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Summary

Netflix's 'Witcher' Boss Says She Can 'Keep Going For Years' Even After Losing Henry Cavill

"Blood Origin" is just the beginning!

Mirren Mack as Merwyn in "Blood Origin." Middle: Michelle Yeoh as Scian in "Blood Origin." Right: Henry Cavill as Geralt of Rivia in "The Witcher."

Mirren Mack as Merwyn in "Blood Origin." Middle: Michelle Yeoh as Scian in "Blood Origin." Right: Henry Cavill as Geralt of Rivia in "The Witcher."

Susie Allnutt | Netflix, Netflix, Katalin Vermes | Netflix
Interim Deputy Editor (News)

Henry Cavill may have disappointed Witcher fans when he left to play (and then lose) Superman, but the boss of the Netflix franchise says there are still plenty of tales to tell without him.

The latest one, for instance, is Blood Origin, a four-episode prequel that’s set some 1,200 years before Cavill’s Geralt of Rivia arrives on the scene. Add to that Nightmare of the Wolf, an animated prequel about Geralt’s mentor, and it seems there’s still a lot of juice to squeeze out of the Witcher orange at this point.

“I feel like I could keep going for years,” Lauren Hissrich, the showrunner on Witcher and executive producer on Blood Origin, told Narcity in a recent interview.

Part of that plan, of course, involves recasting the role of Geralt, with Liam Hemsworth taking over the white wig in season 4, which will come after Cavill's final appearance in season 3.

But it's not all about Geralt. Hissrich says she's hearing plenty of great Witcher ideas from the writer's room, including the one that launched Blood Origin. That means there could be more stories outside the main one to tell in the future.

"It's a big giant adventure for me," she said. "It's people who've come to fall in love with this world and had their own take on it and their own tone (...) What more could you possibly want?"

Of course, it helps to have a veteran action star like Michelle Yeoh onboard when you try something new. Yeoh stars in Blood Origin as Scian, a master swordswoman who teams up with six others to save the elves' very reality from being fractured by magic. They also happen to create the first witcher along the way.

Witcher writer Declan de Barra says he actually cooked up the idea for Blood Origin on a napkin, and he used that napkin to successfully pitch Hassrich on his story.

"It's somewhere in my house," he told Narcity, when asked about the napkin. "But I have a picture of it and I still have the text I sent to Lauren which is exactly a transcription of the napkin."

De Barra added that he really enjoyed looking at the distant past in the world of The Witcher, because there isn't much to be found about it in the hit video games or books

"I wanted to show a world that was surprising," said de Barra. "It's not the mythologized version of elves that we have in genre, and not the mythologized version that the elves in The Witcher world have of their past. Because we lift our past up sometimes and sort of make it bigger than it is."

All four episodes of The Witcher: Blood Origin drop December 25 on Netflix.

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    • Interim Deputy Editor, News

      Josh Elliott (he/him) was the Interim Deputy Editor (News) for Narcity, where he led the talented editorial team's local news content. Josh previously led Narcity’s international coverage and he spent several years as a writer for CTV and Global News in the past. He earned his English degree from York University and his MA in journalism from Western University. Superhero content is his kryptonite.

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