Castlevania S01E04: Monument Review
Medium: Television
Release date: 7/7/2017
Review date: 6/23/2024
Score: 6/10
The immaturity of the series really does bring this episode, and honestly the entire season, down, unfortunately. What should have been a conclusion really hammering home the show's central themes of the danger of religion and the demonization of the Other felt closer to someone bragging about having "told you so" than some sort of epic or insightful finale. Yes, the central premise of the show is now established, "Trevor Belmont, Sypha the Speaker magician, and Alucard the vampire son of the big man himself all team up to kill Dracula," but getting here felt more perfunctory than inspired; why didn't Netflix just start the series here? The fight scenes were fun but again are missing any real lethality or threat of lethality to our main characters. Not sure if I was supposed to be worried about Trevor's potential for being killed by Alucard during their duel at the end, but that just felt like a greater extension of their conversation rather than a perilous fight to the death. I'll probably keep watching the series now that we're finally to the "hot Dracula hunting monster killing throuple" portion of the series I was seeing people talk positively about, but that's more indicative to how the episodes are short, simple to watch, and can only probably get more interesting moving forward than it is to the show's quality at this point. I didn't really feel like anything happened this season, and it really felt pointless at just four episodes.