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The Witcher: Blood Origin, a spin-off miniseries and prequel to Netflix's The Witcher, which starred Henry Cavill for three seasons, is now the worst-rated series in both Netflix and television history. It currently sits at a critical score of 33% and an audience score of 10% on Rotten Tomatoes.
This happens amidst all the turmoil currently surrounding The Witcher franchise. Henry Cavill, who played the protagonist Geralt of Rivia for three seasons of The Witcher, left the show following creative differences with the writers. While Cavill was an ardent fan of the original book and video games on which the series is based, several writers of the show reportedly hated the source material.
Why is The Witcher: Blood Origin rated extremely low?
The critical consensus of Rotten Tomatoes had this to say about the overall quality of the spin-off miniseries.
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"A shallow excavation of ancient lore from Andrzej Sapkowski's fantasy series, Blood Origin shares ancestral DNA with The Witcher but little of what makes the mothership series memorable."
One reason The Witcher: Blood Origin got a low score would be that the series did not seem to deliver the high expectations that fans of both the original Witcher series, books, and video games had.
The prequel series had a lot of material to pull from Andrzej Sapkowski's work, which, unfortunately, the creative team did not do. According to fans, the writing was distasteful, the dialogues felt clunky and generic, and the miniseries ended up completely embarrassing the original.
Moreover, the visual effects, such as the appearance of a Dragon-like creature in the series and the final transformation of one of the lead characters, left a bad taste in fans' eyes because of how extremely horrendous it was. This contributed to the low score for the four-episode prequel series, which is new for both the Netflix and The Witcher franchise.
In addition to The Witcher: Blood Origin's lackluster quality was Henry Cavill's exit from the franchise and some of the drama surrounding the series coming to light, significantly frustrating both Cavill fans and fans of the source material. Following Cavill's departure from The Witcher after the third season, fans have been calling for Netflix to get the series canceled.
The show has a notable cast consisting of Michelle Yeoh of 2022's Everything Everywhere All At Once, Jacob Collins-Levy, Sophia Brown, and Laurence O' Fuarain.
The Witcher franchise is currently in a gloomy state, thanks to Cavill's exit and the casting of Liam Hemsworth for the fourth season, which many fans are not impressed by as they believe Cavill embodied Geralt.
On top of all that, fans are frustrated by the injection of woke identity politics in both The Witcher: Blood Origin and The Witcher series.
One fan has even criticized the hair and make-up of The Witcher: Blood Origin.
Several fans have taken to Rotten Tomatoes itself to criticize the show and its quality. Ready Steady Cut wrote:
"The TV equivalent, in a way, of a tangentially-related hyperlink that you end up clicking while reading about something else on Wikipedia."
Marcelo A, a fan of the series, wrote:
"In a generic fantasy setting with several box ticking characters, a show with no soul rises from a place it should never have risen. Between abominable and atrocious, this non-Witcher has basically nothing worthy of noting.
"It does absolutely nothing for a Witcher fan: adds nothing, build nothing, had no character or resemblance with source material. I could watch the original Polish show that you might not even know that exists, but this was a little too much."
CBR, or Comic Book-Reader, has blamed Henry Cavill and The Witcher fans for the poor ratings of The Witcher: Blood Origin series as they have been review-bombing it.
On the other hand, there are some people who were more positive about the show. One user, @Aileyn, took to Twitter to write:
Another user, @AmyImhoff, tweeted:
The plot of The Witcher: Blood Origin
The Witcher: Blood Origin is set 1200 years before the events of the main series and follows the Seven, warriors who band together to fight The Golden Empire. Among these warriors are Fjall and Eile, played by Laurence O' Fuarain and Sophia Brown, who fall in love while they fight a common enemy.
By the end of the series, one of the members of the Seven must sacrifice themselves to become a monster capable of killing other monsters.
Declan De Barra, one of the showrunners, explained the story in an interview with Collider:
"It [the prototype Witcher identity] shifted around a lot once it was going to be Éile and then the idea of sacrifice. Witchers are always sacrificing themselves, or someone is sacrificing an innocent essentially to become a Witcher, [there] is always this element of sacrifice and sacrifice them."
He added:
"The idea of sacrifice between two lovers where someone co-opts, or steals, the other person's sacrifice because they love them, without admitting that they loved them, that was something really strong. When we hit on that, that's when we realized there'll be a flip."
The unfavorable reception towards The Witcher: Blood Origin has only contributed to the uncertain future of the Witcher franchise. Only time will tell if things will smooth over for the world of magic, monsters, and witchers.
