Quick Critique: Castlevania Season 2 (Patreon)

Castlevania is back on Netflix and instead of the short season of just 4 episodes, we get 8 episodes with still only 2 episodes worth of content. They go heavier with the Playstation games over Castlevania 3 this time. And you get some good stuff from the game like Hector and devil forging, Carmilla, and lots of nods to the games and enemies in the Belmont’s archives. Slogra and Gaibon even show up, but aren’t referenced by name. I'm bummed they went with Leon being the head of the Belmont clan; Sonia will always have a place I my heart, even though I liked Leon’s story. But despite these good bits, very little actually happens across the whole season. Episodes feel like the same three plot points repeated over and over with no progression. Carmilla is written as such an uninteresting character but she's the backbone of this season. Her motivations are instantly obvious, hackneyed, and poorly executed. When something cool actually does happen in the show, it feels amazing. There’s a scene with Sypha and the Castle that’s really tense, shot well, and well animated, but it takes six episodes to get that sequence and nothing else reaches that level. Dracula is still the star of the show, but he’s relegated to a bit player and it takes a long time to get his plot moving. Dracula gets one good sequence but it's dulled by the constant parade of uber violence and gore so the one time you get to see Dracula fight, it's when you've already seen a boring Dracula flashback fight and the combat has long grown stale. And I still hate their Trevor. He somehow seems even dumber and more childish in this set of episodes and that’s weirdly a repeated theme for the season. When you think vampire hunters and the army of the dead, you’re really just thinking about a story of men that act like kids in adult bodies, right? This series sure hopes you do.

It’s a really rough show to recommend, even to die-hard Castlevania fans. When neat stuff happens, it’s so very neat, but even at only 8 episodes long, this season feels drawn out and tedious. Castlevania is a franchise with fantastic lore, characters, and music but the writing in this show manages to somehow just make it all seem so dull.