By The second season of Netflix’s The Witcher gave us a good look at the newer version of Jaskier played by Joey Batey. Jaskier is now a popular bard compared to Season 1, where he was closer to the beginning of his career. But the bard’s adventures aren’t confined to just following Henry Cavill’s Geralt and The Witcher. As we revealed last year, Jaskier would make an appearance in the prequel The Witcher: Blood Origin. Now we have a few more details of his appearance.
For those wondering: yes, Joey Batey will indeed physically appear as Jaskier in the prequel limited-series and here’s how it goes:
In The Witcher: Blood Origin, Jaskier is in his natural habitat: a tavern. There, in front of a crowd, he starts telling (or singing) this old tale that is supposed to be Blood Origin, but he is interrupted by an elf. The elf corrects him and says this isn’t how it happened.
As expected, Jaskier being Jaskier might have added a few more colors and drama to the original tale. Alternatively, the tale is 1200 years old and it would have been impossible to preserve all the details exactly how they happened.
The identity of the elf in this prologue-type scene is currently unknown to us, but it could be someone from the cast that survives those events.
The Witcher: Blood Origin, among other things, will provide a backstory to Eredin and The Wild Hunt as well as reveal more about the Season 2 villain Voleth Meir, who is shown to be a member of The Wild Hunt. Read more about that in our in-depth analysis of Voleth Meir and her connection to The Wild Hunt:
Much as I generally like Joey Batey as an actor, I think he wasn’t used well in Season 2. Partially that’s due to the way the Jaskier role was scripted. It felt often out of character compared to the books. The song he performed (burn butcher burn) was…bad. Bad as a song, completely ill-fitting for a medieval type of music, and his singing was awkward. I think that musical piece as well as the lyrics could have easily been done far better and I wonder why it wasn’t. Jaskier is a poet, but in Season 2 that distinctive personality trait wasn’t noticeable.
I can’t help saying I have absolutely no interest in Blood Origin. More of the fanny fiction by the screenwriters would be too much to take. I wish they would focus their efforts on getting the screenplay for the Witcher show right so that it deserves to be called an adaptation. In other fields of business they would be told that in view of their performance so far, they have no capacity left for extra activities before they get their main job done straight.
I have zero interest for Blood Origin but if the upcoming animated series is about Geralt’s early adventures I’d be happy to give it a chance.
That’s what I want too. An episodic series of Geralt doing his job and his witchers brothers to pop up here and there. (although seeing how Lauren treated the other witchers maybe it’s better to not touch them again). But a series with Geralt’s adventures as a witcher before the events of the main series is the only logical thing.
How funny would it be if Blood Origin turned out way better than the Netflix version of The Witcher series overall because I read it’s going to be directed and produced by a different group not really affiliated with Hissrech and her fanfiction. So maybe it will do fine?
But it is fanfiction anyway. I wonder if the very multicultural cast will be a convincing setting for a world that is supposed to be several thousand years old, even in fantastic terms. Maybe ancient Rome was to some degree multicultural with people of different ethnics, but that was because it was also really big in terms of population.A megacity by the standards of its time. Having scene pictures with small groups of people of diverse origin is again a very modern idea. I find that difficult to buy into. Actually, I don’t think I feel like giving it even a try. It is really a pity. All we get from those screenwriters of nowadays is a sort of random fantasy, trying hard to weave in modern themes and wanting to come along with a critical attitude towards certain developments in modern society, but it is all half-hearted and poorly written. Whereas Sapkowski has it all, and also the Witcher games: The senseless atrocities of war, violence against women, violence against minority races, violence against those who are weaker, abuse and domestic violence and so on. On the other hand, intelligent, independent and well educated women and so on. The writers should have the courage to leave the edge and complexity of Sapkowski’s storytelling in place. Otherwise it is deprived of its originality by a lot, and we have seen the result, a random fantasy story with main figures that are not very interesting to watch. Sapkowski’s novels, for all their shortcomings here and there, reach deeper and are rich in historic and literary allusions. Instead, the story in the Witcher show is rich in inconsistencies and events that are logically conflicting. Unfortunately, the screenwriters seem to know very little about literature and history in general. Even assuming that they have read the books, they seem to be often clueless about the themes in literature and history that Sapkowski is alluding to.
Yes yes yes to all of this!!! Well said! I wish fans would write the scripts, they have more knowledge and intelligent to understand Sapkowski’s rich themes.