Henry Cavill explains Witcher swords, breaks down fight scenes

The life of a witcher is nasty, brutish and short really long, because part of their training involves changing their physiology so they have expanded lifespans. As far as we can tell, Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavill) is over 100 by the end of the first season. He’s looking good for his age.

Anyway, in all that time, you’d best believe that Geralt has gotten into his share of scrapes against monsters and humans alike. Below, Cavill himself walks us through the first of the show’s big fight scenes: the battle against Renfri and her men in the premiere episode, “The End’s Beginning.”

This fight was more stylized than most of the ones on the show, probably because it was choreographed by a guy named Wolfgang Stegemann whereas the rest of the episodes were done by none other than Vladimír Furdík, who played the Night King on Game of Thrones. And neither of them are returning for season 2, so who knows what the fights will look like then?

Anyway, it’s fun to see how clearly passionate Cavill is about this stuff, and to learn how much training went into making this kind of thing look convincing onscreen. I still haven’t forgotten the guy Geralt decapitates like he’s swatting a fly. Heads everywhere.

And Cavill isn’t done laying down the martial knowledge. Here he is explaining everything you need to know about the swords a witcher uses in his work:

There was some confusion about this before the show aired: a witcher carries two swords: one made of steel (or apparently meteorite, in the case of Geralt) and one of silver. The steel sword is for people and the silver for monsters. And for human monsters? Take your pick, I suppose.

But he doesn’t carry both swords at once. The steel one is on him at most times, but the silver one is usually with his horse Roach. If he’s using the silver, it probably means he has a plan in mind; if all goes well, he’s not going to need that one at a moment’s notice.

Again, it’s great to see how involved Cavill is with this stuff, even asking a new handle be made so he could make the swordplay look more convincing. And as expected, he’s not literally swinging a sword at people’s heads all the time; the show has its fair share of rubber swords, half swords, and other fake swords made to real real via movie magic.

Now I demand a video where Joey Batey (Jaskier) talks about his prop lute. We’ve got some time to kill before The Witcher season 2 lands in 2021, after all.

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