Castlevania Season 4 Thoughts

 Okay, so Spoilers for season 4

Netflix needs to start telling folks two seasons ahead of time that they plan to cancel them. That way showrunners have enough time to produce shows that end in a satisfying way. I think this is the main point and the main problem I've had with just about every Netflix show's ending. It just needed more episodes to make it feel RIGHT. 

Castlevania is no exception. Admittedly, it took me a minute to come to this conclusion. I ENJOYED what they offered. It was beautiful. It worked. Just....not enough.

The biggest problem is that they never really brought their plotlines together. People. DO NOT START PLOTLINES UNLESS YOU PLAN TO MERGE THEM TOGETHER. I don't care how far afield you fling characters. That's fine. But you find a way to bring the various plots together by the ending. If not, you wasted everyone's time. 

In the case of Castlevania, we had two groups of characters who NEVER MET ONE ANOTHER. Both sets had Dracula in common, but only during the second season. Past that, both sets continued to have storylines, but those plots never converged. This was useless. And needless. There was a place where it could have happened and didn't, but by then, we were so far into the season it would have felt clunky. However, with another season, it would not have felt that way. 

The show relied too much on McGuffins, but also failed to make them feel earned. In the second season, we were first introduced to the magic mirrors and what they could do, they sounded so very rare. The Belmonts had one. Dracula had one. In the third season, one character's whole story arc was about finding a small one for communication and then a larger one for transport.

This season, everyone has a magic mirror. The crappy enemies have them. The less crappy enemy has one. One guy gets his small magic mirror from some random wizard in the castle. Off-screen. 

The town where Lisa was killed for witchcraft is suddenly full of an underground stash of magical items because their king and queen were wizards. And not just small magical items! Trevor finds a couple of significantly powerful things, including the McGuffin needed to kill a god. That isn't a major plot point though. He just randomly finds stuff to put that weapon together. Oh, and also, there is ANOTHER GIANT MAGIC MIRROR DOWN THERE.

Look, I get there is some videogame logic at play here, but this is when you have to pull away from game logic and focus on narrative flow. 

How to fix it? As I said, two seasons. The first season of the vampire/forgemaster arc would be about reflection on what they want to do with their lives. Don't make Carmilla go crazy because, honestly, the 'smart woman who wants power goes crazy' trope needs to die. Carmilla was introduced as focused and very chill. Making her crazy-so-she-has-to-die was lazy (and rather dangerous) writing. Have Isaac attack, but stop the battle when he and Hector talk about what they really want out of things. Have Lenore comment that she feels the same way. By the end of their collective arc, they've gotten Striga and Morana back and everyone is in agreement that Dracula should not come back. Hector knows where this is going to happen, so they go there to stop it, arriving mid-battle like Sypha and Trev do. 

Alucard and Trevor/Sypha stuff is fine, but needs more detail, especially in terms of Trevor understanding the weapons. No going through the mirror until the end of the season and make it a bigger deal for that to happen. Also, don't reveal the alchemical betrayal until the very end of the first season. Saint Germain's flashback can be the first episode of the second season. 

The second episode and onward should have been that battle and what happens afterward. Two episodes of the lower part of the castle. Two episodes of them battling the completely amazing (and basically wasted) group of wizards and necromancers waiting on the upper floors. An episode where they try to get into the room/Death reveals himself. An episode where they are in the room and trying to stop what is happening. An episode where Drac and Lisa are in the body and all hell breaks loose. Trevor battles Death episode. Then the rest of the season can wrap up where we go from here.

And in terms of that, I think the wisest idea would have been for Alucard and everyone else to agree that it IS best that a new Vampire Council takes the whole area as their domain, with full support and all. It's been very clear for the last two seasons that everyone functions better when there is a strong, dangerous, but stable vampiric leadership going on. It keeps all the necromancers and weird cultists and evil priests in line. The four sisters, the two forge masters, Alucard, and even the other two hunters would form the basis of this Council and keep things as peaceful as possible. If anything has been proven over the last two seasons, it's that Dracula was the most stable force in the land...until he went insane. Something needs to fill that vacuum or nothing will get better. 

But...it's easy for me to reconstruct the plotlines when I wasn't the one under pressure to do it for Netflix. I get that. And before anyone thinks I hated this, I really didn't I loved it. Some of the battle scenes were so beautiful I had to watch them several times, especially the one with Carmilla. That's the thing though, I loved this so much that I know it deserved more.