In one of the first scenes of The Witcher: The Origin, bard Jaskier (Joey Batey) wonders if the story the mysterious elf wants to tell him is yet another cliché story about an unlikely group rising up against an empire. And, despite the character’s denial, the prequel to The Witcher that just hit Netflix is really a big hodgepodge of commonplaces that adds little to the franchise.
The premise itself is really interesting: showing how the world of the series became this thing full of different races and monsters and, in addition, revealing how the first wizard was created. The problem is that this 1200-year time travel looks more like a bad RPG campaign and shows that, in the end, these mysteries of the past were much better in legends and songs than in the miniseries format.
With a script that brings together all possible clichés, the promise to expand the universe of The Witcher it turns out to be a rather predictable and poor journey that does not excite and still exposes the weaknesses of the Netflix adaptation.
A poor RPG campaign
To be quite honest, the world of The Witcher it was never the most original thing in the world. The great merit of the saga — whether in books, games or even in the series — is how it manages to sew together all this fantastic medieval imagery with legends and classic tales and give this salad an acidic tone that makes everything very interesting.
The episode of Beauty and the Beast in the second season or the mission of the Bloody Baron in the game are beautiful examples of how the charm of the franchise is to start from the obvious to surprise the public — a characteristic that The origin give up completely.
Everything in the story of these seven warriors who come together to overthrow an empire is as cliché as possible to the point where you know very well what will happen, how each character will behave and every attempt at a plot twist. Everything is predictable because there is not the slightest effort for this plot to be minimally creative.
It’s like that lazy RPG game you play with an inexperienced GM. Renegade heroes? Have. Unlikely partnerships? Have. An unexpected romance? Obvious. Sudden prophecies? But of course. Visions in the middle of a forest? You can be sure it is.
Everything is so generic in The Witcher: The Origin that it’s hard to get attached to any of the characters. The duo of protagonists Éile (Sophia Brown) and Fjall (Laurence O’Fourain) even try to deliver a little personality, but the story of this duo is so beaten that it becomes difficult to understand the dilemmas of each of them. Even Michelle Yeoh is underutilized here, being limited to being the eastern elf who fights kung-fu and sells cheap philosophy.
And this is all very sad, as it was Netflix’s chance to sign new protagonists for the franchise and not depend so much on Geralt, even more so now that the hero of the main series is going to change his interpreter. However, the attempt to present new faces stumbles upon a rather puerile script. If you told me that all episodes were written by an artificial intelligence, I would believe it.
The thing is so amateurish that there are those central core characters who barely have a personality. “Heroes” like Zacaré (Lizzie Annis) and Brother Death (Huw Novelli) are just personality traits that are not taken advantage of and that, in the end, exist only to make volume in this group.
Even more serious is how much the script simply throws some things out. One of the members of that infamous entourage, Syndrill (Zach Wyatt), starts the series trapped in the headquarters of the empire and, without further ado, appears on the other side of the world as if nothing had happened. Like? He says he ran away and that’s all.
It’s the kind of thing that just goes to show how much The Witcher: The Origin it’s just silly. And this becomes more evident when he tries to incorporate some seriousness by placing a plot of palace intrigues à la game of Thrones, but it’s just childish. There are few things that really work and show that, in fact, revealing these mysteries of the past may not have been a good idea.
empty pockets
But it’s not just in the script that The Witcher: The Origin falls short. The technical part is also one of its most obvious weaknesses. And I’m not even just talking about the low budget, which generates some rather embarrassing effects, like the Nintendo 64 sky that appears at times. The miniseries is limited even in its direction.
Production seems to have difficulty putting together this story that it wants to tell and bumps into some basic questions that are evident at first glance. In montage, the passage of time for certain events is truncated, and even the way isolated facts spread across the empire as if they were known facts is confusing.
in the direction, The origin he seems not sure what he wants to show. In one of the episodes, Empress Merwyn (Mirren Mack) leaves the palace to see the misery of her people in the streets. And what does the camera do? It shows none of this, preferring to close the image on her face and saying nothing by it.
Part of this can be explained by budget savings. After all, to create this image of a miserable crowd, you need to hire extras to shape this image — and it’s clear how much Netflix held its pockets around here. So much so that there is no scale to any of the “great” events that are narrated. From the 20-person army to bring down an empire to the 30-person rebellion in the streets, everything here is small and lacks impact.
The point is that the series didn’t need to fill the film sets with hundreds of people for this, just have a competent direction that gave the impression of crowd that these moments needed. However, the people behind the camera seem not to be very familiar with these cinematographic tricks and end up stuck in these voids that only make the action much poorer.
What is saved?
Although little stands on The Witcher: The Origin, there are some points that turn out to be interesting in the midst of this scorched earth scenario that the miniseries leaves. And much of it revolves around the basic premise itself, i.e. the connections the story makes to the main series.
Even if the final resolution isn’t all that great, the plot gets a little more attractive as the Conjunction of the Spheres and the creation of witches start to be drawn into the plot.
Are some of the solutions found for this silly? Yes, but just a glimpse of this connection between history and what we know from The Witcher to keep us going through these four episodes. As said, it is the promise of enriching and expanding this world that draws attention here.
At the same time, all the stumbles of The origin it can also be a wound for the franchise as a whole — even more so in such a delicate behind-the-scenes moment. The miniseries arrives full of problems shortly after fantasy fans delve into much richer worlds and much better crafted scripts.
under the shadow of The House of the Dragon and even from The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Powerthe pile of clichés and the predictable and obvious plot makes The Witcher: The Origin a simple and silly work – an impression that can contaminate even the main series. Comparisons between universes are inevitable, as is their execution.
With the third season of The Witcher knocking on the door, it’s hard not to be worried about the future in the face of what this prequel presented. It may just be a point off the curve, something to be forgotten. But it could also be an omen of just how much of Netflix’s gamble has been lost.
The Witcher: The Origin it is available on Netflix.
