Castlevania on Netflix

Just finished watching season 4 of Castlevania on Netflix. Thought I would give my thoughts and opinions on this show.

The show is quite good. Thought they did a fantastic job with the main cast of characters: Trevor Belmont, Sypha Belnades, Alucard and Dracula.

Trevor is the last surviving member of the Belmont family. He is brash, flippant and is lacking in ambition. Content to drink his days away. I thought he was a good character and had a good arc. I enjoyed his fighting style especially later when he acquires more weapons. And his final fight was indeed epic.

Sypha is a speaker magician. She records history and is powerful in using ice and fire magic. I liked Sypha well enough and thought they did a good job with her character. In fact, this is how you do female representation right. One of my pet peeves in entertainment is the trend of pretending that woman are equal to men in fighting ability. In Castlevania, Sypha is powerful. But she doesn’t beat up and throw around 250 pound men and destroy giant horrific monsters with her fighting ability. No, instead she uses magic. And it works.

Alucard is half-vampire half-human. The son of Dracula. Amazing character but I think they should have made him even more powerful. Alucard fights Dracula to a stand-still yet has some trouble fighting monsters that even a headwomen of a village can easily dispatch (I’ll get to her later). I would’ve like to see more of a Dr. Manhatten vibe from him where he is closer to a god than a human.

Dracula is portrayed excellently in this show. His revenge on the world of humans in season 1 was legendary. Very important for a show like this to have an iconic antagonist and Dracula surely fits the bill.

As for the side characters, I like both the forgemasters Isaac and Hector. Isaac is one of the few cases where woke casting actually works. In the original game Isaac is white but they turned him into a Muslim character in this animated series. Still, Isaac was an intriguing character and I think they did him justice.

Carmilla and her vampire sisters. I wasn’t a huge fan of these characters. Carmilla was a decent antagonist as a man hating feminist vampire but their crew got tiresome after awhile. I did enjoy Hector and Lenore’s relationship though. Though I think they way Lenore’s arc ended was completely out of character and kind of ruined her arc for me.

Saint Germain was an amazing side character. He is mysterious and has a charming personality. Loved his arc.

The vampire antagonist Varney was annoying and throughout the season I started to wonder if he was part of woke casting as well. I was thinking how could such an annoying pussy be a part of Dracula’s inner circle. But it all made sense in the end. Good character.

Overall it was a great show. But I have some trepidation about the show going forward as season 4 had alot of unnecessary woke casting. Particularly Greta and the shaved head black girl who is the leader of the royal guard… Greta is a black or mixed race headswoman of the closest village to Alucard’s castle. She asks for Alucard’s help and when he comes to save the day she is ungrateful. She is the annoying woke woman character trope we’ve seen so much over the years. Always trying to banter with Alucard but it always comes off as cringeworthy. They also made her an unbelievable fighter. She must kill at least 15+ demons in the show that even the main characters have a hard time dealing with. It’s ridiculous.

As for the shaved head black girl stereotype who is the leader of the Royal guard. She is equally unbelievable and made me suspend my disbelief watching the show. Also, her heroic martyr scene wasn’t played well. I never felt any emotion upon her death when I should have. Basically the scene is Trevor is fighting off demons to protect villagers and out of nowhere 2 PoC villages come out of nowhere to stand in front of Trevor and save him from a death dealing blow, dying in the process. This scene could have been played alot better by showing these villagers watching from the sidelines in fear and reverence of Trevor and then they shield Trevor in that decisive moment. Instead they come out of nowhere and it lacks that emotional payoff. Then the shaved head girl sacrifices herself to save Trevor as well but this also lacks any emotional payoff. Alot of wasted potential here.

Another pet peeve is the insistence in season 4 to make all the villages mixed race. It’s almost as if it’s not allowed to have all white casts in media even if it’s set in medieval Europe. This also made me suspend my disbelief. To have a village of about 10-15 houses being half white and half black made me start to think in the middle of watching it: Do these villages segregate and only have sex with the same race as them? Shouldn’t they all be mixed race if there are black and whites in the same village? It’s just stupid and only put in to virtue signal. One more pet peeve is portraying all the white farmers as idiotic inbred goat fuckers. That was a little much. Last pet peeve is that it seems like every village has a female leader. Even after Carmilla rants about how every town is ruled by an old man. Once Trevor and Sypha show up it’s always a female in charge. Pretty dumb…

So, all in all the show was good. But with the woke casting of season 4 I’m a little worried for future expansions of the show.

• This topic was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by Gadfly360.