Witcher prequel series Blood Origin premiers this December

Netflix announced the release date of the Witcher prequel series, Blood Origin, at its Tudum livestream earlier today. Cast members Michelle Yeoh, Sophia Brown, Minnie Driver, and Laurence O'Fuarain briefly discussed their characters, and revealed the series' premier date of December 25, 2022.

Blood Origin is set 1,200 years before the main Witcher saga, and presents the origin story of the titular order. It looks to be an interesting divergence from the lore of the books and games where the monster hunters are created with the anachronistic genetic engineering of ancient humans after the dimension-rending Conjunction of the Spheres. Blood Origin seems to attribute the Witchers' creation to the elves, with the series focusing on three fey people played by Yeoh, Brown, and O'Fuarain.

The Witcher on Netflix has had great success with its additions and changes to the Witcher story in the past, and Blood Origin does have an ace up its sleeve in Michelle Yeoh as the elf Scian. Yeoh's received renewed attention in recent years for her performances in Everything Everywhere All at Once and Star Trek: Discovery, but she has a career spanning decades of stellar dramatic performances like her role in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, as well as fantastic stunt work like in the 1992 Jackie Chan action-comedy, Supercop.

Also exciting for me is the presence of Irish actor and comedian, Dylan Moran, perhaps most famous for the short-lived BBC Channel 4 sitcom, Black Books. IMDB says he'll be playing a character named "Uthrok One-Nut," so the show's looking like it's in pretty good shape already.

I've got high hopes for Blood Origin then, and it's nice to get more Witcher stuff as we wait for Season 3 of the main show (coming Summer 2023) and CD Projekt's distant new game series.