Early media screening reviews for The Witcher: Blood Origin are coming in, and they are…less than favorable. The prequel series to the Netflix hit The Witcher is currently sitting at a blistering 54 on Metacritic with four reviews from well-known outlets. It’s hard to tell where it will sit as more reviews come in, but two reviews coming in under 40 certainly seems foreboding.
Blood Origin always had its source material (or lack thereof) working against it. The series isn’t based on any work by Andrzej Sapkowski, author of The Witcher novels. Going off of this information, fans of the Netflix series and the novels have taken to social media to refer to Blood Origin as “fan fiction.” The lack of reference material to work with means that for Blood Origin, everything is down to the series writer(s), and it seems the result isn’t exactly a grand slam.
The production hasn’t been smooth sailing, either. Back in September, it was revealed that the original six-episode order from Netflix had been dropped instead to four. That’s never a good sign for a series and instead looks like Netflix higher-ups possessed enough forethought to try and recoup some costs by limiting the trainwreck ahead of time.
It’s sad to think of just how wasted this cast was on something that appears very likely to underperform. Namely, action icon Michelle Yeoh (Everything Everywhere All at Once, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon) deserves much better than what this series appears to offer.
When compared to the rest of The Witcher, there’s a bit of to be some equilibrium. The first season of the series is also at 54 on Metacritic, but the second season saw a rise to 69.
We will continue to keep an eye on scores, but needless to say, it isn’t looking good.
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