Henry Cavill’s smile gives The Witcher season 3 its best moment

Here’s a secret that’s not so secret anymore: Henry Cavill is a great actor. As we get closer and closer to a Superman reboot, estimates of his stoic yet defensively human Clark Kent continue to grow. But it is in Geralt of Rivia that Henry Cavill found his perfect role. However, for some reason, Cavill says goodbye to the Witcher’s white wig at the end of Season 3, but not before reminding us how excellent he is in the role.

Evidence of Cavill’s greatness as Geralt is scattered everywhere The witcher season 3, from the carefully protective body language he has around Ciri (Freya Allan) to the unspoken affection he has for Yennefer (Anya Chalotra) after their romantic reconnection. But the best moment, both from his performance and Season 3 Part 1, comes when Geralt and Ciri reunite in Episode 3.

In that brief moment, Cavill gets a wonderful little half-smile that fills up 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 instantly melts in a way that shows Geralt’s genuine love, but also the reluctance and genuine fear this love opens to him, now that he is more concerned with Ciri than with himself. It’s the whole character in miniature, an entire 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 is so good as Geralt that he actually tilts the axis of the show a bit off center. The defining characteristic of Geralt in the original Witcher novels is that he was never meant to be the center of attention or the deciding factor in saving the world. He’s a killer, a fighter, and kind-hearted, but he’s not built for big choices. He’s most at home with distracting sarcasm and stoic, genuine care, and when he accidentally finds himself at the center of a family he wants to protect, he finds himself closer to Ciri’s spotlight than he’d ever like to be alone.

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

Each character is at their best when they talk to Geralt, which is what made the TV series’ Monster of the Week origins so intensely appealing. Now, however, every scene eagerly awaits Geralt’s return. And while that’s probably not what this series needed – as all the season 3 issues indicate – it’s mostly to Cavill’s credit that it remains watchable at all.

The witcher, during the three seasons Cavill was its star, was the rare case of fandom that made an adaptation great. A huge fan of the Witcher series himself, Cavill campaigned for the role of Geralt almost from the first moments when Netflix announced its adaptation. And while passionate love for a series can sometimes make for poor adaptations, Cavill proved that he not only knew the source material, but how to translate it to the screen in a way that worked. For all the problems of the rest of the series, and the struggles with other characters or overarching plots, Henry Cavill’s Geralt was always the thing that got it right.