A Henry Cavill-Free ‘The Witcher’ Isn’t as Doomed as It Seems

As The Witcher’s third season draws to a close, and we bid farewell to Henry Cavill’s Geralt of Rivia, many viewers have asked how the show will survive without its star. Through three seasons, Cavill’s evident passion for The Witcher has kept Netflix’s dark fantasy afloat, which made his decision to leave the show after Season 3 troubling for fans. Much of the proceeding discourse has centered on his replacement, Liam Hemsworth. But forgotten in that discussion is that the fate of the show should perhaps rest not on Geralt at all, but on the same shoulders as the Continent: Freya Allan’s Cirilla of Cintra.

The Witcher isn’t exactly a subtle show, least of all in its desperation to appear clever. From the frustrating time-hopping of the show’s first season to Season 3’s needlessly convoluted midseason finale, “The Art of the Illusion,” attempts to brute force narrative sleight-of-hand into The Witcher have invariably fallen flat. Bringing Freya Allan into the lead, however, would represent a rare smart move for the series—one that makes sense not just from a narrative perspective, but also to honor the show’s source material. We’ve had hints that The Witcher is heading in this direction, with Allan leading portions of Season 2 and Time of Contempt, the second novel in author Andrzej Sapkowiski’s Witcher series, being so pivotal to Season 3. Even series producer Tomek Baginski has acknowledged Ciri’s increased importance, telling Yahoo! News in the lead up to season 3 that Time of Contempt is “the book where Ciri—let's be blunt about this—becomes the main character of the saga.”

The sense that Season 3 would see Allan step up to lead in preparation for Cavill’s exit hasn’t quite come to pass, however. The season maintained a rare fidelity to the structure of Time of Contempt, barring a few odd changes. But too often, the show pushed Ciri and Geralt into the background in favor of the lengthy political machinations of Nilffgaard and Redania. While this plot was found in the book, it hasn’t translated well to screen. Meanwhile, the show has also wasted time trying to recapture the magic of Season 1’s earworm “Toss a Coin to Your Witcher,” hitting us with so many songs in lieu of story progression.

‘The Witcher’ Sends Henry Cavill Off With a Whimper

If anything, Season 3 has focused more on Ciri and Geralt’s companion Yennefer (Anya Chalotra), which isn’t a bad thing. Chalotra continues to shine and menace as Yennefer. But other than Cavill, it’s Allan alone who appears to understand The Witcher’s tone and direction from a more holistic perspective, beyond what the writers put in front of her. This greater understanding of the source material and context around The Witcher gives Ciri more depth than many of the show’s other characters, while providing a sense of familiarity for fans of the books and games that rarely extends to the rest of the cast. Considering how expertly Allan has balanced the physicality of The Witcher’s action scenes, the emotional exploration of Ciri’s destiny in Seasons 2 and 3, and the show’s sardonic humor, Season 3 felt like a missed opportunity to front Allan, as the weight of Cavill’s absence threatens the coming seasons.

That’s not to take away from Chalotra or the always excellent MyAnna Buring, whose Tissaia de Vries finally has something to do in Season 3, even if her story has been strangely changed from grieving the betrayal of fellow mages to being upset about a boy. But after a shaky first season, Season 2’s improvements hinged mostly on Ciri’s prominence and interplay with Geralt, something notably lacking in the lackluster Season 3. Indeed, it often feels like Cavill and Allan’s excellence is in spite of the narrative choices and writing rather than because of them.

This is best exemplified in Season 3’s penultimate episode, “Out of the Fire, Into the Frying Pan.” It’s an almost Ciri-exclusive episode, which sees her wandering, delirious, through the Korath desert. It’s an important moment for Ciri, as she confronts both her past and future, and it feels like a test of how a Ciri-led The Witcher might play out on screen.

No one can watch Allan sucking on a damp rock and not think she’s doing her absolute best with the material she’s been given. But the episode is so drawn out, interspersed with choppily-edited hallucinations, that neither Allan nor an abundance of unicorn testicles can make the episode feel anything but a slow drag.

‘The Witcher: Blood Origin’ Is the Worst ‘Game of Thrones’ Copycat Yet

This is an unfortunate pattern in Season 3, with important moments rushed into becoming or relying on unearned twists—not helped by the month-long gap between the season’s episode drops. Arguably Allan’s best performance across the series is in Ciri’s confrontation with Cahir (Eamon Farren) in the second half of Season 3. This is the man who killed her family, upended her life, and has haunted her dreams. In the books, it’s a major scene for Ciri: she finally sees the face behind the winged helmet is a young, frightened boy and spares him. Allan carries the emotional weight of the scene perfectly, but Cahir is older in the show than he is in the books; he’s deferential rather than afraid, which leaves the scene feeling out-of-place and cold.

It’s moments like these that makes one wonder whether the showrunners have the wherewithal to understand what a Ciri-led The Witcher looks like, given that’s ostensibly what we’ve seen in Season 3. It’s especially top of mind when their attempts to make a Geralt-led series have been dogged by issues that have ultimately led to the exit of the show’s star.

This is all speculation, of course. Liam Hemsworth might surprise us as Geralt. Remember how we all hated Ben Affleck as Batman until he turned out to be one of the few not-terrible things about the DCCU? Regardless of what Hemsworth brings to the role, however, fans of the books know the future of The Witcher is Ciri, and Allan has repeatedly proven capable of carrying the franchise. But whether the showrunners have the wherewithal to understand that, or what it looks like, remains to be seen. What is clear, however, is that after a third season replete with unforced errors, not centering the coming seasons of The Witcher on Ciri and Freya Allan would be the biggest fumble yet.

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