🤐 SPOILER ALERT 🤐
Geralt of Rivia is the most famous witcher on the Continent, but he comes from a long line of magically enhanced monster slayers. The animated prequel The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf, which follows Geralt’s mentor Vesemir (voiced by Theo James), provides a look at how witchers gain their abilities through a brutal alchemical process called the Trial of the Grasses. Many who undergo the rite don’t survive, but those who do emerge with heightened strength, ability and healing powers as well as an extended life span.
The Witcher: Blood Origin goes back much further in time, more than 1,000 years before the events of The Witcher, to tell the story of how the prototype Witcher was created.
“We weren’t building the Witcher we know and love from the main series, which is the perfect Porsche version,” showrunner Declan de Barra tells Tudum. “We were building the first car that runs on steam or whatever. It was not that great and it was brutal and clanky.”
The creation of the prototype Witcher is an act of desperation for the seven heroes of Blood Origin, who need a way to stand up to the might of the elven Golden Empire and the hydra-like creature known as Balor’s beast. The creature comes from another world and is capable of destroying entire armies. The mages Zacaré (Lizzie Annis) and Syndril (Zach Wyatt) theorize that the best way to fight it would be to infuse a skilled warrior with the power of another monster.
The early version of the Trial of the Grasses uses many of the components that would become keys to the finalized ritual. The mages concoct a series of elixirs using plants including mandrake root, wolfsbane and corpse-nettle. They also incorporate feainnewedd, a small purple flower common in the time of Blood Origin but nearly impossible to find by the time of The Witcher.
While Éile (Sophia Brown) volunteers for the transformation, Fjall (Laurence O’Fuarain) drinks the elixirs first to protect her from the untested and possibly lethal process. Once the ritual starts, it can’t be interrupted without killing him.
Consuming the elixirs is agonizing, but they’re just meant to prepare Fjall for the core of the procedure: connecting him to the heart of the Ragnavyyrm, a horrifying aquatic monster that the group encountered while traveling through a portal into another world.
Fjall emerges from the process with a witcher’s signature golden eyes and keen reflexes that allow him to catch a throwing knife in midair. While normal weapons can’t pierce the beast’s thick, scaly hide, Fjall is able to slay the creature.
Unfortunately, the process is unstable. Black veins creep up Fjall’s skin and turn his eyes black as well, an effect similar to the alchemical elixirs used by later witchers to enhance their skills for a short time. Initially, Éile calms Fjall’s burgeoning rage through singing, but eventually that’s not enough. The monstrous power consumes Fjall, transforming him into a beast that can’t distinguish friend from foe. After Fjall tears one ally in half and brutally attacks another, Éile kills the man she loves to prevent him from hurting anyone else. Even though Fjall dies, the love he and Éile shared results in a child.
Past is prologue in the world of The Witcher. The knowledge of how to make a new witcher is lost when the witcher stronghold of Kaer Morhen is destroyed. Vesemir (Kim Bodnia) is left serving as a teacher and father figure to what might be the last group of witchers ever. As their numbers dwindle, he becomes desperate to re-create the formula. He believes that Princess Ciri may be the key because feainnewedd grows where her blood has been spilled. In Season 2, he attempts to create a new version of the Trial of the Grasses by using her blood, but the elixir is stolen before it can be tested.
Likewise, the story of how the prototype Witcher was created disappeared when humans arrived on the Continent and ended the Elven Golden Age.
“The idea was that something was lost after the fall of the elven civilization, but the original Witcher was tied into the new form of Witcher in terms of a missing ingredient that was lost to time,” de Barra says. “I love that because that fit in with the idea of lost stories and lost cultures when the elves got colonized, because that’s the first thing colonizers do. They get rid of their history, their culture [and] language, and that’s the way of controlling.”
