The first writings for The Witcher: Blood Origin happened on a napkin in a cafe in November 2019. Declan de Barra, the spin-off creator, first came aboard the Netflix franchise as a writer and executive producer for the flagship show. During season two, the conversation in the writers’ room turned toward the Conjunction of the Spheres, which merged the worlds of elf, man, and monster together.
Even though that created the present-day world of the show, there haven’t been many answers as to how the Conjunction happened in the original books by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. After mapping out ideas for how that might have occurred and what the world would have looked like before, De Barra got a call from Netflix about pitching a prequel series.
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“I was like, ‘F— yeah!’ and then literally sat in a café and scribbled it down on a napkin,” De Barra told Entertainment Weekly.
Blood Origin will be a four-episode miniseries coming to Netflix this Christmas. According to De Barra, the concept for the show hasn’t changed that much since he first wrote it down on a napkin. “It’s normally months and months and reams of paper and crying and gnashing your teeth and clawing your skin off. It never really flows this easily.”
The miniseries begins during a time when the Continent was dominated by elves, untouched by the colonialism of humankind that’s a key part of the main series. It’s a thriving society more technically advanced in the areas of magic and science. However, just because they were enlightened didn’t mean there weren’t any problems.
“I think once the society gets to its peak, greed creeps in and cracks form. It’s completely an unfair society, so you’re going to have an awful lot of people that are not living in the best circumstances.”
There were royals at the top, followed by mages and sages, then warriors, and at the bottom, there was the lowborn. Due to a massive social stratification between the highborn and the lowborn, there was no passing from one to another. The society also had their own brand of racism, a “species-ism” regarding how the dwarves are treated. In short, it’s not a perfect society at all.
The Blood Origin Characters
Colonialism works by killing language, culture, and education, which will be true of the elves within Blood Origin. De Barra wanted to tell a story about how the victors tell history. And as a fan of films like Seven Samura and 13 Assassins, he created his own group of disparate individuals to drive the narrative. While we’ve had some idea beforehand, we can now go into more detail about who each of the new characters are.
Éile (Sophia Brown), the daughter of the chief of the Raven Clan, has been trained since birth to become part of an elite guard that protects the monarchy. Nicknamed the Lark, she has learned the ways of the sword from Scian (Michelle Yeoh), a sword-elf who also just so happened to have an instrument, a key-harp, hanging on her wall.
“Éile picked it up and that was the end of her. As soon as she heard notes and what they could do, she realized she was born into the wrong profession and she took off. In the old days, in these times, you would be put to death. There was no leaving. But she’s the daughter of the chieftain, and so she left. She was pretty much banished from there,” said De Barra.
De Barra wrote five songs for Brown to sing as Éile, who’s described as having the voice of an angel. According to Brown, she found it difficult to perform those pieces without feeling like she was her character. Also, just because Éile is a traveling musician now doesn’t mean that those warrior instincts have been lost.
“I liked the fact that, even though there was a lot of fighting and there was a lot of toughness to the character, I brought a softness to her that was crucial to the world, to her, and to the people that she interacts with. I didn’t want a woman who is tough and self-sufficient to just be seen as cold,” Brown told Entertainment Weekly.
Fjall (Laurence O’Fuarain) is similar to Éile in that he is also a guard of the royal family. Only he works for the Dog Clan, whose warriors use axes instead of swords. According to O’Fuarain, there’s a bit of hypocrisy within Fjall at the start of the spin-off. He sees the injustice of the lowborn but does nothing to stop it because he enjoys his station. Then, through circumstances that will soon become clear, Fjall gets cast out of his clan.
“He has, in battle, lost a loved one who he was trying to protect, and he just can’t get over that. It’s eating him up inside an awful lot. He can’t make peace with himself or the world around him. So when he gets cast out of his clan, he’s trying to find his place in the world. While that’s happening, the Continent is in total turmoil,” said O’Fuarain.
O’Furain took the physicality required by the role very seriously. As he pointed out, Henry Cavill, who plays Geralt in the main series, is “literally Superman,” so he knew he needed to put the effort in. Luckily for O’Furain, he didn’t need to go to the gym on most days because the axe he had to wield for the role was plenty heavy on its own.
“Fjall is quite adorable, but Scian would never say so. He is impetuous and emotional. He gets very angry before he understands why and does things without thinking first. Scion believes if he learned not to be so temperamental, he could be a very good warrior,” said Yeoh.
Scion herself was a member of the Ghost Clan and a different breed of warrior than the other two members of her group. One day, the King of Xintrea sent the Dog Clan to poison her, but Scian was saved by the Raven Clan, who subsequently adopted her. Scian’s become a hermit out on the Black Sands when we first meet her during the show.
“It is totally her choice because this is where she finds peace, she communicates with her ancestors to find out what the future holds,” said Yeoh.
Scion’s body is covered in distinct tattoos, all of which have a special meaning. For instance, Yeoh said that the one on her forehead translates as “promises made shall not waiver.” The one on the side of her face translates as “born of black sands, cast by fire, shaped by the sea.” That speaks to how the elves found in the Ghost Clan lived by the ideals of promise and integrity.
“She is very spiritual,” Yeoh adds. “This existence is only interrupted because Éile has come looking for her.”
What binds these three characters together? Brown sees it as grief, as they’re all searching for closure from something in their past. O’Furarain believes they see each other in one another due to their shared trauma. Yeoh believes the quest there going on is about the journey within. A journey with each other and for love.
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