The Witcher season 3’s best part is Henry Cavill’s excellent Geralt

Here’s a secret that isn’t so secret anymore: Henry Cavill is a great actor. Clark Kent’s stoic yet human Clark Kent is gaining in popularity as the Superman remake nears. But it’s in Geralt of Rivia that Henry Cavill found his perfect role. Cavill will be saying goodbye to his white Witcher wig at the end of Season 3, for whatever reason. But not before Cavill reminded everyone how good he was in that role.

Evidence of Cavill’s greatness as Geralt is scattered all through The WitcherYennefer’s (Anya Chalota) unspoken love for him is evident in season 3. From his protectiveness towards Ciri (Freya Allen) to their romantic reconnection, he shows a lot of affection. The best part of both his performance and the entire season 3 volume 1 is when Geralt and Ciri finally reunited in episode 3.

In that brief instant, Cavill manages a miraculous little half smile that fills in so much more of Geralt’s warmth, kindness, and care for Ciri than the series’ dialogue manages to convey. The cold hardness of a monster killer melts instantly in a way that shows Geralt’s genuine love, but also the reluctance and genuine fear that this love opens up to him, now that he’s more concerned for Ciri than himself. It’s the entire character in miniature, a whole arc played out in a single expression, better and more carefully than the series has ever done.

This is both the blessing and the curse of Henry Cavill’s time as the Witcher. Cavill’s performance as Geralt is so great that he tilts the center of gravity for the entire show a bit. Geralt’s defining feature in the original Witcher novels is that he was never supposed to be the center of attention or the deciding factor in saving the world. He’s a killer, a fighter, and good-hearted, but he’s not built for big choices. He’s most at home with diverting sarcasm and stoic, straight-faced care, and accidentally finding himself in the center of a family he wants to protect thrusts him closer to Ciri’s spotlight than he’d ever like to be on his own.

Image: Netflix

But instead of chasing that version of Geralt, the Netflix series decided to make him a hero, a focal point for action and decision, simply because it’s too much fun to deny Cavill the chance to do things, consequences to the show be damned.

Every single character is at their absolute best when they’re speaking to Geralt, which is what made the TV series’ monster-of-the-week origin so intensely appealing. Geralt is back, but now every scene waits with impatience for him to come. And while that probably isn’t what this series needed — as all the problems with season 3 point to — it is a credit to Cavill most of all that it remains watchable at all.

The WitcherCavill, himself a huge fan of The Witcher series, campaigned for Geralt almost from the first moments that Netflix announced its adaptation. Cavill was a huge fan of The Witcher and campaigned to play Geralt from the moment Netflix announced their adaptation. And while sometimes passionate love of a series can make for poor adaptations, Cavill’s proved he knew not just the source material but how to translate it to the screen in ways that worked. For all the problems of the rest of the series, and its struggles with other characters or overarching plots, Henry Cavill’s Geralt was always the thing it nailed.