Of Mages, Malice, and Monstrous Mayhem
Episode 4 of The Witcher: Blood Origin starts this final episode with war coming to Xin’Trea. Merwyn the Massacre’s attention though is for further lands afield, wanting to conquer them and rule all with one leader. She intends to lead a new Golden Age… but there’s a peoblem. Balor conjures a portal and betrays them all, killing Fenrik and embracing his newfound Chaos powers that he asked for. He’s going to take everything, which is what he’s always desired.
What happens at the palace?
Meanwhile, Scian leads the group through the streets and up to the palace. As the gates are opened, Avallac’h shows up before Merwyn and lets her know that Syndril’s portals could allow them to travel through time as well as to other worlds. As Fjall and Scian arrive at the palace before Merwyn, the rest of the party head out and try to secure the town square. Merwyn decides to betray Scian and holds her up at sword-point, deciding to have her beheaded and destroyed. Outside though, Eile rallies the troops to her side to overthrow the Empire given there’s no food. As everyone resonates with the cause, inside the throne room Scian destroys the two soldiers leading her away while Fjall finds himself face to face with the beast.
Is Merwyn killed?
Eventually our motley group join together, where Callan and Zacare kiss before parting ways and heading off to stop the monolith. Naturally, Geldof gets struck in the shoulder with an arrow but she just shrugs it off, ripping it out and continuing on with her fighting. Balor returns and finds himself face to face with Syndril and Zacare. The pair of mages realize that he can control Chaos magic and try to work out what to do about this. At the same time, Djall fights off the creature outside, while Merwyn ends up stabbed and she places a crown on her head, sitting on the throne and pleading with her subjects to remember her. Oh they will Merwyn… as a tyrant and slaughterer.
Is the beast defeated? How does the series handle the Conjunction of Spheres?
Meanwhile, Djall embraces the beast within, hulking out and grabbing a huge sword. In doing so, he launches it at the winged beast and bests it, hitting the creature in its forehead. With the monster gone, Balor monologues about his new power and in doing so, finds himself bound by Zacare. Up on the side, Fjall loses control and kills Callan. However, it’s Eile’s singing that manages to bring him back. Only temporarily though, as Eile eventually stabs him and kills the guy. As a result of all this, the sky streams a kaleidoscope of colour, as worlds collide, which is known as the Conjunction of the Spheres. Every living thing fell silent as a result, but then the continent awoke with humans now inexplicably walking among elves.
How does Blood Origin end?
We then jump forward six moons later, with noticeboards set up offering coin for slaying monsters. Eile is still alive and it turns out when she slept with Fjall, they also bore a child; a creature of new making. This is the birth of the first Witcher. And then we’re back with Jaskier, who’s told to sing the song and be ready for change, bringing this fantasy prequel to a close.
The Episode Review
Well, where do you begin with this? Blood Origin bows out with an indifferent shrug with a series that’ll be forgotten as soon as the new year rolls in. It’s been a pretty poor year for fantasy overall (with the exception of House of the Dragon and perhaps Alchemy of Souls) and this series ultimatelty serves as the moudly cherry atop a putrid cake of mediocrity. Blood Origin has absolutely no defining features to it, characters that have zero growth and a cookie cutter story we’ve seen repeated ad infinitium across numerous other fantasy shows. It’s hard to lnow where to start with this one, as the story has so many issues from top to bottom. Not only is the narrative poorly paced and rips off numerous other IPs, including The Incredible Hulk, Castlevania and even Arnold with that “Come with me if you want to live” line, the show also has absoltuely zero identity either. Merwyn is a terrible antagonist while the characters are one-note, unstoppable warriors that never really have any proper challenges. Geldof is one such example, whom we see is basically a Mary Sue character all the way through. It’s a shame because there was definiotely some promise here but if this is a sign of things to come with The Wircher, thwere’s no wonder that Henry Cavill has left!
