The world of The Witcher is expanding with the prequel miniseries The Witcher: Blood Origin, which won’t see any characters from the main series except for one: Jaskier (Joey Batey), and that’s a lot better than having Geralt (Henry Cavill) show up. The Witcher is a series of novels and short stories by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski which became widely popular when they were adapted to video games. After being adapted into a movie and a TV series in Poland, The Witcher got its first English language adaptation in 2019 thanks to Netflix, becoming one of the platform’s most popular titles.
Netflix’s The Witcher approached Sapkowski’s stories differently in its first season and followed three characters – Geralt of Rivia, Yennefer of Vengerberg (Anya Chalotra), and Ciri (Freya Allan) – in different places and points in time, thus going for a non-linear narrative that was confusing at times. The Witcher season 2 went for a linear narrative and continued the stories of Geralt, Ciri, and Yennefer while also reuniting viewers with some of the most popular characters from season 1, most notably Jaskier, the travelling bard who befriends Geralt, joins him in a couple of missions, and writes songs about his adventures, such as the viral hit “Toss a Coin To Your Witcher”.
Even though Geralt was often annoyed by Jaskier’s presence, the bard won the audience over and he returned in season 2 to continue getting involved in all types of trouble, and to the surprise of the audience, Jaskier will also be part of The Witcher’s prequel spinoff series Blood Origin, even though it’s set many, many years before the events of the main series.
Why Jaskier In Witcher: Blood Origin Is Better Than Geralt
Blood Origin is set 1200 years before the events of The Witcher, and it will tell the story of the creation of the first witcher, as well as of the events that led to the Conjunction of the Spheres. In addition to that, Blood Origin will explore the ancient Elven civilization before its demise, and among the elves featured in this series is Eredin (Jacob Collins-Levy), the leader of the Wild Hunt, who made their debut at the end of The Witcher season 2. Because of its time setting, Blood Origin won’t feature Geralt nor any other characters from The Witcher except for Jaskier, and the reason for that is actually quite fitting with his role in the books.
According to some reports (via Collider), Blood Origin will feature Jaskier as the series will start with the bard trying to tell the story of the Conjunction of the Spheres before being interrupted by an elf claiming to know the real story. In the Witcher books, Jaskier tells the stories of Geralt and Ciri through songs, and these have prompted people in the audience to stand up and share their version of the events told by Jaskier, so his role in Blood Origin is a perfect nod to the source material. Jaskier serving as the link between The Witcher and Blood Origin is way better than having Geralt appear in the latter in some way, as it’s more fitting with Jaskier’s role in this universe and what he does in the books – plus, Geralt already gets all the attention in The Witcher, and Jaskier, even though he’s immensely popular, hasn’t gotten enough screen time so far.