Set 1200 years before the events of The Witcher, The Witcher: Blood Origin tells the story of the Conjunction of the Spheres and how the Continent was changed forever. This four episode miniseries follows a band of warriors on their quest across the Continent as they make their way to the Elven capital of Xin’trea to stop the tyranny of the new Elven empire. The final episode is packed with fight scenes, world-ending events, haunting music, and reveals that leave us with more questions than answers.
Power, Revenge, and The Fight for Xin’trea
The final episode begins with Merwyn (Mirren Mack) sending her first scouting party through the monolith. She has decided to trust Balor (Lenny Henry) to guide Eredin (Jacob Collins-Levy) and his soldiers to another world even though Balor hasn’t really done anything to prove he’s any less power-hungry than he was when she locked him up. Merwyn’s naivete quickly becomes her undoing as Balor betrays the others as soon as they make it through the portal to the chaos realm. Balor sacrifices his apprentice Fenrick (Amy Murray) to prove his worthiness to the mysterious entity that he’s been communicating with all season and gain access to the realm’s chaos magic. He immediately uses his new powers to scatter Eredin and his party across the realm before coming back to Xin’trea to claim the throne. In the town square, Éile (Sophia Brown) uses her influence as the Lark to convince the lowborn Elves to rise up and claim Xin’trea for themselves so that she and the others can use the commotion as cover to infiltrate the palace. Scian escapes the guards and lets in the rest of the crew. We get a badass hallway fight scene with Scian, Brother Death (Huw Novelli), and Meldof (Francesca Mills) that sees the latter take an arrow out of her own shoulder and then use said arrow to take out a guard with one swift movement. It’s Éile, not Fjall, that deals the fatal blow to Merwyn, stabbing her in the chest before leaving her at the mercy of the people she’s betrayed. With one adversary down, Syndril (Zach Wyatt) and Zacaré (Lizzie Anis) confront Balor as he comes back through the monolith. Zacaré binds her brother to Balor, who then uses Balor’s own chaos magic against him to bring the monolith down on top of them both, triggering the Conjunction of the Spheres.
What is the Conjunction of the Spheres?
The Conjunction of the Spheres, that we now know was caused by the shattering of Xin’trea’s central monolith, is a moment that changed the Continent forever. Whereas Elves and Dwarves were the primary inhabitants before, now the land was filled with monsters, humans, and different forms of magic. While we don’t see any monsters after the Conjunction, nor much else of the cataclysmic aftermath, the wanted signs calling for brave Elves to hunt strange creatures at the end of the episode shows us how dangerous the Continent has now become, hinting at the future we’ve seen where the witcher formula is perfected (or at least has fewer deadly and monstrous side-effects). Fjall successfully takes out the beast, by fully giving into the monster mutagen coursing through his veins, but he loses himself in the process. Éile is momentarily able to get through to him by singing to him of their unborn child (though I’m dumbfounded at how she already knows she’s pregnant given it hasn’t even been twenty-four hours since they slept together, but that’s magic I guess). They share a tender moment together before Éile puts a dagger through his heart, freeing him from a life of rage and torment. After the Conjunction of the Spheres brings men and monsters onto the Continent, the heroes we’ve been following go their separate ways. Scian is once again on her own. Brother Death and Zacaré hold a funeral for Syndril. And Éile returns with Meldof to the island where she first met Fjall, where she stays with Ithlinne (Ella Schrey-Yeats) and her mother. Hen Ichaer, as it’s also referred in The Witcher, is a powerful Elven curse passed from generation to generation that is said to bring about the destruction of mankind. Ciri’s connection to this bloodline was revealed in season 2, and now it seems we know the true origin of her power. Whether Ciri is truly the prophesied avenger of the Elves and destroyer of man is yet to be determined, but this is certainly an interesting connection between the two series.
Avallac’h and the Wild Hunt
In the final moments of the episode, we see Eredin treading through the desolate wasteland he’s trapped in before stumbling across a monster skull buried in the gravel. He picks this up and puts it on like a mask, hinting at his future as the leader of the Wild Hunt. We finally saw the Wild Hunt’s mysterious wraith-like warriors appear in season 2 of The Witcher, and they’re poised to be one of many villainous forces seeking Ciri in season 3. According to the Witcher book and video game series, Eredin is a ruthless warrior who wants to use Ciri’s Elder Blood to travel between worlds, and it appears like his motivations will be similar in The Witcher season 3, as his lover is seen mourning his loss at the end of Blood Origin. But in all the chaos of the finale, there is another important moment that gets lost, especially if you aren’t super familiar with Witcher lore. Just before Scian and Fjall enter the throne room, Merwyn’s young mage Avallac’h (Samuel Blenkin) reveals that he’s discovered something in Syndril’s writings on the monoliths – the ability not only to move across realms, but across time as well. In The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Avallac’h becomes a brief ally of Ciri’s as she tries to evade the Wild Hunt, but like most he also wants to use Ciri’s blood for his own gain, in this case to open gates between worlds. While Avallac’h hasn’t appeared in The Witcher yet, and didn’t play a large role in the events of Blood Origin, the post-credit scene at the end of episode four shows that he could still be an important player in season 3 for similar reasons. Though his motivations are currently unclear, revealing that it was Avallac’h, and not Geralt (Henry Cavill), that Ciri saw while playing in the Cintra square in season 1 shows that he’s already discovered her connection to the Elder bloodline and has begun to follow her across time.
