Golden Age Arc
24 eps
24 canon 📷 24
Years earlier, Guts defeats Bazuso in battle and leaves with the reward, only to be ambushed by Corkus and members of the Band of the Hawk. Casca steps in when Guts overwhelms them, but he defeats her too before Griffith arrives and wounds him badly. After Guts recovers in the Hawks' camp, Griffith calmly tells him that he wants him and challenges him to a duel that will decide whether Guts joins the band.
Griffith defeats Guts and claims him as a member of the Band of the Hawk, despite Guts openly resenting being treated like someone else's possession. During a nighttime raid, Griffith places the newcomer in charge of the rear guard, forcing Guts to protect the Hawks' retreat against pursuing soldiers. Guts survives the brutal assignment and returns to unexpected cheers from the mercenaries, beginning his uneasy transformation from solitary fighter into one of Griffith's men.
Three years pass, and Guts has become one of the Band of the Hawk's most trusted commanders while their victories steadily raise Griffith's reputation. Memories of Guts's childhood reveal a life shaped by mercenaries, abuse, and Gambino, the adoptive father who taught him to fight but later blamed him for every misfortune in his life. When Gambino tries to kill him, Guts kills the man he still thinks of as his father and flees, explaining why belonging to the Hawks means more to him than he is willing to admit.
Guts leads the Hawks through another Midland battle with his usual reckless aggression, taking risks that infuriate Casca even when they work. Griffith's string of victories earns him a place among the Midland nobility and an introduction to Princess Charlotte, drawing open resentment from aristocrats who despise seeing a common mercenary rise so quickly. On the battlefield, Guts once again saves the Hawks from disaster, but the growing distance between Griffith and the people who followed him from the beginning is becoming impossible to ignore.
During an assault on a Tudor-held castle, Guts finds his men slaughtered by Nosferatu Zodd, a warrior whose reputation for surviving countless battles turns out to be horribly literal. Guts manages to wound him, prompting Zodd to reveal his monstrous apostle form, and Griffith arrives only to be dragged into a fight neither man can win. Zodd stops when he sees Griffith's Behelit and leaves Guts with a warning: when Griffith's dream dies, Guts will face a death he cannot escape.
Guts and Griffith recover from their encounter with Zodd while the Band of the Hawk continues rising through Midland's military ranks. Griffith uses his growing status to move closer to King and Princess Charlotte, while Guts begins noticing that the dream pulling Griffith upward is also separating him from the mercenaries who helped him get there. The Behelit and Zodd's warning linger over Guts, but for now the Hawks keep following Griffith toward a future none of them can yet see.
Griffith's battlefield success earns him the title of count and brings him closer to Princess Charlotte, infuriating General Julius and the nobles who see his rise as an insult to their bloodlines. Julius joins Minister Foss in a plot to kill Griffith during a royal hunt, arranging for a poisoned arrow to make the murder look like an accident. Guts remains focused on fighting beside Griffith, unaware that the Hawks' greatest danger is beginning to come from inside Midland's court rather than the enemy army.
During the royal hunt, Griffith is struck in the chest by Julius's poisoned arrow, but the Behelit beneath his clothing absorbs the shot and saves his life. Realizing exactly who tried to kill him, Griffith quietly orders Guts to assassinate Julius that night while the palace celebrates. Guts slips into the nobleman's residence and kills Julius, but the mission goes horribly wrong when Julius's young son Adonis witnesses him and Guts instinctively strikes the boy down too.
Guts escapes after killing Julius and Adonis, but the boy's death follows him long after the danger of discovery has passed. Later, he overhears Griffith telling Princess Charlotte that a true friend must pursue a dream of his own and stand as Griffith's equal rather than simply follow him. The words hit Guts harder than Griffith knows, because for the first time he realizes that the life he found with the Hawks may still leave him as nothing more than a piece inside someone else's dream.
The Hawks clash with Adon Coborlwitz and the Blue Whale Knights as Midland's war with Tudor continues, but Casca is fighting while sick and gradually loses the strength to hide it. She falls from a cliff during the battle, and Guts dives after her, carrying her from the river and finding shelter before the enemy can catch them. With Casca feverish and their clothes soaked, Guts keeps her warm through the night while the two commanders who constantly fight with each other are finally forced into a quiet moment alone.
While hiding with Guts, Casca tells him how Griffith saved her as a young girl by giving her the means to defend herself, inspiring her to abandon her old life and follow his dream. She also reveals the sacrifices Griffith made to finance the Hawks, including selling himself to the predatory noble Gennon rather than waste his soldiers' lives for money. Casca admits how deeply she loves Griffith and how much Guts's closeness to him has hurt her, leaving Guts to understand the complicated bond he stepped into when he joined the Hawks.
Adon and the Blue Whale Knights catch up to Guts and Casca before they can return to the Hawks, leaving Guts to hold off an entire force while Casca escapes. Several soldiers pursue and capture her, but Casca finds the strength to fight back despite her illness and exhaustion. Guts refuses to fall no matter how many men surround him, turning what should have been a simple execution into the battle that earns him a terrifying new reputation.
Guts survives his fight against a hundred soldiers and returns with Casca to the Band of the Hawk, where their relief quickly turns into celebration. Sitting above the campfires, Guts explains to Casca that each flame below belongs to someone following a personal dream, while he has spent his life doing little more than swinging a sword and following Griffith. His growing need to discover a purpose of his own frightens Casca, because she realizes that Guts may be preparing to leave the Hawks just as the band reaches the height of its success.
Midland asks the Band of the Hawk to retake the supposedly impregnable Fortress of Doldrey, and Griffith accepts despite facing a much larger Tudor army led by General Boscogn. The fortress is controlled by Gennon, the nobleman Griffith once endured for money, giving the campaign an ugly personal history beneath its military importance. Griffith orders an apparent retreat after the first assault, drawing the enemy army away from Doldrey while Casca and a smaller force prepare to exploit the opening he created.
Griffith's retreat proves to be a trap: Casca attacks the weakened Doldrey garrison and finally defeats Adon while Guts faces General Boscogn in the open battle outside. Guts's sword breaks during the duel, but Zodd mysteriously throws him another blade from afar, allowing Guts to kill Boscogn and shatter Tudor's resistance. Griffith kills the wounded Gennon and the Hawks seize Doldrey, winning the battle that effectively ends the long war and carries them into Midland as heroes.
The victory at Doldrey ends the war and brings the Band of the Hawk into Windham as celebrated heroes, dressed in noble clothing and honored at a royal banquet. The Queen and the nobles still opposed to Griffith secretly arrange to poison him during the celebration, convinced they can finally stop his ascent through Midland society. Griffith drinks the poisoned wine and collapses in front of the court, but Minister Foss's nervous behavior hints that the plot may not be unfolding the way the conspirators expect.
The Queen and her allies gather privately to celebrate Griffith's apparent death, only to discover that he survived and has already turned their assassination attempt against them. Griffith coerced Foss by taking his daughter hostage, then has the conspirators locked inside their tower and burned alive while he watches from a distance. Seeing how completely Griffith can destroy anyone in his path only strengthens Guts's decision to leave, and he tells Casca that he needs to find a dream that belongs to him.
Guts announces that he is leaving the Band of the Hawk, and Griffith refuses to accept the loss of the man he once won by the sword. Their second duel ends almost instantly when Guts breaks Griffith's blade and walks away, finally claiming the freedom he could not win when they first met. Griffith is shattered by losing control of him and goes to Princess Charlotte that night, a reckless choice that leads to his arrest outside the palace the next morning.
A year after leaving the Hawks, Guts lives and trains with the blacksmith Godo and begins questioning whether constant swordsmanship has brought him any closer to finding his own purpose. A visitor brings news that Griffith was imprisoned and the Band of the Hawk branded outlaws, with Casca now holding the survivors together as their commander. Guts immediately returns to them and arrives during an attack by mercenaries, discovering just how much the Hawks have suffered since the night he left.
Guts helps the battered Hawks defeat the mercenaries hunting them and learns that Casca has spent the past year keeping the band alive while planning Griffith's rescue. Her anger finally breaks through and she blames Guts for leaving when Griffith needed him, but the confrontation gives way to everything both of them have avoided saying. Guts and Casca make love, and Guts asks her to leave with him after they rescue Griffith, offering the possibility of a life neither of them has built around Griffith's dream.
Guts, Casca, Judeau, and the rescue party infiltrate the Tower of Rebirth and finally reach Griffith's underground cell. The man they find has been tortured for a year, with his tongue cut out, his body ruined, and no possibility of ever fighting or leading the Hawks as he once did. The group escapes with him while the surviving Hawks outside are attacked by monstrous creatures, making the rescue feel less like salvation than the beginning of something much worse.
The Hawks flee with Griffith, but the reality of his injuries settles over everyone as they understand that their old leader can never return to the life he built. Casca tells Guts that she cannot simply abandon Griffith in this condition, and Griffith overhears enough to realize that even the people closest to him now see him as someone who must be cared for. Desperate to escape that future, he takes a wagon and crashes, then finds his lost Behelit just as blood from his wounds activates it and pulls the Hawks into a nightmare world beneath an impossible eclipse.
The God Hand appear before Griffith and tell him that the Behelit has brought him to the moment for which his entire life was prepared. Surrounded by apostles, Griffith is shown visions of the countless dead who became the foundation of his dream and is told that reaching the castle he always sought requires one final sacrifice. Guts fights desperately toward him, but Griffith accepts the choice and offers the Band of the Hawk, branding the people who followed him as sacrifices to the monsters gathering around them.
The Eclipse becomes a massacre as apostles descend on the branded Hawks, killing the mercenaries who fought beside Guts and Casca throughout the Golden Age. Griffith is reborn as Femto and sexually assaults Casca in front of Guts, who hacks off his own trapped arm trying to reach them and loses an eye in the struggle. Guts survives the Eclipse and returns to Godo's home with the Brand of Sacrifice carved into him; consumed by rage at Griffith and the apostles, he takes up the enormous sword that will define his life as the Black Swordsman.
