What is a recap? A miserable little pile of spoilers!
Last we left our heroes and villains, the female general Carmilla had arrived to Dracula’s castle and helped to get things started in a single direction to begin a more direct conflict between the war council and the heroic trio, who themselves are on the hunt toward the fabled Belmont Hold.
Today we’ll dive into the third episode of Castlevania season two, “Shadow Battles.”
Warning: Castlevania is a mature series. Imagery, language, and themes may not be suited for young audiences.
1. Hector’s Further Origins
The episode starts with us learning about the origins of Hector’s undead puppy, Cezar, and the first time the Devil Forgemaster ever learned about his powers with magic. For understandable reasons, his parents were less than thrilled by the fact that he came home with a reanimated dog.
As he explains to Carmilla, he had first met Dracula during his travels abroad when the vampire sought him out while trying to learn about all of humanity as per Lisa’s wishes. Hector had been living alone with a group of reanimated small animals, showing his proclivity not toward undead soldiers, but toward gaining pets of his own to keep him company. Once Lisa had been killed, he had been visited once more, and asked to help create an army of night creatures, constructing them rather than allowing them to come into existence naturally in smaller amounts as would be the case without Forgemasters, to avenge her death.
In order to secure Hector’s aid, Dracula lied to him by omission, letting him dictate that the human species would be culled to a smaller, manageable population to make sure they could not harm anyone else but kept in merciful conditions, rather than exterminated outright or made to suffer needlessly. The fact that Dracula returned his request with a promise that he would “bring a merciful end to the human plague” did not seem to register as sinister as it should have, but as ever hindsight is better than in the moment. Evidently, he was wrong to trust the word of the grief-stricken lord, but he is unwilling to turn against him, even as he sees that “the fire has gone out” in his master.
2. A Coalition Within the Ranks?
Carmilla appears to be trying to manipulate Hector. She preys on his self-worth, praising his skill in forging as well as telling of her admittedly logical plan to send troops to the Belmont estate. While he does agree to it, he still will not act without agreement from Dracula himself.
In order to get around that, Carmilla takes a different tack. She tells Hector to create night creatures that he can trust completely with whatever it is they happened to find, knowing that those reanimated by Forgemasters are completely loyal to their reanimator personally and that reanimator’s goals. Afterwards, she requests that he help her to convince Dracula to allow them to attack Braila. She even repeats this “request” as a demand when she speaks to Godbrand later, so whatever the reason, going to that town is important to her.
3. A History of Violence
The heroes arrive at the destroyed Belmont estate, where Trevor had lived until he had been forced to abandon it when he was at some age between twelve and fourteen. Finding the stone door to the Hold below, they rely on Sypha’s skill with magic to unlock it with the proper Enochian incantation.
On the way down the spiral staircase into the massive library, Trevor explains certain things about the Belmont family history. They came from France, leaving eastward to follow “the work.” The one who came to Wallachia was one Leon Belmont, who was hunting Dracula at the time, and ended up building the house along with digging the foundations for the massive trove underneath it. Leon Belmont is famous in Castlevania lore as the very first Belmont to declare his intention to “hunt the night” after being manipulated into the initial creation of Dracula himself from someone he once considered a friend in the 1100s, as shown in Castlevania: Lament of Innocence.
While Trevor is happy to find new armaments in the form of the legendary Morning Star flail (an upgrade over his Vampire Killer whip), and Sypha is similarly amazed by the immense amount of knowledge secured by the Belmonts over the centuries in a vast assortment of languages, Alucard is not exactly enthusiastic about being in what is essentially “like a museum dedicated to the extermination of [his] people,” which includes many skulls of various creatures, including what appear to be child vampires, on display. The half-vampire even notes, sarcastically, that the Belmonts appear to have been “mentally ill hoarders” to secure all of this occult information in their books and artifacts.
Continued below4. Godbrand’s Intellect
Godbrand, of all people, realizes something significant about their crusade: if the vampires exterminate all of the humans, what will they have to eat? Other more common livestock such as pigs won’t be good enough for the long term, as Godbrand admits (rather embarrassed and more than a bit crass) that “pig’s blood gives [him] the shits.”
Godbrand tells Carmilla that Dracula doesn’t appear to have drank any blood at all recently. In all, their leader does not seem to be giving much, if any thought to how vampires will really survive after the fall of all humans. As is, his “war” seems less like one the more they look at it, and more like a protracted suicide that threatens to take all of vampire society with him.
On account of his anger, Godbrand even goes directly to Dracula himself to lodge his complaints, but shows another pearl of intelligence when he elects to back down from them when threatened and demeaned in return by the far superior (not to mention far taller) undead lord.
5. Carmilla’s Intentions
When speaking with Godbrand in the final moments of the episode, Carmilla makes clear her true allegiances by explaining her origins. She had been turned centuries ago by a male vampire who had promised to “give [her] the world.” However, over time he continued to age, growing in both cruelty and madness, with her bound to his wishes. Ultimately, she had decided to assassinate him with a spiked noose.
She learned her lesson from that encounter, as well as a major element to her personality. She refused to ever again follow the commands of “mad, old men.” Considering that Dracula, the “leader of [the vampire] nation,” was similarly mad, cruel, and old, she seems to wish to take control for herself, one way or the other.
