Castlevania's defining trait, since the beginning, is that it's better than it has any right to be. I'm talking about the animated series on Netflix, which found its groove in Season 2 by combining surprisingly articulate conversations between murderous vampires and ruminations on loss and legacy with explosive action sequences. You could say the same about the original '80s videogame, too, which gave a guy a whip and made him face off against a pastiche of horror movie baddies like mummies and Frankenstein's monster before slaying Dracula.
That flimsy premise somehow sprawled into dozens of games, some of them among the best ever made. Turns out you can't get much cooler than a guy with a whip, if you draw him right.
Season 2 of Castlevania: Nocturne, the centuries-later continuation of Netflix's original Castlevania series, features the best drawings of a guy with a whip yet made by human hands. Granted, the team at Powerhouse Animation are pretty much just competing against themselves at this point—the fluid, snaking whip cracks that impressed in the first couple seasons of Castlevania now look pedestrian next to the superhuman stuff Richter Belmont pulls off in the second half of this season. His whip is so alive, so frequently charged up with a crackling coating of electricity or shards of magical ice as it dismembers a vampire that it almost feels like he's cheating.
How'd this guy so thoroughly out-whip and out-cool his great-great-great-etc.-grandfather Trevor Belmont from the original series? Generational wealth, man. Nothing beats it.
The first season of Nocturne was a reset, proving that the series could continue on by adapting a new game with new characters, and without original writer Warren Ellis, who was accused of sexual misconduct by more than 60 women in 2020. It features a wickedly good villain and turns Castlevania: Rondo of Blood's generic damsel Annette into an Afro-Caribbean slave turned revolutionary with earthbending witchcraft powers drawn from her ancestors, perhaps the best argument for ignoring the source material ever made. It ambitiously grounds the vampire action in the real French Revolution of the late 1700s and earnestly tries to connect the immortal lives of vampires to the political turmoil that feels so urgent—so new—to the young humans fighting demons and the aristocracy all at once.
On ideas and ambition it's the best the series has ever been, but Nocturne Season 2 wastes too much time flitting back and forth between its characters for the first four episodes without meaningfully pushing their stories forward. It's a strange cadence, with short conversations often retreading the same emotional beats. I found myself sorely missing the longer, more overtly philosophical speeches and exchanges in the original show.
Those slow, thoughtful/dark/funny/weird scenes came to define Netflix's Castlevania just as much as its action. It was the odd balance of the two, so unexpected in an adaptation of a series where you smash in secret walls to find roasted turkeys and snag hearts hidden in candelabras, that made the show a rare treasure.
Nocturne just doesn't quite have the same flair for words or pacing, first dragging its heels and then rushing to its conclusion. There was room for more quality time between Richter and Annette and the world-weary Alucard, who pulls off one action move ripped straight from Symphony of the Night that had me howling. There could've been time for some more indulgent speeches with sharper plotting across the eight episodes to make better use of the supporting cast, which is even more varied and interesting than the original show's.
Those missteps hold Nocturne back from greatness, but my god, what a spectacle it is when Powerhouse Animation goes all-out; the time, skill, and budget poured into this season's fights tower above everything they've done before.
I'll be rewatching clips of these fights for years to come.
I'll be rewatching clips of these fights for years to come. Trying to describe them would be pointless. Just be prepared to finish the series and immediately yearn for the Castlevania game that makes you feel even 1% as badass as Richter at peak performance. Only Konami could squander advertising this good and not have a single new Castlevania game to show for the eight years this show's been running. Ah, well; Vampire Survivors or Dead Cells it is, then.
Nocturne teases a mystery that could unravel into a third season, but it also culminates in such a relentlessly escalating battle that there's a sense of Powerhouse leaving it all on the field here. What's left, really? Bringing back Dracula just to kill him again? Maybe this is where it should end. But as long as there's still a whip, I'll be there for the next one.
