Netflix’s Castlevania Season 3 is the perfect blend of animation, storytelling, and horror. Following last season’s defeat of Dracula and his forces, the heroes and surviving fiends try to find their place in the aftermath.
Castlevania Season 3 has a four-arc narrative that does more to set the stage for a fourth season than resolve major conflicts. Each arc is unique but is definitely building toward a unified confrontation next season. Season 3 is sort of like the Empire Strikes Back of the series.
Castlevania writer Warren Ellis has spun masterful tales of horror in Season 3. The first two seasons focused a lot on the gore, which is understandable since we’re dealing with vampires and demons. In Season 3, Ellis evolved the series into some of the best horror stories I’ve ever seen or read.
The series starts on a positive note with Trevor and Sypha enjoying their new partnership as lovers and monster hunters. However, there is a creeping sense of horror that pervades each episode and continues to build throughout the season. Even in idyllic settings, there is a constant feeling that something evil lurks beneath the surface.
And this is why horror is superior to gore in film and TV. Gore makes you want to throw up your lunch. Horror makes you want to run screaming until you lose your mind.
The animation by Powerhouse Animation Studios is absolutely stunning. Castlevania series director Sam Deats continues to deliver some of the best animation on TV. You may remember he created the Castlevania promotional poster last month.
AMAZING VOICE TALENT CONTINUES IN SEASON 3
Before jumping into the story arcs, I want to point out the amazing voice work in this season. One of the elements that makes Netflix’s Castlevania so riveting is the voice work. Once again, Season 3 takes this to the next level.
We have the returning voices of Richard Armitage as Trevor Belmont, James Callis as Alucard, Alejandra Reynoso as Sypha, and other incredible voice talent. They are joined this season by a crew of top Hollywood talent including Bill Nighy (Pirates of the Caribbean series, Underworld), Jason Isaacs (Harry Potter series, Star Trek: Discovery), Lance Reddick (John Wick, The Wire), Navid Negahban (Legion, Homeland), and Jessica Brown Findlay (Downton Abbey, Victor Frankenstein).
Perhaps the most interesting voice actor this season is Barbara Steele as Miranda, an aged sorceress living a sad, solitary life. In addition to starring in the 1991 revamp of Dark Shadows TV series, Steele was a star of numerous Italian Gothic horror films in the 1960s. Her breakout role came in one of the greatest films of the genre: Black Sunday. It’s a must-see for classic horror fans.
TREVOR, SYPHA, AND SAINT GERMAIN ARC
Trevor and Sypha decide to take a break from monster hunting in the quaint village of Lindenfeld. Trevor is uncomfortable in being content for once in his life in contrast to Sypha’s joyful outlook. Those thoughts are soon shoved aside as they are drawn deeper and deeper into a mystery involving the town’s religious order.
Our heroes are told the monks lost their minds after their priory was attacked by a night creature. The monks’ alignments have clearly crossed over into the evil end of the chart. Additionally, there is even more going on in this town than meets the eye.
Trevor and Sypha befriend a dapper visitor named Saint Germain, who also is more than he seems. The three of them team up to investigate the unsettling events plaguing the town. In the end, Trevor and Sypha provide assistance as an act of kindness to Saint Germain so he can achieve his goal. Also, there are lots of demons.
CARMILLA, STRIGA, MORANA, LENORE, AND HECTOR ARC
The next story arc involves Carmilla force-marching poor, dumb forgemaster Hector hundreds of miles in the snow to her stronghold in Styria. Carmilla reunites with her vampire “sisters” Lenore, Morana, and Striga. The evil quartet begins work on an ambitious plan to take advantage of the chaos following Dracula’s defeat by turning a neighboring region into their own human cattle farm.
Hector gets thrown into the dungeon and his life doesn’t really get better from there. However, the vampire sisters need his forgemaster talents to make their plan work so Lenore, the diplomatic one, masterfully seduces Hector through kindness to the point where he is little more than a pet.
ISAAC ARC
One of the most interesting characters in the series is the soft-spoken, disciplined, and loyal Isaac. Sure, he pops souls from Hell into corpses to create night creatures, but he’s not evil, per se. More like lawful neutral in alignment. Isaac has gone through too much hardship in his life. And now on his own after being saved by his loyal master Dracula in Season 2, he’s adrift in a foreign land. He starts creating hellish army, not so much as part of a grand plan, but more because people keep trying to kill him so he kills them back and reanimates their bodies with the damned.
As Isaac slowly makes his way back to Eastern Europe to level righteous revenge against the betrayer Hector, he experiences several fateful encounters. It starts with an act of kindness by a blind mystical merchant. It continues with a ship captain who treats Isaac with respect. And finally, Isaac encounters a lonely sorceress who provides helpful advice so he can achieve his goals.
One other exchange stands out in Isaac’s story arc. One night in the desert with his horde of night creatures, he calls one of them to sit with him and talk about its life prior to being damned to hell. The conversation perfectly captures a prevailing theme that humans are just as monstrous (or perhaps more so) as the monsters who prey on them
ALUCARD, TAKA, AND SUMI ARC
We catch up with Alucard who lives a solitary life in the ruins of his father’s castle surrounded by an idyllic countryside and the vast library of the Belmonts. He’s so lonely that he makes dolls of Trevor and Sypha—and has an imaginary conversation that is absolutely hilarious.
Like Isaac, Alucard is adrift in the wake of committing patricide against the King of Vampires. But unlike Isaac, Alucard has no plans except getting through one day to the next. That’s until two Japanese humans travel to him seeking to kill their former vampire master, Cho. Luckily for the siblings (Sumi and Taka), Cho was dusted last season.
Alucard decides to train the pair to become the ultimate vampire hunters. He provides combat training and educational trips into the Belmont library. Despite his kindness to Taka and Sumi, the pair decide that Alucard is holding out on them. The resolution of this conflict leads to one of the most well-written and gratifying sequences in TV as the four arcs hit their respective climaxes simultaneously.
As the story jumps repeatedly from one arc to another, the viewer is hit with a spectrum of visuals. The sequence is beautiful, sad, erotic, tense, and horrific—all the same time. This is truly some of the best storytelling in television.
FINAL THOUGHTS
As you may have deduced from this article, kindness is one of the reoccurring themes in this season. This is saying something since this is an animated horror series. In each arc, we see kindness play out in some form. In Trevor and Sypha’s arc, there is kindness for kindness sake. That’s also true for the most part in Isaac’s arc. The story arc in Styria shows kindness being used as means of manipulation. Finally, in Alucard’s story, his kindness is used against him.
Netflix’s Castlevania Season 3, despite some acts of kindness, makes a strong case for the eradication of humankind much more effectively than Dracula did in seasons 1 and 2. I won’t go into details in case you haven’t watched it yet, but there are some really terrible humans. I mean, what was the Judge doing with the shoes? Gross.
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