It goes without saying that The Witcher fandom has been in a state of rebellion ever since it was first announced that Henry Cavill would be dropping out of the main series following the end of season 3, with Liam Hemsworth drafted in to pick up Geralt of Rivia’s swords from then on out. Prequel Blood Origin faced a tough task to win over the doubters, then, and it’s already failed spectacularly a mere 24 hours after premiering.
While there’s an element of review-bombing in play as there always tends to be when a high-profile show derived from a popular IP does things the target demographic doesn’t like, the way Blood Origin is being treated makes the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s She-Hulk: Attorney at Law look like The Sopranos by comparison.
At the time of writing, The Witcher spinoff is being buried six feet under to put it lightly on Rotten Tomatoes, with the four-episode adventure holding a Rotten Tomatoes user rating of just eight percent. That’s eight. Not 18, not 80, but eight. Honestly, critics aren’t treating it much better, with the widely-panned offshoot of the fantasy franchise holding a miserly 38 percent rating from reviewers.
Boiling it down to its very essence, The Witcher: Blood Origin has 200 percentage points to play with on the aggregation site, but the combined might of the ratings from both sides of the divide come to a diabolical 46. Warrior Nun got canceled for being Netflix’s best-reviewed run of episodes ever, so you can imagine showrunner Lauren Hissrich is getting pretty concerned about the future of the Continent right about now.
