Malyen Oretsev

Mal is a tracker in the First Army of Ravka, raised alongside Alina Starkov in the same orphanage and bound to her by a friendship neither quite names. He's easy with a joke, good in a crisis, and more sure of his rifle than his feelings — a soldier who'd rather protect Alina than examine what she means to him.

Archie Renaux plays him as competent rather than swaggering, which keeps the childhood-friends setup from curdling into cliché. The show trusts small glances and unfinished sentences to carry the weight, and Renaux's easy charm masks a genuine ache underneath — a soldier's steadiness hiding someone who has never quite said the important thing out loud.