When Castlevania: Nocturne debuted in 2023, I claimed it was the best Castlevania season, which I still stand by. The animation, tone, and complexity were welcome changes, but Season 2 had the potential to undermine all of that. Thankfully, for the most part, it didn’t.
While Castlevania: Nocturne’s second season may have a few more flaws than its stellar first season, it’s still ultimately a good show that kept me hooked for its eight-episode run. It had a little bit of everything you could have wanted from a more grounded and serious Castlevania adventure, but I can’t help but feel that Season 2 was a bit of a give-and-take. Certain characters shined, with others floundered. The action was wonderful, but the steps to get there were shaky.
Taking place almost immediately after the events of the first season, our heroes Richter (Edward Bluemel), Maria (Pixie Davies), and Annette (Thuso Mbedu), are joined by Alucard (James Callis) as they find a way to stop the empowered Erzsebet Bathory (Franka Potente). This involves tracking down the mummified remains of the goddess Sekhmet, whose powers were channeled into Erzsebet over the course of several centuries. While Richter and Annette join Alucard on this expedition, Maria instead opts to stay behind in Machecoul to not only grieve over the vampirification of her mother but also swear bloody vengeance against her father Emmanuel, who serves as Erzsebet’s Forgemaster and was indirectly responsible for what happened to her mother.

The first half of the second season is a fairly slow affair as the first handful of episodes are dedicated to the fallout of Erzsebet’s arrival. Our heroes are licking their wounds and trying to pick up the pieces, which is totally fine, but it dwells on this for a tinge too long. Even when the setting shifts to Paris, it doesn’t feel like much is happening because of how belabored certain plot points are. Everything related to Sekhmet’s power just feels so overcomplicated that by the time it ties into the climax, I just tune out the hows and whys of what’s happening in favor of just watching the pretty animation.
For example, the episode intros to half of Castlevania: Nocturne’s second season are spent fleshing out not Erzsebet’s backstory, but rather the history of her second-in-command Drolta and the importance of Sekhmet. We learn about Drolta’s relationship with Sekhmet, her desire to find a suitable vessel for her spirit, explaining why her spirit is in multiple parts, and her inevitable meeting with Erzsebet. I would also be more forgiving of the abundance of lore if it amounted to anything more than power-ups, but that’s what it basically is. Plus, given how the season ends, it’s hard not to find a lot of the set-up slightly pointless, especially with how Erzsebet is treated.
While Erzsebet was depicted as this imposing and grand figure in the first season, she almost plays second fiddle to Drolta and her expanded role in the second season. Erzsebet becomes nothing more than a proxy for Drolta, but the problem with that is Drolta isn’t interesting. The 12-foot giant vampire who is heralded as the vampire messiah with the power to match is. Focusing on Drolta just doesn’t land.

Thankfully, most of the other main characters in Castlevania: Nocturne shine. Despite being separated from the party for most of the season, Maria has an excellent character arc as she grapples with all of the changes to her family and her desire for justice, which becomes more and more twisted the further she receives guidance from her vampiric mother Tera (Nastassja Kinski). Their scenes are great mostly because even up until the end of the season, we never really know if we can fully trust Tera now given her more morally ambiguous presentation.
Annette also gets some solid development as she learns more and more about her powers. Even Juste Belmont (Iain Glen) gets a moment or two to shine, which is wonderful since Richter gets virtually no development whatsoever. He’s still a cinnamon roll of a protagonist and while I may have liked that in the first season, the lack of any meaningful development of his personality makes me pine for Trevor.
And then there’s Alucard. From the opening scene where Alucard bursts into an Egyptian tomb, kills several vampires, and then curses about how Sekhment’s mummy wasn’t there, it felt like seeing an old friend after several years. Granted, he doesn’t have the same dynamic with Richter and Annette that he did with Trevor and Sypha, something that even he notes, but they still make a fine team. He’s sardonic as hell, but when he has moments to reflect upon his long life with characters like Maria, it hits harder because we know exactly what he’s been through.

As for the animation, while I found that Castlevania: Nocturne has moments where characters look weirdly proportioned, the action scenes more than make up for it. Again, they never reach the same level of gore and bloodshed that the original show did, but here it’s instead made up for with infinitely more creative fight scenes. The entirety of episode 7 is just an all-out brawl between our heroes and villains and it’s a fantastic fight. It may have taken a while to get to that point given the pacing and questionable decisions made in the first six episodes, but it all comes together in the end.
In a way, I’m almost reminded of the original Castlevania’s second season. It spent too much time dealing with the fallout of the first season, had characters putz around one place for too long, then delivered a brutal and highly entertaining climax. All of that is just as true for Castlevania: Nocturne‘s second season. While its problems are mostly tied to its larger cast of characters, the highs are worth it. The character drama is good when it needs to be and the action always delivers. While it’s not certain what the future may hold for the series given the finale and how, again, it mirrors the original show’s second season with an ending that oddly wraps up most of its major plot threads, it leaves just enough wiggle room where I can hope that we’ll see this cast return once more for some vampire slaying action.
Published: Jan 19, 2025 10:57 pm