Note: this is a mostly spoiler-free review of Castlevania Season 3, which is available to stream now on Netflix. The main section of the review only covers basic plot and character details, with more specific twists discussed in a spoiler-marked section at the end. If you need a refresher on the series, check out our Castlevania: Season 1 review and Castlevania: Season 2 review.
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Netflix’s Castlevania series is undoubtedly the finest video game adaptation ever made. Even so, it’s hard not to approach Season 3 with some degree of trepidation. Can a series that did so much to paint Dracula as a tragic, nuanced villain in its first two seasons maintain that level of quality now that Dracula has gone from undead to just plain dead? Castlevania fans needn’t worry. The series not only survives the loss of this critical character, it somehow manages to get even better in the process.
Dracula’s absence casts a wide shadow over the third season. Picking up a couple of months after the dramatic final battle at Castle Dracula, Season 3 sees all the surviving characters scattered to the wind and seeking new purpose. Alucard (James Callis) is now the lonely steward of his father’s abandoned castle. Trevor (Richard Armitage) and Sypha (Alejandra Reynoso Agueda) are enjoying the honeymoon phase of their budding romance as they become travelling monster hunters. The treacherous vampire queen Carmilla (Jaime Murray) returns home to Styria with her captive prize Hector (Theo James) in tow. And not to be outdone, Isaac (Adetokumboh M’Cormack) begins his single-minded crusade to punish humanity for destroying his master.
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Dracula may be gone, but Season 3 introduces a number of new characters to fill the void and take advantage of the longer 10-episode structure. Carmilla is joined by her three sisters – Lenore (Jessica Brown Findlay), Morana (Yasmine Al Massri) and Striga (Ivana Milicevic). Trevor and Sypha’s travels put them in the path of several key players like the worldly Saint Germain (Bill Nighy), a town official known only as The Judge (Jason Isaacs), and a creepy monk named Sala (Navid Negahban). Finally, Alucard’s solitude is interrupted by the appearance of two aspiring vampire hunters named Taka (Toru Uchikado) and Sumi (Rila Fukushima).
With the main cast divided along many fronts and so many new faces being introduced, Season 3 has a much looser and more organic feel than the past two seasons. Before, the end point was pretty clear, with all roads leading to that final battle with Dracula. Now the series faces a more uncertain future, and one ripe with potential. If these disparate threads are meant to eventually intertwine, that’s not really apparent in Season 3. Showrunner Adi Shankar and writer Warren Ellis are taking a very slow, steady approach to charting the series’ future. Season 3 plays like a transitional story bridging the Dracula conflict with another cataclysmic battle still in its early stages.
That might not sound like a terribly exciting pitch, but the fact is that Castlevania is often at its best when it moves slowly and allows its characters to breathe, converse and search for meaning. Having Ellis as the series’ sole writer continues to work in its favor. Ellis has a very distinctive voice marked by equal parts sarcastic, self-aware humor and burning tragedy. Ellis is able to paint the Castlevania universe as a nihilistic wonderland where magic and misery go hand-in-hand. In Castlevania’s vision of the 15th Century, Hell is a real and tangible place, while traces of the divine and holy are few and far between. Vanquishing the most powerful vampire the world has ever seen doesn’t necessarily bring peace to the land. Nor does it give our heroes happiness or fulfillment.
As in Season 2, the series devotes an incredible amount of attention to ensuring all characters – good or evil, major or minor – are fully realized people with clear desires and motivations. Perhaps no chapter better illustrates this than episode 6, which shifts focus away from the main trio of protagonists and onto Saint Germain and Isaac. Up to that point, the former is depicted as a debonair man of science, but here his soul is laid bare and the full scope of the Castlevania universe begins to reveal itself. As for Isaac, he may well be the most compelling player in the Season 3 mix, given his commitment to what he sees as a righteous crusade and his moral code, despite plotting the mass extinction of humanity. In episode 6, the series reveals that even the undead Night Creatures under his thrall have wants and desires, exploring how these unholy monsters retain shreds of the lives they once lived.
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Again, these various story threads never really converge over the course of Season 3. There are hints of the larger war to come on the Carmilla front, but that can is kicked down the road to Season 4. Season 3 still manages to be cohesive and tonally consistent, however. Loneliness and the desire for connection are the central themes of the season. We see it in Trevor and Sypha’s fumbling efforts to find happiness together. We see it in Alucard’s rush to become a mentor to Sumi and Taka. We see it in the growing bond between Hector and Lenore, the one woman in Styria who shows compassion for Carmilla’s captive pet. Even with Isaac, his travels are less about building an army than exploring how he can’t seem to avoid connecting with his fellow humans despite his intense disdain for them. Season 3 may not always be heavy on plot, but it’s never boring.
The new season does share one key structural similarity with Season 2. Just as Season 2 paid off a long, slow buildup with a dramatic, action-packed battle with Dracula, Season 3 culminates in two final episodes that up the bloodshed and spectacle considerably. Even though the series remains divided along several fronts at that point, episode 9 creates unity through a montage of violent action and sexual release (sometimes both at once). This is where the show’s striking animation stands out the most. While it does become obvious when scenes switch between traditional 2D characters and the more fluid but less detailed CG models, the sheer scope of the action and the ingenuity in the monster designs and fight scenes are more than enough to make up for those weird transitions.
The series also continues to benefit from a talented cast of voice actors. Several returning faces are given the opportunity to push their characters in new directions. Callis succeeds in exploring a more vulnerable, lonely side of Alucard, while M’Cormack shines even more now that Isaac is a free agent in charge of his own destiny. The new additions in Season 3 further add to that appeal. Nighy is predictably excellent as the outwardly carefree but inwardly haunted Saint Germain. Isaacs is very entertaining as the tightly wound Judge. Findlay brings a welcome sense of ambiguity to the role of Lenore, a character whose true intentions remain shrouded in mystery until the very end of the season. Only Uchikado and Fukushima fall a little short of the mark. Their heavy accents leave little room for subtlety and make it difficult to parse their characters’ true motives and thoughts toward Alucard. Maybe that was the point, but it works against the Alucard storyline for much of the season.
Warning: the remainder of this review contains spoilers for Castlevania: Season 3!
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Ultimately, even with the season remaining divided along several fronts and serving more as a preamble to Season 4 than a self-contained story, the final two episodes manage to wrap things up on a very satisfying note. The weird dynamic between Alucard and his pupils is justified in the ultimate payoff, as Sumi and Taka attempt to seduce and betray him to steal the secrets of Castle Dracula for themselves. These two characters aren’t as important as what they mean for Alucard himself. Seeing Alucard impale his two would-be murderers and openly acknowledge how much he’s become like his father is a haunting way of ending Season 3. It also suggests the series may diverge from the source material by angling Alucard to truly become Dracula’s successor rather than actually resurrecting Dracula.
Trevor and Sypha’s storyline also ends on a fittingly bleak note. While it could be argued that the two don’t grow or evolve much over the course of Season 3 (they’re still on the road and hunting monsters), the point is clearly to show how Sypha’s innate hope and optimism are strained by seeing the world through a Belmont’s eyes. They did their best to save a city besieged by unholy monks, and all they got, in the end, was scores of dead civilians and a Judge who turned out to be just as wicked as Sala and his men. All three main heroes are united by a growing sense of disillusionment with the world around them.
Finally, it’s worth touching a bit more on Saint Germain. Between Nighy’s performance and the humorous dynamic Germain shares with Trevor and Sypha, he’s probably the best addition to the mix in Season 3. His arc is also one of the strongest, as he evolves from self-interested book hunter to the key to stopping Dracula’s return in the finale. Germain also serves a valuable role as a foothold into a larger universe, helping move Castlevania beyond the realm of supernatural horror and into a more sci-fi-oriented direction. It’s impossible to watch Germain’s psychedelic odyssey in episode 6 and not wonder if this is the first step toward the Devil May Cry series and the “Bootleg Multiverse” Shankar has been teasing.
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Source: IGN.com Netflix's Castlevania: Season 3 Review