Castlevania Season Two Review: Politics As Unusual in the Fight Against Dracula

I distinctly remember how the first season of Castlevania came to be on Netflix, dropping with little warning and hijacking my Saturday. As an unplanned viewing experience, I remember having already bought tickets to see Spider-Man: Homecoming on its weekend debut, but almost missing my movie because the curiosity of one episode of Castlevania quickly turned into four. And to be clear, four episodes was the entire first season. It was a drive-by onslaught of micro world building, myth-raising and incredible, gory action. In four quick episodes we got Dracula’s revenge on the humans for killing his wife and the introductions of our heroes fighting against him in Trevor Belmont of the almost extinct but expert monster killing Belmonts, Sypha, a magician and part of the legendary Speakers and Dracula’s own half human son Alucard. Season one was condensed between these characters and the corrupt church that set plans in motion, mostly confined to one town where the action takes place.

Season two is a very different animal. Given an eight episode run (for which we got to see the first six episodes of), the second season expands the series in predictable but mostly beneficial ways. The cast of characters that matter to the plot balloons significantly, exclusively on the Dracula side of things. We are entreated to Dracula’s war council: Vampires from all over the world, summoned by himself to help eradicate the humans of Wallachia. We only get a look at a couple of those vampire g…