and moving performance through Yennefer’s arc, and Freya Allen was born to play Ciri. Along with a stellar cast and opulent budget, The Witcher has lovely storytelling and a massive fan base to boot.

So why did The Witcher: Blood Origin fail so badly?

I really, really, really wanted to like this show. It was more diverse, which is something I am always looking for in shows. However, that’s where the pro list ends and the con list begins.

The Witcher: Blood Origin was a complete waste because of poor execution. The writing pace is unreliable and the world-building lacks in multiple areas. The character arcs resemble a child trying to toast bread-- a chaotic combination of burnt and underdone.

Many know it was initially set to be six episodes instead of four. While I’m not sure if this would have helped the show as a whole, I know that it would have made the characters more memorable. We could have been given a backstory on Gwen & Meldorf, which was a perfect example of why we have the mantra ‘show, don’t tell.’ We could have seen more of the Empress, who was so forgettable that I can’t even remember her name and upbringing. We know that she was obsessed with colonizing (in her words “civilizing”) the other worlds, but shouldn’t there be more than that? Not only that but her incompetence and aloofness do not align with the brutal way she killed her own people in the first episode.

Additionally, this is probably just me, but I wanted more about Eredin and his lover--whose name is Brian, by the way. They never correctly named him in the show--another red flag. Also, this is glaringly obvious, but this show has too much Bury Your Gays* for 2023. Every queer couple has one dead member. Come on, Netflix!!

Another irritating bit about this show is the ending. Elie, the main character, ends up pregnant and now we have to guess who her descendant is-- because that was what was missing from the franchise: MORE QUESTIONS. The only helpful information we gained from this spin-off/prequel is how Eredin became the villain of The Witcher series. Even then, he got maybe one hour of screen time and even less character development.

The main reason why this show failed is that it was destined to fail from the start. This is because the story, no matter how well-flushed out, didn’t need to be told. It told us about the conjunction of the spheres, which, if we listen to the words, we know exactly what happened; THE SPHERES CONJOINED. Humans, elves, and monsters suddenly all began to share a planet. Nothing more needed to be said about it. As a mature show, the viewers should have enough brain cells to figure out what that means. The Witcher series has so much source material that it's almost criminal to make a show about this instead of… literally anything else.

I think that a better spin-off would have been about the first child of Elder Blood. In The Witcher 2x01, Nivellen reveals to Ciri the origins of her bloodline. A human and an elf fall in love and have a baby, and it’s doomed from the start because humans and elves hate each other. So the human and the elf die, but the baby lives, and thus begins Ciri’s bloodline. This would have been a better story than the cash-grab that was The Witcher: Blood Origin.

As previously stated, I did try to like The Witcher: Blood Origin. It had a diverse cast, great music, and lavish sets & costumes. But just because you put glitter on a spoiled potato doesn’t make it any less of a spoiled potato. However, the cast and crew still did a fantastic job with what they were given, and I’d like to highlight how much work went into making this show. It’s a shame things got lost in the greed, or else this show truly could have been great.

*Bury Your Gays is a trope in which a show has the presentation of LGBTQ characters only to kill them off. This is because queer characters are often viewed as "more expendable" than their heterosexual counterparts. This is a form of discrimination and negates the show's claim of "queer representation."