Summary
Castlevania: Nocturne Season 2 retains the high quality of its predecessor – and the main series – in a more character-focused sophomore outing that nonetheless has its fair share of epic action.
We’re at a point now where anything that debuts on Netflix with Castlevania in the title is a guaranteed good time, which if you’d told me just a few years ago, I never would have believed. The first season of Castlevania: Nocturne shouldn’t have worked, really; shouldn’t have been able to recapture the same – or even similar – magic. The fact Season 2 pulls it off as well is pretty remarkable.
The extent to which it pulls it off is probably going to be open to interpretation. I was somewhat in the minority when I praised the first season, and this second batch of eight episodes opts to focus more on character and emotional depth than splashy action and worldbuilding. Not that there isn’t plenty of action, obviously. But it’s less the point this time around.
But the same creative team – Clive Bradley at the helm, with Sam and Adam Deats directing and the formidable Powerhouse Animation (Blood of Zeus, Skull Island, and so on) bringing it all to life – commit to the challenge. Season 2 of Castlevania: Nocturne feels like a real outgrowth of the first season’s ending, which left things in quite a state and left the introduction of Alucard (James Callis) as a spicy cliffhanger.
Alucard’s presence is the primary difference between the two seasons. As the most iconic franchise character and a mainstay of the main show, Callis’s deep drawl is a comforting throughline. He has an interesting if fractious relationship with Richter (Edward Bluemel) but mostly provides the right kind of gravitas for Erzsebet (Franka Potente) – now imbued with the spirit of Sekhmet – to feel like a properly large-scale threat.
(L to R) Thuso Mbedu as Annette, Edward Bluemel as Richter Belmont, James Callis as Alucard in Castlevania: Nocturne S2. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2024
Speaking of Erzsebet, she’s hoping to combine with the other half of Sekhmet’s soul to increase her powers tenfold, which sends Richter, Alucard, and Annette (Thuso Mbedu) on a mission to Paris to try and prevent that. In the meantime, Maria (Pixie Davis), still haunted by Tera’s (Nastassja Kinski) transition in Season 1, finds herself on a more personal journey with Richter’s grandfather Juste (Iain Glen, The Rig) and Mizrak (Aaron Neil), separating the main cast into two distinct groups.
There are also subplots for the bad guys, including the surviving and uniquely self-aware night creature Edouard (Sydney James Harcourt) – still love his design, by the way – and Erzebet’s right-hand woman Drolta (Elarica Johnson, from P-Valley), who is quickly brought back into the fold despite her apparent demise in the first season.
Sometimes these deviations take the form of flashbacks to flesh out the mythology and deepen the existing characters. Annette gets a few particularly interesting jaunts into the spirit realm that provide substantial emotional payoff in the endgame, which in classic Castlevania fashion is a large-scale, Avengers Assemble-style delight that puts Powerhouse to the test. Unsurprisingly, they pass with flying colors.
I have no idea if Castlevania: Nocturne Season 3 is on the cards. Season 2 ends impressively but not conclusively, which suggests that if the sophomore outing proves popular, there might be more to come. At this point, I certainly wouldn’t grumble. Netflix remains the one-stop shop for high-quality video game animations, which after Arcane and Onimusha and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is truer now than it ever has been. Who’d have thought it?
