The Witcher: Blood Origin — does it link to The Witcher? All your questions answered

New to the show, are we?

The title of The Witcher refers to Geralt, the lead character in almost all of Sapkowski's books (and the show, and most of the games). But Geralt is just one of many witchers.

Witchers are mutated humans, who are forced to undergo a transformation when they are young called the Trial of the Grasses. This gives them "superpowers," like quick reflexes and reactions, and the ability to see in the dark.

So they don't quite turn into Superman, but these skills help them with witchers' main task. These characters roam the world, working as mercenaries to fight monsters for pay — usually scraping by and being hated as much by suspicious humans as they are hungry monsters.

The Witcher: Blood Origin doesn't actually star a witcher, because they didn't exist in the time the show is set in. However we do get to see how the breed of mutated humans did come about.

The Conjunction of the Spheres is a pivotal event in the world of The Witcher, but it's always spoken about or used as part of the lore. That is, until Blood Origin, which depicts the event.

Originally in this fantasy world, only elves and dwarves existed. However at one point "spheres," or alternative worlds, aligned, letting people from one fall into another. After this event, humans and monsters were both introduced to the world, which led to quite a political sea change. 

In the main series of the show humans are in charge, with elves badly mistreated, so clearly the 1,200 between Blood Origin and The Witcher weren't great for them.

Previously, the Conjunction of the Spheres wasn't very well understood, either by characters in The Witcher or the fans of the franchise. However now that Blood Origin shows the event, we understand how it came about.

The Witcher: Blood Origin is a mini-series split over four parts, but you might be confused because lots of sources call it a six-part series. 

The reason for this is that Blood Origin was initially slated to be split across six episodes, but just before release, and after some last-minute reshoots, that was revised down to four.

At Netflix Tudum in September, showrunner Declan de Barra explained that the decision was to improve the pacing of the show. That was backed up by the showrunner to the main Witcher show, Lauren Hissrich, who said, "It's a road story of seven people who meet up and journey to Xintrea, so it didn't make sense to make a lot of pauses in those stories," explaining that many of the dropped scenes are people talking around campfires that affected the pacing too much.

While Blood Origin is set 1,200 years before The Witcher, it acts as a prequel for two core parts of the world of both shows.

First, it explains how the first witcher came about — these monster-hunting mutant humans, which Geralt (Henry Cavill) is in The Witcher, weren't around forever.

Second, it explores the "Conjunction of the Spheres." You might not know this, but in The Witcher's lore, only elves and dwarves used to inhabit the planet. Then the Conjunction happened, dropping creatures from loads of different dimensions amongst the elves. This is how humans and monsters joined the fray.

The Conjunction of the Spheres is mentioned through the various Witcher properties as a fundamental part of the lore, but Blood Origin depicts how it came about.

But there is one part of Blood Origin that stands as a more overt cross-over...

A fan-favorite character of The Witcher is Jaskier (played by the delightful Joey Batey), who functions both as comedic relief and the singer of everyone's favorite "Toss a Coin to Your Witcher."

However, Jaskier is actually in Blood Origin, despite it being set 1,200 years before he was born.

Why? Well, slight spoilers here: at the beginning of Blood Origin, we start with Jaskier as he's being rescued by Scoia'tael (a guerilla band of elves) from his captivity with a group of Temerians (a human empire). He's rescued from this encounter by Seanchai (played by Minnie Driver), an ancient elf who requires him to use his bardic abilities to adapt a story she tells him into a song.

This story ends up being the tale of Blood Origin, with Seanchai acting as our narrator as she tells Jaskier the story. 

While author Andrzej Sapkowski's series of Witcher books inspired Netflix's TV show, as well as the series of video games, Blood Origin isn't actually based on one of his books.

Sure, Sapkowski has written stories in the world of The Witcher that aren't about Geralt and his adventures, and other authors have written tales in the universe too, but Blood Origin isn't based on any of them.

Instead, it's an original exploration of some of the lore that is mentioned in those stories. So in that regard, it's loosely based on the Witcher books, but the characters and story are invented for the show.

No, Blood Origin has nothing to do with any of The Witcher franchise of video games, neither the main-series titles nor the various spin-offs.

This is because while both the TV show and video games are based on the same book, they're different interpretations of the source material, with no further links between the two beyond that.

Just imagine it as two unattached branches from the same tree. So if something happens in Blood Origin, it's not necessarily canon for The Witcher 3 and vice versa.

A tiny bit of confusion may arise from names: The Witcher 3 has a downloadable expansion called Blood and Wine and the double use of the word "blood" has led some to think the two were linked... but in the Witchering world, there's no shortage of blood.