A New 'Witcher' Origin Series Is Coming to Netflix

'The Witcher: Blood Origin' will tell the story of the very first Witcher.

netflix the witcher
Netflix
Netflix

Netflix knows we're all dying for more Witcher content. Though we're still gonna have to wait a while for The Witcher Season 2 to finally drop, the streaming service has announced it's greenlit a prequel limited series in The Witcher universe, which will tell the story of the very first Witcher and the time when the worlds of men and monsters were separated, and the cataclysm that united them. 

Netflix describes the new six-episode series as follows: "Set in an elven world 1200 years before the world of The Witcher, Blood Origin will tell a story lost to time -- the origin of the very first Witcher, and the events that lead to the pivotal 'conjunction of the spheres,' when the worlds of monsters, men, and elves merged to become one."

Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, the showrunner of The Witcher, will be an executive producer, Declan de Barra, who wrote, produced, and even contributed his singing talents to a few episodes of The Witcher, will showrun this miniseries, and Andrzej Sapkowski, the author of the book series The Witcher is based on, will be a creative consultant. Since this is a prequel series about the events leading up to the very first Witcher, Henry Cavill will probably not star in it. 

This is the second series of the Witcher cinematic universe that Netflix has picked up; back in January, the company announced an anime series, titled The Witcher: Nightmare Of The Wolf, about the origin story Vesemir, Geralt’s Witcher mentor. Neither have gotten a release date yet.

In the mythology of The Witcher, the world of the Continent exists within a multiverse, where a bunch of distinct parallel universes that were home to a bunch of different races of beings were mashed together, dumping monsters and other beings that didn't belong all into one world together. The Witcher's task -- to hunt the monsters that terrorize the people of the Continent -- came about because of this conjunction, and it was also the thing that brought the force of Chaos, also known as Magic, into this world to be harnessed by sorcerers. Simple enough, right? If you wanted more background into Witcher lore (and who doesn't?) this miniseries sounds just right. 

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Emma Stefansky is a staff entertainment writer at Thrillist. Follow her on Twitter @stefabsky.