The Witcher boss teases how the show ties into the Blood Origin post-credits scene
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Warning: This article contains spoilers from The Witcher: Blood Origin.
The last thing The Witcher fans saw prior to season 3 of the mothership series was Blood Origin, the prequel miniseries that went back thousands of years in the timeline of the show to chronicle the pivotal event known as the Conjunction of the Spheres.
The ending of that show did two things. One, Minnie Driver's ageless shapeshifter Seanchai relays a prophesy. She says, "The Lark's seed" — that would be the bloodline that began with the unborn child of Éile (Sophia Brown) and the first prototype Witcher, Fjall (Laurence O'Fuarain) — "will carry forth, the first note in a song that ends all times, and one of her blood shall sing the last."
And second, a post-credits scene revealed that the elf Avallac'h (Samuel Blenkin), a character from the Witcher books that was first introduced on screen in Blood Origin, has secretly been involved in the timeline of the main series. The spin-off end tag revisits a scene from The Witcher season 1, when Ciri (Freya Allan), disguised as a street kid, looks off into the market crowd as if being watched. Blood Origin reveals Avallac'h, with the ability to move through time, is the figure she sees.
Susie Allnutt/Netflix; Lilja Jonsdottir/Netflix Henry Cavill in 'The Witcher' and Sophia Brown in 'The Witcher: Blood Origin'
How is this all being tied together? The Witcher showrunner and Blood Origin executive producer Lauren Hissrich teases the grander plans, and also clarifies something that fans have been speculating about since Blood Origin.
"The first one: The prophecy I actually think is not as clear cut as many people think," Hissrich tells EW. "It does seem to immediately say Ciri is related to Éile, and that is not the case. So we can dispel that rumor right now. That is a little hidden gem for us, and we have other things brewing with that."
As for the Avallac'h post-credits scene, Hissrich confirms, "He has been watching Ciri for a very long time, planning his future and her future."
"One of the things that I love is when we finally meet Avallac'h in the books and you realize he's been tracking a lot of time," the showrunner adds. "And because he can move through space and time, it felt like such a cool way to go, 'Wait! Where else has he been?' We obviously never see him any place else in seasons 1 and 2, but what else has he seen and how are we building to his story in a later season?'"
Netflix Henry Cavill in season 3 of 'The Witcher'
The showrunner expands on the idea of taking a "macro approach" to the show's storytelling. To put it another way, "We have to set up certain dominoes so that we can knock them down later," she says. "There's one I wish I could tell you! There is something — it's one of my favorite things — that we set up in season 1 that pays off in season 3. And it's something that I got a ton of questions about."
Elements like this mysterious season 3 payoff, the Avallac'h post-credits scene, and Seanchai's prophecy in Blood Origin "don't have to necessarily be answered right then for our viewers and our audience," Hissrich continues. "You have to trust that if we made a decision at a certain point that we did it for a reason, that you're gonna find out later."
The Witcher season 3 will premiere its first five episodes, packaged as Vol. 1, this Thursday on Netflix. The last three episodes, pegged as Vol. 2, will arrive next month on July 27.
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