The Witcher season 3, volume 2 review: Henry Cavill deserves a better exit
In the star's final episodes on the Netflix series, Geralt contemplates something that's been obvious from the start
Late in The Witcher’s third season, the second volume of which premieres July 27 on Netflix, Geralt (Henry Cavill) is having a reckoning. “I’ve always tried to stay above the fray,” he says. “To shut everything out. And life always finds a way to force my hand.” He flashes back to Renfri, the princess he killed back in season one—or the cursed child born under a bad moon, as the sorcerer Stregobor saw her.
Geralt never really believed Stregobor, but he didn’t have to; he was still clinging to his neutrality then, still trying to convince himself that staying out of it—the politics, the petty squabbles between men, the greater good or lesser evil, all of it—was the best way to stay alive. He kept telling himself this, and Ciri, too, decades later, all the way through the first volume of season three. He kept telling himself this right up until Dijkstra held a knife to his throat and told him, “You should’ve picked a side. The Redanian side.”
That’s where volume one ended, and where volume two picks up, in the middle of the Thanedd coup at Aretuza. In episode six, the first of three entries in volume two, both Vilgefortz and the Nilfgaardians and Dijkstra, Philippa, and the Redanians are trying to take over the magical school at the same time, and Geralt, Yenn, Jaskier, and Ciri are caught in the middle. Nearly all of the other mages have secretly chosen a side, and as the battle plays out, Geralt once again refuses to join either one. Instead, he focuses on getting Ciri out of there, away from all the people who want to use her. It’s a wonderfully tense, violent episode, a beautifully rendered explosion of pressure. And it’s where the season should have ended. Instead, the last two episodes drag on, leading to an anticlimactic—and even worse, boring—end for Henry Cavill’s time on the show.
When Cavill announced he’d be leaving after season three, many people assumed the show would end, too. He was, and is, the perfect person to play the mutant monster hunter; he’s an avowed fan of the novels and games on which the show is based, and he’s got the look, the grunts, and the “Ah, fuck”s down pat. He’s probably a bigger Witcher nerd than most people who watch the show. (Rumors claim that he left the series because it diverged too far from the books, but there’s no real evidence to back that up.)
