The world of The Witcher has expanded with the arrival of the prequel series The Witcher: Blood Origin on Netflix, but the show is having a bit of a rough landing upon its premiere. Set more than a thousand year before the events of The Witcher, Blood Origin debuted on Christmas Day with the limited series consisting of four episodes. It explored the creation of the first Witcher along with the events leading up to the Conjunction of the Spheres.While The Witcher has boasted strong critical and audience scores with its first two seasons, the same cannot be said for the prequel. Blood Origin has premiered with a rotten 38% score on the Tomatometer at Rotten Tomatoes, with most critics pelting the series with bad reviews. Worse yet, the audience score is much lower, netting Blood Origin an abysmal 8% score. Per Forbes, this marks the worst audience score for a major Netflix Original.

"Blood Origin does not stand very well on its own or as part of the expanding franchise, managing to focus on some of the least interesting aspects of one of The Witcher’s most fascinating pieces of lore," critic Joseph Stanichar of Paste Magazine said in his review.

"In a year filled with great fantasy – House of the Dragon and The Rings of Power among them – this ultimately ranks near the bottom," adds Total Film's Bradley Russell.

The audience reviews are much less kind, and many of them we can't print here. What nearly all of them have in common is a shared unhappiness in the series, critical of various aspects from the writing to the VFX. Some viewers wrote that they gave up after the first episode.

"I started to watch but dang, I didn't make it all the way through the first episode," one person writes. "The acting is corny and the dialog is terrible. Its like the the show was written by 1st graders."

Another audience review states, "Saw this at a relatives house on Christmas day and I could not believe how bad this show was on EVERY LEVEL! Tellya everyone who was involved with this disaster should never be allowed to touch another tv series again."

Related: The Witcher: Blood Origin Was Re-Shot to Bring in Minnie Driver's Character, Says Showrunner

The Witcher: Blood Origin Has High Viewership

The Witcher: Blood Origin Trailer starring Michelle Yeoh
Netflix

The reviews aren't pleasant, but there is a victory that comes with the release of The Witcher: Blood Origin. The series has managed to bring in high viewership, debuting as the No. 1 show on Netflix. But given the critical reception, perhaps it's for the best that Blood Origin is a limited series without any plans to have continued that story in another season.

This also has to have some fans wondering what will happen with season 4 of The Witcher. Henry Cavill will return for the third season in 2023, after which Liam Hemsworth will take over the role. Some fans have said they will boycott the new season without Cavill as Geralt, while others say that they will give the new actor a chance. At this point, it's too early to tell how fans will ultimately react when the main series moves forward without its lead star.

The Witcher: Blood Origin is now streaming on Netflix.