Every monster fight in The Witcher season 3, ranked from worst to best

1. The Mage’s Flesh Abomination

As good as all the monster fights in The Witcher season 3 are, there’s one which stands head and shoulders above the rest: the many-limbed abomination Geralt faces in the castle of Vuilpanne.

During the second episode of season 3, “Unbound,” Geralt continues his hunt for the sorcerer Rience and his mysterious patron based on information he gets from Codringher and Fenn. While Codringher and Fenn don’t know who Rience’s boss is, they know where this dangerous sorcerer is doing his “dirty business” and experiments: an abandoned castle called Vuilpanne, next to a series of scarlet ammonite mines on the outskirts of Piana.

Geralt sets out for the place alone expecting a fight, and what a fight he finds. After downing a witcher decoction which heightens his strength, Geralt enters the spooky castle. Deep in its bowels, he finds a series of disembodied heads belonging to teenage girls attached to the walls of the place through fleshy, disgusting tentacles. That’s scary enough, but after Geralt finds one young woman who survived the ordeal, the true threat emerges: the bodies that belonged to those tentacled heads, which have all been merged together into a horrifying creature with far too many limbs for comfort.

Geralt’s showdown with this abomination is a desperate struggle that forces the witcher to bring his full strength to bear against a foe that could easily tear him to pieces if he steps wrong. It’s a creepy monster, from the spider-like way it moves to the gross sounds it makes as its flesh reshapes itself. It’s one of the most horrifying sequences of the entire Witcher franchise, right up there with season 1’s Striga battle.

As Geralt impales one of the torsos protruding from the flesh beast, a corresponding disembodied head dies. The hideous creature then redoubles its efforts, while the remaining two heads scream for it to kill Geralt so he can’t “hurt” them anymore. It’s the stuff of nightmares.

Pretty much everything about the abomination battle is The Witcher at its best, from the terrifying design of the monster to the dark atmosphere and setting to the spectacular fight choreography. And it’s a marked improvement over the source material; since we know that this creature was created by Rience’s employer, it gives us even more reason to fear them.

All told, there’s no question that the flesh abomination is the standout monster fight of The Witcher season 3.

All eight episodes of The Witcher season 3 are now available to stream on Netflix.

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h/t Mashable