Toss A Coin To Your Witcher was totally snubbed at the 2020 Emmys (admit it, it’s still in your head) but that doesn’t mean that the world is done with Netflix’s hit (and divisive) fantasy series, The Witcher. Based on the novels by Andrzej Sapkowski, The Witcher is a fantasy series that follows Geralt of Rivia (a stoic Henry Cavill), a monster hunter thrust on an epic quest that will change destiny itself. The first season was mixed, to say the least. Sometimes it wanted to be the new Game of Thrones, sometimes it was a mess, sometimes it was campy fun. The show was also narratively messy, with multiple stories happening decades apart from each other without much context. While season two will hopefully fix these issues, Netflix will get a second stab at the world of The Witcher with an upcoming live-action spinoff series subtitled Blood Origins.

While there is no casting information yet for the episode, we do have some information and can deduce even more thanks to the title. If the show was your first and only introduction to the world, you may have been wondering what the heck the title even means but there’s more than likely quite a lot being revealed here than meets the eye. The show will take place a whopping 1200 years before the events of the main series. Declan de Barra, who wrote “Oh Banquets, Bastards and Burials”, will serve as showrunner while Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, the big boss of the original series, will work as a producer. Sapkowski will return as a consultant for the show. Whether this is a limited series or an entirely new franchise remains to be seen.

Now, what’s up with the show? Aside from the time period, we know the show will focus on how the Witchers came to be, specifically through the lens of the first one. This, along with the title, all but confirms that the show will focus on the aftermath of The Conjunction of the Spheres. The term was brought up in passing in season one of the show but is heavily explained in both the novels and the video games. The event happened 1500 years prior to the novels, meaning that the effects of the calamity are still relatively fresh.

The Conjunction affected every dimension in the world of The Witcher at the same time and brought magic and monsters into the world Geralt inhabits. Suddenly, new species, creatures and properties collided into the world and, well, let’s just say that they did not really get along. Everything from ghouls, vampires, halflings and even humans were violently introduced to each other for the first time.  The original world of humans was destroyed so the race of men is homeless and trapped, which forces them to adapt and colonize.

So the show certainly won’t focus on this. We’ll likely learn about it and maybe even see it in flashback, but this won’t be what drives the narrative. But what I can assume is that the world of the Witcher will have turned ugly, violent and desolate in the three hundred years since the Conjunction. People are living in fear and killing anything that doesn’t look like them. Monsters are running lose and colonization has begun in full, forcing the elves to retreat into smaller and smaller territories.

With so many monsters on the loose and people suffering, somebody likely thought it was a good idea to rid these vermin for a profit. Since Witchers are augmented individuals, it’ll be interesting to see how a lonely traveller turns into a superpowered individual on his or her own and establish the first school.

There’s a lot of information to go over and I’m honestly not sure six episodes is enough to digest it all. My main worry is that this show will be rushed and will jump around quite a bit. The Witcher’s biggest problem was its ability to tell a clear and concise story, which forces me to wonder just what this show is going to be about and what its purpose is. Netflix is already giving us an animated Witcher series, Nightmare of the Wolf, that’ll focus on the early days of Geralt’s mentor, and that seems more focused as a limited series, but to introduce such a huge piece of lore and then confine it is a bit concerning.  There’s no word as to when the show will even begin production or who will star in it, so we’ll have to wait quite a while to get the answers to those questions. For now, colour me curious but wary.