The Witcher: Blood Origin cleverly includes backstories for two characters that will be crucial in The Witcher moving forward. Indeed, Blood Origin includes several important connections to the main series, including showing the very first Trial of the Grasses. As a prequel, The Witcher: Blood Origin works well to explain some key parts of The Witcher's world. The Witcher season 3 should look to immediately add meaning to those connections to mitigate the impact of Blood Origin's poor reviews.
While The Witcher: Blood Origin show has struggled since its release, the prequel series has succeeded in setting up two crucial elven characters, Eredin and Avallac'h. If The Witcher season 3 follows the books, these two elves will be particularly important to the story relatively soon. The Witcher has received some backlash for deviating too far from the source material, however, the presence of these two characters in Blood Origin seems to confirm that their stories will not be cut from the main series.
How Avallac'h & Eredin's Backstories Are Important In The Witcher
The Witcher: Blood Origin ensures that The Witcher will avoid a major Wild Hunt problem by introducing Eredin, the leader of the villainous Wild Hunt, and setting up a potential ally among the elves for Ciri in Avallac'h. If the show follows the books, both characters will play critical roles in Ciri's story as the elves join the race to control Ciri's power. Their sneaky introduction in Blood Origin sets that up by giving the audience an early glimpse of these characters and their motivations.
In the books, both Avallac'h and Eredin are from another world, and their race of elves is known as the Aen Elle. The Aen Elle seek a child of the Elder Blood that can take them to a new world, and they believe Ciri's child is destined to be that person. Consequently, the Aen Elle take Ciri to their world and try to convince her to conceive a child with their king, Auberon, in what is probably Ciri's strangest book story. During all this, Eredin tries to convince Ciri that Avallac'h is lying to her, and ultimately Eredin murders Auberon and frames Ciri for it, taking power for himself.
While it is difficult to say what parts of this storyline will make it into The Witcher, Avallac'h and Eredin's appearances in The Witcher: Blood Origin confirm that both characters will still likely play vital roles in the show, whatever they may be. Introducing Avallac'h and Eredin in Blood Origin, before they appear in The Witcher, is smart because it gives the audience a reason to care about them when they do appear. This way, the show will be able to jump directly into their storylines without taking time to set up Avallac'h and Eredin's purposes.
How Blood Origin Makes The Witcher's Future Villain Roster Better
The Witcher: Blood Origin improves The Witcher's villain roster, mainly by introducing Eredin. Eredin and the Wild Hunt will make much deeper and more intriguing antagonists now that the audience knows their backstory. Considering Eredin's tragic arc in Blood Origin, the audience even has a reason to sympathize with him, though that sympathy may be short-lived considering the destruction the Wild Hunt is sure to cause.
It is also possible that Avallac'h ends up as an antagonist by trying to use Ciri in The Witcher as a tool to save his people. That could create an interesting quandary for audiences by setting up an antagonist to Ciri whom the audience would have reason to cheer for in other circumstances. It seems unlikely, however, based on Avallac'h's sympathetic portrayal in The Witcher: Blood Origin and his similar role in the games' narrative.