By Jaskier’s involvement in The Witcher‘s first live-action prequel The Witcher: Blood Origin was known to us for more than a year, when the limited series was still in production, but since then, in April 2022 Netflix decided to have reshoots for the series and among other things, Jaskier’s prologue scene was completely changed.
Less song and dance, more action
In a new interview with Scifinow, Joey Batey confirmed that the original prologue scene that would open The Witcher: Blood Origin was changed. He revealed that the original version had Jaskier performing an additional song written by Bear McCreary: “We shot something whilst they were all shooting the show, it was a big song and dance number. And Bear McCreary wrote the song and it was quite fun. It was a fun opening.“
And indeed, the original version that we heard a year ago was quite different from the new one. Originally Jaskier is in his natural habitat: a tavern. There, in front of a crowd, he starts 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”.
Batey then told about how it was changed: “Then I got another call from Declan – this was the surprising one! – whilst I was shooting the third season of The Witcher and said “we’re going to do it at all again, it’s going to be totally different, it’s going to be mayhem and carnage!” And I was like: “Cool!”.
We already saw images from the reshoots involving Joey Batey’s Jaskier with Minnie Driver’s Seanchai added to the mix. Instead of lighthearted song and dance scene, it is a battle scene involving the Scoia’tael and Northern soldiers with Jaskier finding himself in the middle of all that.
UPDATE: Netflix has unveiled a new clip from Jaskier’s prologue, where Seanchai stops time and appears before Jaskier as himself.
As much as fight scenes are good, it would still be very pleasant to see something more lighthearted and fun in The Witcher franchise, especially involving Jaskier. Still, we will hear him sing nonetheless as we know his song is featured in the end credits of Blood Origin.
Season 3 of The Witcher is in post-production for a Summer 2023 release. The live-action prequel The Witcher: Blood Origin has been set a Christmas 2022 release. Stay tuned to Redanian Intelligence and do pop into our Discord server to join in on The Witcher conversation.
