WARNING: This is a FULL SPOILER REVIEW. If you’ve already watched and want somebody else’s opinion to compare to your own, or you don’t mind having content spoiled, this is for you. Anybody else, read at your own risk.
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Castlevania has been one of the best shows on Netflix for years now, and the series ends now with season 4. This video game based series found a fantastic way to convert a game to a TV series, not committing too heavily to directly porting the stories of the game, and instead forging its own path. The question I guess you’re asking now is, did season 4 live up to its predecessors? Let’s break it down.
A Tale of Four Stories
This season really took a parallel story approach, with three different interwoven tales, the first revolving around one character group, and the other two coming together at the end with the rest of the cast.. The first is Carmilla’s story, which you may also see as Hector, Lenore or Isaac’s story, but ultimately all the pieces move around her, despite the lack of screen time she has. The second pair are, of course, Alucard’s story, and Trevor’s story, which you could also call Trevor and Sypha’s story, but let’s just keep it short. Since the first story to wrap up in the show is Carmilla’s group, let’s start there. I will remind you if you haven't watched the season yet, that while I am writing these focused on one pair at a time, in the series they are happening in parallel.
Carmilla’s Story
Carmilla and her sisters left the last season off working on building the ambitious world that she had planned out, one that would expand her power not only across all of Europe, but, eventually, the entire world. Although she felt strongly about enacting her ambitions, all of her sisters were starting to have doubts. Morana and Striga had spent time patrolling the lands that Carmilla had first set her eyes on, and their doubts stem from the realization that war would be a constant for them, leaving Striga in the field and Morana in the castle controlling the supply lines, separating them for the rest of their lives. They start to decide that there may be another way for them to live, but before they could reach any conclusions, they are called back to the castle.
Meanwhile, Lenore is having fun chatting with Hector while he works on creating a forgemaster hammer and having less fun realizing that her role as a diplomat is being phased out for a world of constant war, the one that Morana and Striga have just grown to understand is coming. She really isn’t a woman of war, despite being a vampire, and has doubts about the extremely expansionist ideals of Carmilla, she knows the strength of stability, and fears the lack of stability that may come with increased power. Hector in the meantime has worked to slowly set up some sort of traps throughout the castle. From last season, I thought he was able to be much more controlled by the sisters, but apparently is more free than I had understood. He has also been working to provide knowledge to a distant sect that wanted to revive Dracula.
Finally we reach Isaac, who has his demons rebuilding the town he last ransacked and having philosophical conversations with them about their nature, that maybe they aren’t just creatures of death and consumption, but it’s just the only thing they’ve ever had the chance to know. Eventually though, he decides that the time for rebuilding has come to an end and charges through a portal with his entire, massive army. This army drops from the sky directly upon Carmilla’s castle, overwhelming her vampires, humans, and the demons that Hector has been able to create since finishing his hammer.
While Carmilla fights off dozens or hundreds of Isaac’s troops, Isaac himself finds Hector, who has trapped Lenore in a barrier. Expecting Isaac to kill him for betraying Dracula, he at least tells him not to kill Lenore, and gives him the ability to activate all the traps that had been set around the castle. Hector lastly cuts off his finger with the ring of control to stop Carmilla from exerting control over his creatures, giving Isaac a direct path to the vampire queen. This is the best fight scene in the season, more or less a throne room with a slightly lowered center area surrounded by a magical barrier, and filled with blood. What makes this great compared to the fights in the other stories that we’ll discuss later, is the fact that this section only had more or less one combat scene, the rest was all building to this. And even though Isaac is fighting with his demons, they are an extension of himself, it feels like a fight between just two people, it’s a war of ideals, a woman who wants to make a secure world by having absolute control, and a man who wants to make a world where people aren’t slaves to the present, and can build a future.
Ultimately it ends as it had to, with Carmilla’s death, although unwilling to even give control of her death to another person, she takes her own life, and Isaac now has control of the region, and a new dream to build. As they see the castle on the horizon, Morana and Striga see the explosion of Carmilla’s suicide and feel her death, assuming Lenore is dead as well, they decide to forge their own path with no plan other than being together, and take their armies west to forge a new path. Hector is given the freedom to choose his own fate and wants to stay and live quietly, reading, creating, and being with Lenore. Sadly, after a discussion about the nature of Carmilla’s desires, and if they represent a madwoman, or the ambitions of all vampires. Lenore knows that she cannot live a life caged in a castle, and she chooses to let her life end looking towards the sunrise to see what Hector had loved so much, and fades away after looking back at him playfully calling him a fool.
Alucard’s Story
After last season a few more impaled men and women have joined Taka and Sumi in front of Alucard’s castle, but not so many that its clear Alucard hasn’t gone full Dracula. A horse arrives with a dead rider carrying a letter. The letter pleads for Alucard to come and protect their town from an increasing onslaught of monsters. Alucard muses on the tenacity of the rider to make it despite dying of his wounds to do it, buries him, and ultimately rides to the towns aid. After saving the town he meets with their leader, Greta, and Saint Germain, who seems to have escaped from the Infinite Corridor. Eventually the group agrees that the townspeople would be safer if they relocated to the castle.
At the castle, the group has little time to rest and after Alucard makes some orphan kids happy with a stunt dive off the top parts of the castle and begins to flirt heavily with, I mean plan defenses with Greta, night falls and the demon army comes. We see a set of four witches, all with notably unique designs, in one of the demon carriages who appear to be working on stitching together a body. Alucard and the townspeople mount a defense that, while noble, ultimately ends in a retreat to the castle interior when a giant monster starts breathing fire/laser beams at the defenders. Alucard and Greta notices a series of red floating orbs heading through the castle, leading to his childhood bedroom, the room where he killed Dracula, and after confronting a character performing some sort of ritual with those red orbs, the souls of fallen, they leave again, unable to break through the barrier to the room and needing to defend against the castle invaders, who have just knocked down the door. The demons break through and there seems to be little hope of survival until…
Trevor’s Story
Since the events of last season Trevor and Sypha continue adventuring, but after experiencing their first failure at the of that previous season, they find the fights to be increasingly difficult, and more frequent. They fight for six weeks against various villains, with a running trend that seems to be pointing to the resurrection of Dracula, and find themselves finally in the city of Targoviste, the city where Dracula’s wife, Lisa, was burned at the stake, the city that Dracula mostly destroyed in retaliation. They meet up with the captain of the survivors, Zamfir, a fairly crazy woman who refuses to let them into the secret Underground Court of the royals until they prove their trustworthiness. Meanwhile a pair of vampires, the brains, british criminal Varney, and the brawn, Slavic warrior Ratko, seek out the Underground Court entrance as well, while picking off survivors to find a way in.
Eventually, Trevor and Sypha gain access to the Underground Court, which turns out to be a dirty catacomb beneath the city filled with sick and starving people surrounded by treasure, where Trevor finds a few gems, a magical dagger, and a holy throwing cross. They discover all the priests in the city have been killed and the canal is filled with their holy water so that demons can’t sneak in through those tunnels, Trevor, ever the kleptomaniac, also collects some of the holy water. As if conditions weren’t bad enough though, the royals that Zamfir is protecting, the ones she claims to be taking orders from, are dead, just corpses in crowns that she allows nobody else to see, she really is crazy. Luckily for Zamfir, she dodges any more criticism of her decision making due to the attack of Ratko and his forces. A gruelling battle ends with Zamfir dying to protect some innocents who had tried to help Trevor, and Trevor finishing off the now distracted Ratko, who he had been losing to.
Trevor and Sypha, ever the unlucky duo, aren't able to rest just yet, as Varney had snuck through during the fighting and discovered a communication mirror behind the dead royals that was large enough to travel through. The pair see Varney jump through it into the room that Alucard had seen barriered off earlier, and the figure performing the ceremony behind it is none-other than Saint Germain. Saint Germain had escaped the infinite corridor, only after meeting another alchemist who told him the secret of controlling the paths between worlds, he had to merge two souls into one body, a man and woman, creating a perfect alchemical being of power that he could control to finally find his lost love. Varney opened up the barrier to let the witches bring their stitched together corpse into the room. Before the spell could be cast, Varney for some reason, reveals that he is the elemental called Death, that consumes the spirits of the dead, and that’s why he wanted Dracula back, because he’d go mad being trapped in the stitched together body with Lisa and kill everything. After threatening Saint Germain to finish the spell that he was totally going to cast anyway before Varney’s big reveal, the souls of Dracula and Lisa are brought back and immediately trapped. Trevor, Sypha, and Alucard had fought through tons of monsters, the four witches, and the vampire commander of the invading army however, and break through the barrier just at that moment, and a single throw of Trevor’s throwing cross covered in holy water destroys the fused body before it ever has a chance to do damage.
This is where the final battle truly begins, as the destruction of the fused soul’s body broke that wing off the top of the castle where it levitated, leaving Trevor with Death and Saint Germain, who was dying after a piece of the now broken throwing cross impaled him. Sypha and Alucard are cut off from him, and he tells Sypha he loves her and that Trefor is a terrible name, implying they had gotten pregnant. Trevor faces down a Death empowered after consuming the magic of Saint Germain’s key to the Infinite Corridor, and they duel, with Trevor grimly expecting to die in the battle. It is hard fought, and Trevor with the last of his energy charges at Death, putting the gems he had found in the magical dagger, making it glow with power and lunges at this final boss stabbing him, and being consumed in the light of the explosion.
Epilogue
Two weeks later, Alucard and Greta have agreed to have the townspeople build a fully new town around his castle and work has already begun in earnest. While Alucard is unsure of his ability to coexist with humans, Greta points out that she knows he’s been taking care of the orphans at that some even call him dad, and that he has enough of a heart that correcting them is something that would make him feel bad, so he hasn’t. Sypha emerges from the castle, apparently after meeting with nobody for two weeks, with intents to ride back to her caravan. Alucard and Greta convince her to stay and learn of her pregnancy, and she picks up on their relationship as well, and upon asking the name of the new town, Alucard said he’s considering Belmont. It’s not over yet, as we yet again have a horse with a heavily wounded rider show up, but this time, the rider is alive, and it’s Trevor. Trevor survived thanks to Saint Germain, finally thinking straight again for the first time all season, using all his remaining power to send Trevor through the Infinite Corridor after he dealt the final blow on Death using the dagger that is supposed to be enchanted to kill both it’s target and user in the explosion without intervention. The gang is happily all back together looking forward to starting a new life holding down a town, which Alucard teases Trevor as being called Treffy, since he so hated the name Trefor for his impending child.
Our last shot is of a pair running into a tavern, only to be revealed as a resurrected Dracula, now being called Vlad, and Lisa, who seem to have gotten their own bodies back after Saint Germain’s combined body had been destroyed. They look forward to trying to get their lives restarted, talking about going to England to live in a northern monastery town by the sea and leaving Alucard to build his own life too, not wanting to get him entangled with their messes in their previous life, although they do tease that they might meet him again later.
Open Plot Threads
Although this was the final season, there are still some open-ended plot threads that we are left to think about, or even for a potential new season or game to pick up on in the future. The first is of the town of Belmont/Treffy, is is going to survive, will it be peaceful forever, will the child of Trevor and Sypha grow up and have his own adventures, the games are often cross-generational, so that could be a new story to start in a few years with a new show. The second is the journeys of Morana and Striga, how do those go, do they eventually settle down and build plans to take power, as Hector and Lenore conclude may be the nature of vampires, although Isaac earlier in the season had said that something we consider to be nature, may just be the only thing that we know, and that there could be other options for us. Third, speaking of Hector, how does Isaac’s kingdom go, is he going to conquer everybody in order to free them, and is that really freedom at all, an interesting question for a king and conqueror that cares about people having freedom of choice. And lastly, are Dracula and Lisa going to live peacefully, he is painted as a doomed and tragic character throughout the series, so has he finally escaped that doomed fate, or will encounter more issues going forward.
Conclusions
This was a fantastic season and a great end to the show, even though there are open plot threads, they are left open in an optimistic way, not one that leaves you nervous for the future, so we as viewers don’t need to ask questions about what will happen if we take the optimism at face value. The animations were still beautiful, and there was actually less gore and sex as a whole too, which was a little surprising after the violent and sexual ending of the previous season. I also thought that there are some really interesting questions about the nature of mankind as well as the nature of power and corruption brought up in the conversations between Isaac and his troops, and between Hector and Lenore that were handled really maturely and while sometimes some statements were made with a sense of finality, these conversations were generally left open ended, leaving the viewer thinking about the questions instead of just trying to tell the viewer what to think
The best single shot was the first attack Carmilla made in the battle for castle, it’s drawn fantastically and the feeling of her speed and power is so present, but as I said, her entire fight against Isaac is the best fight BY FAR, and it does make the end game fights that the main party face feel less epic in comparison. The enemies are less personal for the main crew and the fights have too many actors in them, which makes them feel more disjointed, removing the emotional investment that you feel in every swing, which felt very present in the Carmilla fight. Additionally Lenore’s suicide, which feels almost like too violent a word for the moment, was also really well done and emotional. I would rank the whole Carmilla surrounded set of storylines to be the best of this season above the Alucard and Trevor plots, which was true in season three as well. In fact, two seasons in a row now I feel that Trevor and Sypha were the least engaging characters, in both the emotional sense, where they didn’t really do anything new, and the combat, where the whip and magic are much less visually and emotionally engaging due to their range compared to Alucard’s knight with a floating sword and Carmilla and Isaac’s sword, knife, and claw melee battles.
I would still rate this super highly, 10/10 still, season 3 may have been better for me, but it’s close to be sure. The Death reveal was just super random and felt forced just to create a boss fight that wasn’t just Dracula again. Also, Lenore was my favorite character and her bittersweet ending was both fantastic and incredibly sad, and now she won’t be in any potential sequel they make in the years to come. That said, this is a series that even knowing all the twists and turns, I will absolutely come back to rewatch in the years to come, and it was a fantastic job by all parties, the writing, directing, animation, art, and voice actors absolutely deserve a round of applause, and I can’t wait to see what the team behind this show has brewing next. Maybe, just maybe, it’s time for a resurrection of the Castlevania games after many years? Only time may tell, but I am excited for what the future of the series has to give.