Warning: This article contains major spoilers for The Witcher: Blood Origin.
The Witcher multiverse is shrouded in a lot of mystery. However, Blood Origin helps deepen our understanding by introducing a character who can hop between timelines and locations: Avallac’h (Samuel Blenkin).
In the series finale, he tells Merwyn (Mirren Mack) that he’s able to use the monoliths – huge obelisk gateways between worlds – to travel in time as well as space. Then in the Blood Origin post-credits scene, he uses this knowledge to go thousands of years into the future to Ciri’s time.
Although this adds an interesting dimension (if you’ll pardon the pun) to the multiverse's mysterious nature, you’d be forgiven for being a bit confused about what all this means – especially when other cinematic multiverses, like Marvel's, function very differently.
12DOVE sat down with Blood Origin showrunner Declan de Barra, who explains that one major way they vary is in terms of variants. Unlike Loki and Spider-Man: No Way Home, the Netflix franchise will not be introducing any different versions of beloved characters any time soon.
"There are no different versions," he tells us. "They're the same characters, but the worlds that they travel between are very different, and they exist on different time planes in some cases. There's a lot of world jumping, but they're the same characters jumping between those worlds.
"They may have changed in terms of their character arc and how long they've lived and what they're doing on these other worlds, but it's the same person. It’s not like there are two versions of Jaskier. It’s straight up that there’s one version of Yennefer, one version of everybody."
This discounts a theory about how the show could recast Geralt, amid the news of Henry Cavill’s exit. He will be replaced as Geralt of Rivia by Liam Hemsworth, but it’s unclear how exactly the transition between actors will happen, or if it will be mentioned at all. The multiverse variants could have been a potential solution to this, but it seems like the show will be following a different path.
With The Witcher season 3 coming out in summer 2023, we’ll just have to wait and see how Cavill’s Geralt leaves off. In the meantime, take a deeper dive into the world of Blood Origin with our explainers on:
- The Witcher: Blood Origin ending explained
- The Witcher: Blood Origin prophecy explained
- The latest on The Witcher: Blood Origin season 2
- Where is Jaskier in The Witcher: Blood Origin?
- Sophie Brown on Elie's big finale prophecy
- Michelle Yeoh's stipulation about joining The Witcher: Blood Origin
- Joey Batey on The Witcher season 3
