Henry Cavill’s 20 best moments as Geralt of Rivia in The Witcher
By Daniel Roman
The third season of Netflix’s monster-hunting fantasy show The Witcher is out now, and it’s the best one yet. Not only does it faithfully adapt the events of Andrzej Sapkowski’s novel The Time of Contempt, but it’s also the final time we’ll see Henry Cavill as Geralt of Rivia. When The Witcher returns for season 4, it’ll be Liam Hemsworth slicing and dicing villains as Geralt instead.
That means that we’ve now seen Cavill’s entire run as Geralt. From epic battles to quiet tear-jerking moments, the actor has had left a huge body of work behind. Let’s look back on the first three seasons of The Witcher and discuss our favorite moments from Henry Cavill’s performance as Geralt.
1. The Butcher of Blaviken
The Witcher starts off with a bang in its series premiere episode, “The End’s Beginning,” which centers around a confrontation in the town of Blaviken. This is our introduction to the series and to Cavill’s Geralt, and it delivers. Even after all the other action set pieces that have featured throughout the series, the showdown in the town square of Blaviken holds up as one of the best.
This episode is adapted from Andrzej Sapkowski’s short story “The Lesser Evil,” which sees Geralt torn between the sorcerer Stregobor and the deposed warrior princess Renfri, both of whom want to convince the witcher to kill the other. Geralt doesn’t want to get involved, but when has that ever worked out for him?
The Blaivken fight gives Cavill a chance to showcase his physicality, a crucial part of embodying Geralt onscreen. By pretty much any standard, he crushes it; Geralt’s initial salvo of chopping through Renfri’s bandits is brutal, swift, and unrelenting.
Things only get better once Renfri appears. The stunt work in their fight scene is incredible, emphasizing the constant push and pull between Geralt and Renfri. Cavill does a fantastic job portraying Geralt’s reluctance to fight Renfri, right up to the moment where he gives her a chance to back down and ends up impaling her with her own knife when she refuses.
Blaviken also has a top-notch resolution as the townsfolk turn on the witcher, throwing stones at him and urging him to leave their village. Geralt is a tragic figure because of how reviled he and his guild are even as they do their best to keep others safe. It’s still one of the best sequences in the entire show.