THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRETY OF THE NETFLIX CASTLEVANIA SHOW. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
With the recent coronavirus outbreak canceling all my classes, I’ve suddenly found myself with an abundance of free time. Like most people, I decided to spend said free time catching up on shows I haven’t finished yet. One of these shows was among the handful of Netflix originals I still bothered with – I am, of course, talking about the latest season of Castlevania.
Some context: the first two seasons of Castlevania dedicate themselves to retelling the general plot of the Castlevania games. Dracula wants to destroy humanity, and a Belmont must stop him. This plotline ended with Dracula’s death at the climax of the second season. With the games’ proverbial script concluded, the third season had much more creative freedom than the first two.
Going in, I had two expectations. I wanted to see what was established in the first two seasons be built upon, and I wanted the plot to go in a direction unbeholden to the games. The question is: did this season of Castlevania accomplish these goals?
After watching the entirety, I’d have to say…kind of.
If there’s one word I could use to sum up Castlevania’s third season, it’d be schizophrenic. The writing quality varies drastically. It dedicates entire episodes to setting up a cultist’s evil plan…only to reveal the entirety of said plan in a brief expository monologue. It gets us invested in several new characters…and then reveals that said characters were evil all along, for no discernible reason other than shock value. Overall, it’s a choppily-made season that feels like it was only made to set up the fourth.
Some structural problems shared with the first two seasons also remain. The main one is its overreliance on exposition, particularly through dialogue – head writer Warren Ellis’s experience is mainly with comic books as a medium, and it shows. There’s also the ham-fisted anti-authority messaging that was most blatant in the first season, except somehow it’s even more inept – a zealous bishop is one thing, but a town judge that moonlights as a child murderer is another.
The character arcs are similarly choppily done. We see Alucard try to break out of his shell by training two Japanese vampire hunters, only for said hunters to backstab him and force him to mirror his father’s actions. Isaac starts to question his misanthropy in several genuinely moving scenes, only to double down on them when he must kill an evil wizard.
Castlevania’s third season is at its strongest, I feel, when it’s a philosophical meditation on themes like human nature, power, and reality. And to its credit, it does do that effectively sometimes – like I said, the writing quality is schizophrenic. But overall, it’s rather choppily made.
