‘The Witcher’ Spinoff Showrunner Drops Major Tease

The Witcher: Blood Origin has made it to the page, showrunner Declan de Barra revealed on Sunday. The writer posted a photo of six scripts laid out in black-and-white, getting fans excited for the spin-off series. Details on the production schedule for the series remain scarce.

“1 for sorrow, 2 for joy, 3 for vengeance, 4 to die, 5 for flame, 6 for a world untold, never the same again…” de Barra wrote of his six scripts on Twitter. The front page of the first showed the title in bold, as well as his name and the date “Pre-Production draft Feb 21, 2021.” It is unclear if these are the final drafts for the limited series, or if he has other people to work with before they are done. De Barra was a writer on The Witcher Season 1, and he worked with showrunner Lauren S. Hissrich to develop this prequel.

“Mic drop! So excited to see it!” one fan commented. Another added: “Well this is bloody exciting,” while a third wrote: “Can’t wait!”

The Witcher: Blood Origin is the second spin-off of The Witcher, announced by Netflix in July of 2020. It will be a live-action limited series, consisting of just six episodes. It will be set 1,200 years before the events of the main series, and will explain the creation of the Witchers themselves. It will also shed new light on the “Conjunction of the Spheres” and the existence of magic and monsters on the Continent in the first place.

“As a lifelong fan of fantasy, I am beyond excited to tell the story The Witcher: Blood Origin,” de Barra said back when the series was first announced. “A question has been burning in my mind ever since I first read The Witcher books – What was the Elven world really like before the cataclysmic arrival of the humans? I’ve always been fascinated by the rise and fall of civilizations, how science, discovery, and culture flourish right before that fall. How vast swathes of knowledge are lost forever in such a short time, often compounded by colonization and a rewriting of history. Leaving only fragments of a civilization’s true story behind.”

“The Witcher: Blood Origin will tell the tale of the Elven civilization before its fall, and most importantly reveal the forgotten history of the very first Witcher,” he concluded.

De Barra’s triumphant new script photo shows how far that story has come, but it has a way to go still. The show is still in pre-production, and no release date has been set yet. In the meantime, The Witcher Season 2 is wrapping up filming in the U.K., and is expected to air sometime in 2021 on Netflix.