Castlevania Season 2 Review

Medium: Television

Release date: Eight episode full season released 10/26/2018

Review date: 10/9/2024

Score: 5/10

Why does this show exist? Not to be an asshole, but why did anybody decide to make an “adult” animated adaptation of the plot of the 1989 Nintendo Entertainment System game “Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse?” I didn’t bring it up in my review of the show’s first season, but technically “Castlevania” (the show) is an adaptation of the general plot of a series of castle exploring and monster slaying games called, would you believe it, “Castlevania.” One of the earliest and best known third party hits on the NES, the first “Castlevania” game “loosely” tells the adventure of the vampire hunter Simon Belmont as he shows up at Dracula’s castle to kill the dude. I say “loosely” because for anyone not aware, the NES wasn’t really technically capable of too much direct storytelling, so pretty much the entire game story would have been relayed to the player through the game’s physical manual. This was also true of the game’s two subsequent NES sequels, “Castlevania II: Simon's Quest,” and the already mentioned “Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse.” Why do I bring this up? Just to emphasize how little material we’re going off of for this adaptation - “Castlevania” (the show) is an adaptation of the plot of an 80s NES game where most of the narrative and background is relayed to the player solely through the game’s manual; why would you adapt that versus just making up some new vampire hunting characters to make a show about? Why would Netflix have OK’d forking over the licensing fees to adapt this brand instead of, you know, just not doing that?

This isn’t to say that “Castlevania” is irrelevant in 2024 - far from it, in fact. The “Castlevania” series, along with the “Metroid” games, helped pioneer the game genre known as, funny enough, Metroidvanias. Metroidvanias are huge today, and it's undeniable that the genre wouldn’t be as creatively diverse today if it wasn’t for the “Castlevania” series of games, so I don’t want to come across like I’m just taking unfair shots at the series. But the issue is, those “Castlevania” games whose design helped establish the Metroidvania genre - they released after the “Castlevania” NES games. “Castlevania I and III” on the NES are pretty straightforward side scrollers (not “Castlevania II,” go ask James Rolfe), with the first widely recognized game in the series to implement the looping, backtracking, unlockable game design now synonymous with the brand being 1997’s “Castlevania: Symphony of the Night” on the PlayStation 1. So why did Netflix sign and pay for a licensing deal to adapt “Castlevania” in the first place, and then why did they choose to adapt the earliest, most story bereft games in the series?

Season Two of “Castlevania” was bad - the majority of the runtime is taken up by inter-vampire drama that doesn’t have any actual influence on the plot. The majority of the season’s episodes take place at Dracula’s castle among his entourage of minions, with the show only occasionally remembering to switch back to Trevor Belmont, Alucard, and Sypha (you know, the only characters from the first season that the audience knows and cares about? The protagonists?) for short bursts before returning to vampire “Real Housewives.” The show introduced the characters of Godbrand, Camilla, Isaac, and Hector in Season Two and then spent the majority of the season’s runtime on them and their petty squabbles; said squabbles initially seemed somewhat intriguing in the absence of other plot threads early on, but once it became clear halfway through the season that those threads weren’t really going anywhere, my mild interest quickly faded. There are a number of contenders for the worst episode this season, but I think I’m going to have to crown Episode Six, “The River,” as the champion because of what an absolute waste of time it was. In the previous five episodes the show had made a big deal about the characters Hector and Isaac using their necromancer powers to build a big army of undead and demons for Dracula to then use to wipe out humanity, as well as making a big deal out of Camilla drawing Hector over to her side and eventually betraying Dracula himself, with those two plot lines converging Episode Six. Dracula and his castle appear near the city of Brăila (Dracula’s castle can teleport around in the “Castlevania” games, a lore detail that does play a noticeable role this season so it is worth some explanation) to silence the infighting between his vampire forces who wish to hunt by providing them with prey. Dracula parks his castle on one side of the river in Brăila, and sends his troops across the bridges to kill all the townspeople, who seem to have enacted some sort of defense, with armored soldiers and ballistas in formation on the opposite side of the river to push the invaders back. But unbeknownst to Vlad, this is the moment that Camilla decides to betray him, so she proceeds to have Hector order a zombie priest he resurrected to bless the river (zombie priests can still bless things?), which turns all the water into holy water. Camilla then reveals that the opposing forces in Brăila are actually her own troops, and has them use their ballistas to destroy the bridges Dracula’s undead mob are walking on, plunging the monsters into the blessed river below and killing them. Camilla’s forces then use the ballistas to shoot expandable bridges (look man, I don’t know either) across the water so Camilla can start moving them to attack Dracula’s remaining army and seize the castle. However, all of the actual vampires were able to avoid falling into the river by using their vampire powers to super jump back to safety on the river bank by the castle, and are able to mount some defense when Camilla’s troops break down the castle doors. But conveniently, at that very moment, Sypha completes her spell to magically pull Dracula’s teleporting castle near her, Trevor and Alucard, which causes the castle to teleport away with all of Dracula’s remaining forces inside while leaving Camilla and Hector in Brăila. Outside of how stupid having collapsible bridge shooting ballistas is, of how stupid having a zombie priest being able to bless entire rivers is, of how stupid having none of the actual vampires be in any danger and having this entire elaborate set up just kill disposable no name mooks is - the worst part of “Castlevania” S2E6 is that wipes away literally all of that season’s plot progression in about 20 minutes. I may not have loved the Camilla, Isaac, and Hector stuff, but it was at least something; however, after this episode, Camilla and Hector basically don’t show up for the rest of the season, and Isaac’s scenes aren’t much better than complete absence. So to have “Castlevania” make all of that irrelevant in an instant so the season could get back to the show’s actual plot doesn’t feel just like poor writing; it feels like absolutely abysmal writing.

I guess it's probably time to talk about “Castlevania’s” (the show) writer, Warren Ellis - I expected better of Warren Ellis. “You expected better of a guy credibly accused in 2020 by multiple women of sexual coercion and manipulation?” you may be asking, which is fair; very, very fair. But yeah, unfortunately, I did expect better. Before the allegations (which I believe, I want to make sure that’s clear, I’m only saying allegations and accusations because the man’s not legally been charged with anything), Ellis was a very well respected comics writer who had worked on a number of well loved series for DC, Marvel, and Image comics and established himself as a very thoughtful, creative author. I first ran into his work through his series “Planetary” and was quite taken by his narrative style; I have recommended “Planetary” to multiple people and would probably still be doing so if it weren’t for the allegations. Before 2020 if you had asked me about Warren Ellis, I probably would have told you he was “one of the good ones;” not necessarily as a person, but as a creative force. So when I say I expected better of Warren Ellis, please don’t think I mean that as a person, just as an author, because I can’t imagine anybody being blown away by the writing in “Castlevania;” I’d actually say it's probably some of his worst.

“Castlevania” Season One felt pointless because it was too short for anything really interesting to happen and was clearly a sort of prologue chapter for Season Two (the plot of the “Castlevania” games is a monster hunter showing up to kill Dracula; while Trevor shows up in Season One, he doesn’t actually do any Dracula hunting until Season Two); one of the reasons I kept watching the show after not particularly enjoying the first season was because I assumed the increase in episode count for the second season would allow for a much improved narrative as there would just be more time for character and plot progression. But Season Two somehow makes the same stupid pacing decisions as the first season, with double the episodes, which makes me think the showrunners don’t feel like that’s a problem, which would be mind blowing if true. If the main plot of “Castlevania” (the game and show) is a monster hunter hunting Dracula, then Season Two spends less than half its runtime on the show’s main plot, instead choosing to waste the audience’s time on the aforementioned vampire politicking that gets completely negated and sidelined by Episode Six.

Even the conclusion of the show, that being Trevor, Sypha, and Alucard finally making it to Dracula’s castle to kill the guy, feels bizarrely paced - within the span of a single episode, Episode Seven, the protagonists enter the castle, kill all of Dracula’s remaining minions, and then kill Vlad, an incredibly rushed sequence of events that feels all the more out of place with there still being the season’s remaining eighth episode left; why didn’t the show just break the Dracula’s castle finale into two parts, especially with how pointless the plot of the Episode Eight we actually got is. The final episode of the season is structured like a big goodbye episode, and I guess presumes that the viewer wasn’t paying that close of attention to the previous episodes by pretending a whole bunch of character development happened this season, when in reality, none took place. I think the show wants me to think that Trevor and Alucard had a complicated, biting relationship that was only able to coalesce into friendship (or tolerance) by the end of Season Two, with the scene of Alucard jokingly flipping Trevor off as he says goodbye at the end of Episode Eight being the culmination of Trevor learning “Hey you know what, this half vampire guy isn’t too bad” and Alucard learning “Hey you know what, this Belmont monster hunting guy isn’t too bad.” But that dynamic just doesn’t actually exist in the show; yeah, Trevor and Alucard have been catty to each other for most of the series up to this point, but I never felt like they despised one another. Their big character climax felt more like the characters deciding to just not be catty for a little bit while they kill Dracula, and then get right back to being catty after - I didn’t feel like I experienced any character growth there at all.

The one theme I did think the series had, that organized religion can often be just as evil as monsters and vampires, gets dropped completely by Episode Two of Season Two. Yeah, I thought it was handled pretty ham fisted and immaturely in Season One, but it was at least a message and felt like it gave the show more of a point than just animating dudes punching each other in the face. Because that’s what the point of “Castlevania” Season Two, and ultimately this whole series, feels like at this point - an excuse to just animate a bunch of dudes punching each other in the face. What’s that? You want interesting plots and characters, with some sort of character progression and growth? Sorry, we don’t have any of that, but we do have fight scenes where Trevor and Alucard fly through the air like birds as they engage in the least lethal looking combat you’ve ever seen in your life, would that be OK?

I apologize if I’m coming off as bitter here, it's just that I’m really struggling with what the point of this series is - you pay to adapt the plot of an NES game with very little plot for some reason, and then you have a talented and well respected writer (who has since been credibly accused by multiple women of being a sex pest) helm the whole thing, and this is the best we can get? I genuinely don’t know what anybody sees in this series, its mediocrity made flesh. Even the animation is flakey - the fight scenes look good, but then there are scenes of characters just standing around talking where the animation will look downright amateurish, especially the faces. The only part of the show I can say was solid across the board was the voice cast; they did a good job, despite the script they were given. The series is so laser focused on appealing to dumb teenage boys that it forgets it actually needs a narrative to keep anybody engaged who doesn’t think just seeing blood and swearing all the time is the pinnacle of entertainment.

A complete waste of your time, I have no interest in watching any more of this series.