When Netflix first launched Castlevania, it delivered to life a beloved online game franchise with gorgeous animation and a star-studded voice forged. It was a slick sequence that capitalized on the fantastical nature of the sport with out sacrificing any of the grimdark themes as a result of medium. After a profitable four-season run, it solely made sense for Netflix to construct on the success and proceed with Castlevania: Nocturne. This time, the spin-off adapts essentially the most well-known entries of the franchise: Castlevania: Rondo of Blood and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night time.
Created by Clive Bradley (fully separating the sequel from the problematic Warren Ellis, who created the unique) and produced by Kevin Kolde, Castlevania: Nocturne has all of the hallmarks of the primary sequence: the identical animation type, the identical deft storytelling, and the identical ruthlessness with regards to the motion. Set about 300 years after Trevor and Sypha’s story, we observe Richter Belmont (Edward Bluemel) as our brooding protagonist, who’s vampire-hunting throughout the top of the French Revolution. At his facet is the mother-daughter duo of Tera (Nastassja Kinski) and Maria (Pixie Davis), each highly effective magic customers and French revolutionaries. Alongside the best way, they meet a sorceress named Annette (Thuso Mbedu) and her good friend Edouard (Sydney James Harcourt), an opera singer.
Nocturne is working with extra recognizable franchise faces like Richter, Annette, and Olrox (Zahn McClarnon), however the sequence isn’t afraid to transform a few of the characters. It’s not straightforward for Richter to fill the sneakers of Trevor Belmont (Richard Armitage), who was a bit extra roguish and charmingly sardonic. Whereas Bluemel does job with the brand new character, it’s arduous to match as much as Armitage’s tone and timbre.
The true star of Nocturne, nonetheless, is definitely Annette, and Mbedu does a improbable job embodying the character’s vary of feelings whereas the sequence offers Annette a complete reimagining. Within the video games, Annette could be very a lot the pale, fairly girlfriend of Richter, typically put within the place of a damsel in misery; in Nocturne, she is an ex-slave from the Caribbean who has come to France on a mission. Her energy stems from her ancestral line, and though everybody appears to have the ability to use magic on this sequence, hers is especially particular and highly effective.
Annette has essentially the most fascinating growth because the present follows her escape from her vampire masters, her friendship with Edouard, and the eventual tragedy that strikes when the 2 of them arrive in France. Equally, Edouard’s journey provides complexity and layers to a personality who was initially little greater than a sidekick at finest. His relationship with Annette and his character arc is among the most compelling and presents one thing new to the mythology of the sequence.
In the meantime, the villainous Olrox is given an origin story; making him Indigenous is a stroke of genius, and McClarnon proves his chops as a voice actor for the function. There may be an plain menace to Olrox, a robust vampire magician who’s Richter’s sworn enemy, however as his story slowly unravels, he turns into way over simply one other dangerous man for our heroes to kill.
After watching the sequence and revisiting Castlevania, what’s lacking in Nocturne is the vampires themselves. The unique sequence gave us vampire queens and vampire Vikings, to not point out Alucard and Dracula. They had been multi-faceted characters who didn’t draw back from the menace that comes with being a bloodsucker. Nevertheless, Nocturne largely performs the vampires as one-note. Even Olrox generally leans into the mustache-twirling villain trope a bit an excessive amount of.
Probably the most fascinating villain can also be the one which we see the least of. The vampire messiah, a determine that the vampires tout as their savior, is talked about all through the season, however Erzebet Báthory (Franka Potente) solely actually makes her look towards the top of the sequence. Anybody who is aware of the story of the real-life Erzebet, higher identified to English audio system as Elizabeth Bathory, will know she’s a improbable substitute for Dracula’s absence on this sequence. A serial killer noblewoman who turned a determine of fable, Bathory is mythologized to have bathed within the blood of virgins and was a possible inspiration for Bram Stoker‘s notorious Dracula — and once we meet her, she’s each bit as terrifying and enigmatic as you would possibly anticipate. If solely we truly had extra of her within the present.