Castlevania Season 3: 11 Reasons You Should Watch
Even with Dracula gone, hell has yet to rest.
With the trailer for season 3 racking up more than 1.8 million views and over 106,000 likes as of writing, even though it was only released 3 weeks prior to premiere, it's safe to say that people were thirsting hard for Castlevania's new season. With Castlevania hitting Top 5 Shows streaming on Netflix for its premiere week, clearly the numbers weren't too overblown.
Though the last season ended beautifully, with the franchise's biggest bad out of commission, Season 3 still had a lot of story to tell with a lot of amazing characters to follow. And tell it did - even if a lot of what fans expected after Season 2 is still a ways off.
While there might be a hundred different reasons why this critically acclaimed season is worth watching for adult audiences (with its mature themes and explicit violence and - surprisingly - sexual content), we've narrowed it down to 10 for easy reading.
This list contains some spoilers for Season 3 of Netflix's Castlevania (though specifics are avoided).
11. The Psychedelic Elements
Writer Warren Ellis leant heavily on the psychedelic, and maybe even cosmic, horror of season 3, from the night creature with bioluminescent mushrooms growing out of its head to the surprising and unexpected elements of dimensional and time travel which feel more at home in a Doctor Who episode (complete with colourful TARDIS portal travel) than an episode of Castlevania.
These elements open a lot of mysteries for the world of Netflix's Castlevania at large, but feel fitting for the more unexplained aspects of the first two seasons's relationship with magic, time, and the way both of these play into Dracula's own story and the stories of those fighting him.
Ellis also mentions, as someone who's never played the games but done extensive research, how the lore of Castlevania struck him as ripe for such strange horror. Part of the reason for this is the games inserting elements for gameplay that, if taken from a storytelling standpoint, have disturbing or larger implications, which Ellis is happy to incorporate into the more narrative structure of the show.
An example of this is the Infinite Corridor, which brings characters to alternate universes - strange to find in a story about killing vampires.