Warhammer 40K’s Strongest Traitor Legion: Inside the Grimdark Universe Henry Cavill Loves

If you know anything about Henry Cavill and Warhammer, you probably know he has a soft spot for the Adeptus Custodes — technically not Space Marines, but close enough for the casual crowd. What we don’t hear about as much are the Chaos side’s heavy hitters. So let’s fix that and talk about the Black Legion, the post-Horus Heresy wrecking crew that turned Chaos into a coordinated threat and rewrote the map of the Imperium.

Quick refresher: where the Black Legion came from

The Horus Heresy ends with Horus dead at the Emperor’s hands, the Imperium in shambles, and the traitor legions fleeing into the Eye of Terror. Instead of playing nice like their loyalist counterparts, the renegade Astartes devolved into raiding each other for slaves and resources. Out of that mess stepped Ezekyle Abaddon — former First Captain of the Sons of Horus and the Warmaster’s most ruthless right hand.

Abaddon looked at what was left of the Sons of Horus and basically called time of death. He torched Horus’s symbols, took the title 'The Despoiler', and rebuilt his warriors as the Black Legion. That rename wasn’t cosmetic. It was a reset button.

What makes them different from the other Chaos legions

Most traitor legions pledge themselves to a single Chaos God. The Black Legion does not. Abaddon’s crew operates under Chaos Undivided — they court all the ruinous powers, which lets them pull talent from across the warp-touched spectrum. That philosophy also makes it easier for Abaddon to wrangle disparate warbands and daemon-sympathizers into one spearpoint when it’s time to hit the Imperium.

The big swing: Cadia falls, the galaxy splits

Abaddon didn’t just posture. He launched a series of galaxy-spanning offensives called Black Crusades, culminating in the 13th — the one that finally broke the fortress world of Cadia. That wasn’t just a moral victory. With Cadia gone, the warp tore open into the Cicatrix Maledictum, a nightmarish rift that cleaved the Imperium in two and cut half its worlds off from the Emperor’s light. The fallout was brutal: with communication and relief severed, nearly half a million Imperial planets plunged into chaos and suffered for it.

• After Horus dies, traitor legions escape into the Eye of Terror and turn on each other.
• Ezekyle Abaddon, ex-First Captain of the Sons of Horus, erases Horus’s legacy and rebrands as the Black Legion under his title 'The Despoiler'.
• Unlike single-god legions, the Black Legion follows Chaos Undivided, which helps Abaddon unify multiple Chaos factions.
• 13th Black Crusade: Cadia falls, the Cicatrix Maledictum rips the galaxy, and roughly half the Imperium is cut off from the Astronomican.

Bottom line: if you’re ranking the traitor legions by actual impact, the Black Legion sits at the top. They don’t just raid — they change the board.

Meanwhile, Cavill keeps doing the most

If you assumed Cavill’s fandom stops at lore and miniatures, not quite. When Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 dropped, he was already on PC, playing on the 'Angel of Death' difficulty the same day. He even hopped on Instagram (@henrycavill) to talk up the game’s story and multiplayer. This tracks with what he’s said elsewhere: in a British GQ chat, he name-checked growing up on Delta Force and Half-Life, and playing Total War: Warhammer II with his brothers. If it’s Warhammer and it plugs into a screen, he’s in.

So when do we actually see his Warhammer on screen?

The Warhammer 40,000 cinematic universe still doesn’t have a firm date. The current expectation is late 2027 or early 2028 on Prime Video. Yes, that’s a wait. On the bright side, there’s time to brush up on your lore — starting with why the Black Legion is the villain faction everyone else in the galaxy quietly dreads.