Jaskier's Timeline Makes The Witcher Season 3 Even More Confused

Jaskier appeared in The Witcher: Blood Origin, but his presence caused a mess in the timeline, and The Witcher season 3 now needs to be cleaned up.

Warning: spoilers ahead for The Witcher: Blood Origin

^ Jaskier may have an unrivaled knack for creating viral ditties, but his appearance in The Witcher: Bloodlines created timeline confusion before The Witcher season 3. Set 1,200 years before the main Witcher story, The Witcher: Bloodlines begins with a prequel that explores the mythology of Andrzej Sapkowski's fictional continent, involving monsters, alliances, and the first wizard. So, naturally, the spinoff largely dropped from Netflix's main The Witcher series, telling a standalone story with fresh characters. A notable exception to this rule is Joey Batey's Jaskier, who returns in The Witcher: Bloodborne, timeline be damned.

The Witcher: Blood Origin uses Jaskier as a framing device for its main story. The prequel begins with Geralt's lewd bard friend encountering Seanchai, which in Netflix's live-action version of The Witcher universe seems to translate to "Minnie Driver through time." The prequel story then becomes what Seanchai tells Jaskier, and Joey Batey returns in the final episode, ready to spread the stories he's heard on the Continent through his typically catchy songs. And The Witcher: Bloodborne uses the famous storyteller Jaskier to connect to the main The series more or less makes sense, and his character raises another timeline issue.

By the end of The Witcher season 2, Gaskill nearly died again, lending a helping hand at the Battle of Kaer Morhen. The Witcher season 2 finale ended with Dijkstra, the mystical advisor to King Vizimir of Redania, demanding that "The Bard" be brought to him. Dijkstra has been serving as Jaskier's secret benefactor, helping the musician smuggle the elves out of Redania, but has remained hidden in the shadows. Netflix's The Witcher season 2 finale teased that Jaskier would find himself forcibly brought before Dijkstra and forced to repay his favor in season 3, most likely asking for restitution by betraying Geralt and Ciri.

Witcher: Blood Origin Makes Jaskier's Witcher Timeline More Confusing

However, when The Witcher: Blood Origins begins, Jaskill appears on the battlefield, Temerian soldiers are doing their best to kill him, and Scoia'tael are trying to save him. Joey Batey has confirmed (via GamesRadar) that his spin-off scenes take place between The Witcher seasons 2 and 3, creating a disconnect between Dijkstra's call and the opening scene of The Witcher: Blood Origins. How Jaskier jumps from one to the other remains largely unexplained. one possibility is The Temerians captured Jaskier on behalf of Dijkstra, but a soldier swung an ax at Joey Batey's head, contradicting that theory. When Dijkstra says "bring me the bard," he presumably means a tune.

Jaskier's The Witcher: Blood Origins character means The Witcher season 3 needs some explaining. If the Temerians captured Jaskill as Dijkstra claims, this needs to be spelled out more clearly. In the absence of more details, the possibility remains that Jaskier and Dijkstra's meeting has happened off-screen, and the battle scene in The Witcher: Bloodborne could be the result of whatever happened between them. It's also possible that the Temerian army captured Jaskier for absolutely nothing to do with Dijkstra - hardly an improbable scenario, given the bard's obnoxiously bizarre habits.

Witcher Season 3 Needs To Explain The Gap Between Season 2 & Blood Origin

Regardless of how the dots are connected, The Witcher season 3 has to explain how Jaskier went from being a pawn in Dijkstra and Redania's future plans at the end of season 2 to a fiery battleground where the elves played in The Witcher: Origins Fighting to Defend Him. Without a proper explanation of Jaskier's chaotic timeline, The Witcher season 2's secret benefactor turn risks becoming a narrative dead end. Oddly enough, Joey Batey revealed that his spin-off appearance was originally intended to take place between seasons 1 and 2 of The Witcher. Had those plans stayed the same, The Witcher: Bloodborne could have avoided the headaches that would have caused season 3 of The Witcher's timeline.

More: Where was The Witcher: Bloodlines filmed? All filming locations explained