Summary
“The Natural Order” drops a couple of intriguing surprises while fleshing out the motivations of the show’s heroes and villains alike.
Episode 5 of Castlevania: Nocturne Season 1 has a willingness to show vulnerability in its cool, vampire-hunting protagonist that many other shows could learn from.
In its opening scenes, after fleeing from his vampire nemesis in Episode 4, Richter Belmont cries alone.
This isn’t a superficial detail in “The Natural Order”. Richter’s reaction to seeing Olrox, his mother’s killer, again is important for both his own character arc and those of others, especially Annette, who has her own hostile relationship with the past, as we learned in Episode 3.
Spoilers ahead.
Castlevania: Nocturne Season 1 Episode 5 Recap
After the battle in the bowels of the abbey, the heroes have managed to flee and reassess.
Annette, after patching up Maria’s wounds with a softly spoken Creole incantation, is itching to return to the abbey and free the captive Edouard, not to mention kill every vampire and conspirator she can find.
She’s also not keen on Richter’s disappearing act. After all, if she had fled in terror from her own past, she would never have survived slavery, embraced her powers, or met Edouard.
Annette agrees to only carry out reconnaissance rather than intervening in anything. When she ventures out, she almost immediately spots Drolta being driven in a carriage and follows.
Drolta is on her way to meet with Olrox at a graveyard, fresh from attending the funeral of the Marquis, whose widow has taken to carrying his severed head around in her arms.
She meets with Olrox, to whom she explains how they’re preserving a tentative alliance with the humans. He remains unconvinced, however, especially about the Messiah.
Annette Gets Revenge
After Annette has overheard this conversation she gets into a confrontation with Vaublanc. Using her powers, she fashions the bars of the graveyard into a prison made of crucifixes which the old vampire can’t even touch, let alone escape from. As the sun rises, Vaublanc spills more information about Countess Bathory.
The general idea is that she drank the blood of the Egyptian God Sekhmet, the daughter of Ra, and is therefore utterly undefeatable. This is why she commands such influence and fear and why so many, even those who obviously disagree with her, have pledged allegiance to her.
Annette leaves Vaublanc in his prison to burn to death as the sun rises.
Castlevania: Nocturne Season 1 Episode 5 Ending Explained
At the end of the episode, two very significant things happen.
One is that the Abbot arrives at the home of Tera and Maria, partly to attempt to justify his actions as being in the best interests of France itself and religion in general. But what he lets slip is much more interesting – he’s Maria’s father.
With this bombshell dropped, we get another one. During his soul-searching self-imposed exile, Richter meets an older man with long white hair in a pub. After Castlevania’s equivalent of a bar fight, which includes a beheading, the old man introduces himself as Juste Belmont – Richter’s grandfather.
You can stream Castlevania: Nocturne Season 1 Episode 5, “The Natural Order”, exclusively on Netflix.
