We’re halfway through The Witcher: Blood Origin’s brief run, but this show somehow feels like two shows. One is a passable Game of Thrones pastiche set in Xin’trea, where a bunch of people are squabbling for control of the Golden Empire they build together. The other is a Lord of the Rings pastiche about a group of people banding together against a great evil, which seems like it might be kind of interesting if it slowed down long enough for us to get to know anybody.
Let’s cover the palace intrigue in Xin’trea first. Here, our point of view comes via Merwyn, the puppet empress who longs to become a real one. When her brother intended to use her hand in marriage as a sweetener in his peace treaty with Pryshia, she sided with Balor instead, and not just by passively letting a coup happen — she literally slit a throat. That implies a willpower that goes far beyond what anyone expects of her, and that seems to be where her character is going. When a kitchen worker tries to assassinate Merwyn, she’s saved by a timid scholar named Avallac’h (more on him in the “Stray Arrows†section below). She’s at least smart enough to draw him into her service, gaining herself an ally not controlled by Balor or Eredin.
There’s the germ of something interesting here. Blood Origin is essentially taking its Cersei Lannister analog and making her the hero instead of the villain — or at least the closest thing to a hero on this side of the story since the alternatives in Xin’trea seem even worse. But the corner-cutting in the storytelling undercuts Merwyn’s arc as well. How dangerous can Balor be if Merwyn can simply throw on a hooded cloak and wander out of the castle? How powerful can she be if none of the townsfolk even notice her? And how cunning can she be if she literally just sort of bumps into Eredin on the streets, which is the only reason she’s able to pitch him on switching to her side?
Those stumbles are frustrating but forgivable because this half of the story at least offers relatively clear characters and stakes. The other half, centered on the group that will eventually become the Seven, is more head-scratching. When we left off, Éile and Fjall had recruited Scian. By the end of this episode, their numbers have doubled, though we’ve barely gotten to know the three heroes we’ve already had.
The action starts when Éile, Fjall, and Scian decide to rob a bank to raise money for an army of mercenaries to take on the Golden Empire. Unfortunately, the bank is empty and the gang is ambushed. After an elaborate fight scene — pretty good, if you can forgive digital blood effects — Scian gets stabbed by a poisoned blade. She insists that the group leave her behind; Éile refuses.
This might be affecting if we hadn’t met Scian about ten minutes of screen time before this or if we knew more than a few sentences about her history with Éile, none of which felt like nearly enough to justify those tears. But just when it looks like Scian might die, freeing Michelle Yeoh up to get back on the Oscar campaign trail, a convenient deus ex machina comes in the form of Callan, a.k.a Brother Death.
Where does Brother Death come from? He just kind of … shows up in the woods. What’s his deal? He used to kill people but decided he didn’t want to do that anymore. Why is he teaming up with our heroes? So he can kill people. How long does it take him to decide to renounce his pacifism? About 30 seconds.
Or, to put it another way, this is all just happening so fast. And not the fun kind of fast but the “I don’t even know what I’m supposed to care about here†kind of fast. Brother Death has barely introduced himself before he zips us off to meet two “celestial siblings†named Zacaré and Syndril. The former heals Scian and the latter admits that the monoliths that allowed monsters to enter the world were his fault. The crew agrees to head to Xin’Trea — some to close the gateways to other worlds, some simply to kill as many members of the Golden Empire as they can.
And if it seems like I’m rushing this formation of this fellowship: Well, that’s about as much time as any of this gets onscreen.
There is an explanation for all of this. In an interview, Witcher showrunner Lauren Hissrich talked about Blood Origin’s cut content, explaining that a lot of “beautiful scenes of people around campfires†were removed during editing to make the show more propulsive. But it seems to me that “beautiful scenes of people around campfires†is exactly what Blood Origin is lacking. If we don’t know who these characters are, why should we care about them?
Stray Arrows
• As the episode ends, the Six try to use a monolith to enter the Xin’Trea castle courtyard but end up teleported to another world, where Éile almost instantly provokes a giant centipede monster. Oops.
• In an apparently disconnected subplot — but one that we already know the resolution of because Minnie Driver told us the names of the Seven upfront — a dwarf named Meldof kills an elf named Talyysen of the One Eye for raping and her murdering Gwen, a woman she loved. Meldof now calls her hammer “Gwen,†talking to it and even kissing it when the deed is done.
• I described the two shows embedded in Blood Origin upfront, but there’s also a third show grafted on top of it: A show in which Minnie Driver keeps popping in to explain things a more confident show would trust the audience to understand via subtext and context. Those moments were, mercifully, less frequent here than in the series premiere.
• On the way to meet Zacaré and Syndril, there’s a fun, trippy sequence in which Fjall and Éile fight through nightmares caused by the Marsh of the Mists. The gnarly highlight of which is definitely the moment when “Merwyn†spews black bile all over Fjall’s face while she’s riding him. The less fun one is watching Éile flashback to a time when she set fire to a bunch of screaming prisoners in a cage.
• Being vague here to avoid future spoilers, but Avallac’h, like Ithlinne and Eredin before him, is a name that should be familiar to Witcher fans.
• I appreciate that the stigma between Eredin and his merchant lover isn’t that they’re two men but that they belong to different social classes. (That said: Does Eredin’s lover even have a name?)
• I guess we’ll need to take him at his word, but “Brother Death†definitely sounds like the kind of nickname a second-grader would make up himself and then loudly insist that everybody calls him it.