‘The Witcher’ It was born as one of Netflix’s first big bets to get a great television franchise. It is true that ‘Stranger Things’ already existed by then, but there I am very clear that nobody, not even its own creators, expected it to achieve such success. The series starring henry cavill It had a very good reception, but then almost nobody paid attention to ‘The Witcher: The Wolf’s Nightmare’ and its second season, still working well, was less watched than the first.
The announcement of Cavill’s departure has sown more doubts about his future and the arrival of ‘The Witcher: The Origin of Blood’ It has not served to clear them. And it is that this prequel in the form of a miniseries is one of the disappointments of the year. In fact, it is difficult to find really positive things in it, since it is true that there are only 4 episodes -so at least there is no time for us to get even more indigestible-, but instead it feels very rushed and also does not even take advantage of the fact that one of its main characters is played by michelle yeoh.
loose expansion
In ‘The Witcher: The Origin of Blood’ we travel 1,200 years from the adventures of Geralt, Ciri and Yennefer to learn about some very relevant events within this universe. Without going into details, a tremendous betrayal causes a major shift in the hierarchy of power that leads to Éile’s paths meeting (Sophia Brown), a warrior turned traveling musician, and Fjall (Laurence O’Fuarain), a warrior who does something for which his clan turns its back on him.
From the first moment it is evident that in ‘The Witcher: The origin of the blood’ there is not the slightest interest in giving the story dramatic depth that he tells us and that the priority is that everything progress quickly. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but a mortal sin is committed here, and that is that it never manages to make us have the slightest empathy towards its protagonists, to which we must add that the relationship that arises between the two is also developed in a rather poor way. , so there is no choice but to accept without further ado what is happening, and does nothing to deserve it.
It shows that the initial plan was to tell all this in 6 episodes instead of 4, which leads to ‘The Origin of Blood’ being superficial at best and hopeless when nothing directly fits. There it is worth noting how weak the dialogues are, resorting to set phrases to try to give emotion to the mission of the protagonists, thus making the generic nature of this Netflix miniseries clearer. And it is that there is nothing wrong with wanting to be the white label of something little by little that you adapt to it -which does not happen here-, but it is also that this does not proceed in a prequel to ‘The Witcher’ in which it is clear that no expense has been spared.
This lack of narrative glue to give unity and greater entity to the whole means that it doesn’t matter that there is money here to create colorful creatures or carry out a careful job of setting to a certain extent. Come on, ‘The Witcher: The Origin of Blood’ doesn’t look like papier-mâché visually, but unfortunately, it’s not something I really take advantage of either. Perhaps that first training session of the two protagonists is where the series shows a little more personality in terms of staging to get the most out of those means, but it is a mirage that does not hide how flat it ends up also being in this section. . Obviously, he outshines the rest – as does his generous use of violence – but there’s little comfort here.
For the rest, it is true that it provides more details that expand this universe and that may be explored in the third season of ‘The Witcher’, but it is not felt that it is something that was essential to tell here and that the mother series could have perfectly integrated otherwise. The first thing that should have been sought here is to give it its own entity and not settle for being a complement that feels very little essential. And it is that if season 2 were one or two steps forward, here we can easily talk about six or seven backwards.
Nor do I forget the cast, where that superficiality that stands out before predominates to the point that most of the characters continue to be mere carcasses to fill with little luck what the story requires of them, being especially evident beyond the leading trio. The worst stop is probably mirren mack, but the usual thing in most of them is that they feel like mere padding. For their part, Brown and O’Fuarain comply with some dignity, while Yeoh is the one that looks the most, but that doesn’t mean that it’s tremendously wasted.
In short
It’s not just that ‘The Witcher: The Origin of Blood’ fell far short of the best Netflix miniseries, it’s that it doesn’t even come close to the level of the mother series and leaves the feeling of this universe probably beginning and ending with Cavill’s stage as Geralt of Rivia. I’m not forgetting its success in other media, but ‘The Wolf’s Nightmare’ was a bit like nothing else and the one that concerns us now seems like one of those expansions for a video game that are nothing more than a sack. A pity.
In Espinof: