Considering the vastness and richness of The Witcher's world, it's no wonder that there are many areas and stories to explore here beyond the original series. One of the key details every fan wants to know about is how the first witcher came to be and how they fit into this wider universe -- something that The Witcher: Blood Origin promises to reveal. The four-part miniseries tackles the time before Geralt of Rivia while also focusing on the fall of the Elven kingdom.

CBR caught up with The Witcher: Blood Origin showrunner Declan de Barra and executive producer Lauren Hissrich to chat about this spinoff show. De Barra explained the challenges of trying to create something new while still maintaining the spirit of the main series. In addition, Hissrich revealed how long the plans for this origin story had been in the making and how the "Conjunction of the Spheres" played a crucial role in its overall inception.

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CBR: My first question is, when creating a show like this, how difficult is it to balance hitting all the right notes that the fans of The Witcher will come to expect while also trying to bring something new to the proverbial party?

Declan de Barra: It's a great challenge because the world of The Witcher is very varied. People come to it from books. They come from the TV series. Some haven't read the books; some have just played the games. So, obviously, the games are sort of a stub -- they're different than the actual books, and the TV series is an adaptation. So, again, [The Witcher: Blood Origin is] driving in a new and exciting way towards information that [was presented] in the books -- like when you meet Avallac'h and Eredin later. We want to meet them at their nascent stages, and we want to show the Elven world in a completely different light where they're not downtrodden and broken, where they are at the height, and they are the ones who are controlling the continent.

It's interesting how The Witcher: Blood Origin is a four-episode miniseries, which does seem quite rare nowadays in terms of the way that television is produced. Was this always the plan from the get-go to make it four episodes, or was there any consideration of perhaps making a film or even a longer season?

de Barra: Yeah, I mean, I kind of thought about it as two films. Because it was close-ended, we had the beauty of "it doesn't matter" -- be as long or short as you want with the episodes and however many episodes you want. So the great part was we got to play in the editing room and go, "Okay, this is the best option. This is the best version of this story where it's not dragging, it's not too fast -- just right." So, it's a tasty sandwich. That was the point. [laughs]

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This question is for Lauren: How did the conversation come about to tackle the origin story here? Obviously, you worked as a showrunner while Declan worked as a writer on The Witcher, so was this something you came up with while working on the main series, or was it something in the plan from the beginning?

Lauren Hissrich: Oddly, a little bit of both. It was not originally planned. When you write a TV series [such as The Witcher], you just want to write something that's great. You want people to love it -- you don't start thinking about spinoffs and franchises and entire worlds. You just want this one show to be great. One of the things we realized when the show was a success is that there were so many stories we wouldn't be able to touch in the main series -- we just didn't have time for. A lot of times, I'm really interested in characters' origin stories anyway, and in this case, the origin story of the continent.

So, the thing that Declan and I had done, [having] worked together for two seasons, Declan had single-handedly tried to figure out what "The Conjunction of the Spheres" was when we were in the main series. It's something that he was really wrapping his head around to determine how do the elders become the elders that we know in our current world because they weren't always that way. So, when we sort of tripped on to this idea, Declan was my first call, and he did not take much time to say yes. It kind of went from there.

All episodes of The Witcher: Blood Origin will stream on Netflix on Sunday, Dec. 25.