The Witcher Prequel Series Has Found Its Female Lead

There’s still no word on when we can expect to see the second season of the main series, and it might even end up getting delayed again after star Henry Cavill reportedly suffered a serious injury during filming, but Netflix’s spinoff The Witcher: Blood Origin is still powering its way through development, and has cast Jodie Turner-Smith in one of the lead roles.

The six-part prequel was announced last summer, and made it clear that the streaming service view the brand as one of their marquee small screen properties, which isn’t a shock when The Witcher drew in 76 million viewers in the first four weeks it was available to become the platform’s most-watched original show ever.

Blood Origin is set over a thousand years prior to the adventures of Cavill’s Geralt of Rivia, and will follow the creation of the first Witcher, with Turner-Smith signed on to play Éile, a warrior with the voice of a goddess that left her tribe to become a nomadic musician, who ultimately gets drawn into a quest for vengeance and redemption.

Those are the first real plot details we’ve heard about Blood Origin, but Turner-Smith’s star has been rising rapidly over the last couple of years. She received rave reviews for her performance opposite Daniel Kaluuya in modern day Bonnie and Clyde crime fable Queen & Slim, while she’ll next be seen opposite Michael B. Jordan in action thriller Without Remorse, which was being set up as the start of a potential franchise at Paramount before the studio sold the project to Amazon.

With the first casting announcement now official, The Witcher: Blood Origin has started to gather some serious momentum, and at this rate, the latest installment in the rapidly expanding mythology could be in production in a matter of months.