Episode 6 of Castlevania: Nocturne Season 1 opens with something we’ve been waiting for all season – the arrival of Countess Bathory, otherwise known as the Vampire Messiah, in France.
She lives up to expectations, I suppose, feasting on a despairing young woman for a meal. Traveling does make one hungry, after all.
She doesn’t seem very nice, in other words. Here’s what else she gets up to.
Spoilers ahead.
Castlevania: Nocturne Season 1 Episode 6 Recap
A good portion of “Guilty Men to Be Judged” concerns itself with both Richter and Maria trying to deal with the revelations made at the end of Episode 5 that drastically recontextualize everything they thought they knew about their own lives.
Juste Belmont
Juste, it turns out, has been watching Richter his whole life, remaining on the outskirts and watching him grow, but never intervening. However, Richter is more shocked and dismayed to learn that Tera not only knew about Juste but had promised never to reveal him to Richter.
Juste, one of the most powerful mages in the entire Belmont line, lost his powers after also losing both his beloved wife, Lydie, and his friend Maxim. Both were killed by a vampire named Lord Ruthven.
Juste, by the way, is the protagonist in Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance.
Meanwhile, Maria is still reeling from the news that the Abbot, one of the season’s Big Bads, is her father. And he seems to want to bond with her.
Castlevania has a habit of humanizing its villains – even its non-human ones, ironically – in surprising and interesting ways, and the Abbot’s relationship with Maria suddenly makes him much more interesting than he was as a mere zealot.
Likewise, Olrox, who through his design, his dialogue, and his relationship with Mizrak is becoming something of a romantic figure. When he explains to his new lover how Julia Belmont killed his first and only love, you do get the sense that his vengeance was poetic to him rather than rooted in outright evil.
He also feeds on the rich, which definitely helps make him a bit more likable.
Castlevania: Nocturne Season 1 Episode 6 Ending Explained
As it turns out, Richter meeting Juste is an important step in his personal development as it allows him to regain the magic he lost as a child.
At the end of the episode, Richter and Juste are both ambushed by a few of the Countess’s vampires, who get the upper hand quickly.
In their eagerness to torment Richter with threats of harm and torture coming to his loved ones, though, they awaken something inside of him, and his magic comes back with a vengeance.
Richter defeats all of the attackers easily, and his resolve to stand by his friends and fight off the vampire menace is stiffened.
You can stream Castlevania: Nocturne Season 1 Episode 6, “Guilty Men to Be Judged”, exclusively on Netflix.
