Castlevania season 2, episode 2 recap: Old Homes

Season 2, episode 2 of Netflix original Castlevania sees Belmont under-equipped for the job of locating Dracula’s castle, but Dracula may soon find him!

“Old Homes” delves deeper into the politics of Castlevania‘s primary villain, Vlad Dracula Tepes (Graham McTavish). In the previous episode, we were introduced to Dracula’s war council — hellbent on its vengeance against humanity. When vampiress Carmilla (Jaime Murray) joins the club, she immediately questions his approach. She asks (almost defiantly) why his wife was never turned into a vampire, and also why he should go to war with the world over her death.

Villagers, pitchforks, torches…the usual

So far, Castlevania has bothered to address the motives of its heroes and villains, making them seem like complex, damaged characters. As another example, Alucard (James Callis) is a half-human, half-vampire ally to Trevor Belmont (Richard Armitage), joining him on the quest to destroy his father. Although Dracula taught his wife to be a doctor, Alucard also says his father also devised machines to blot out the sun. Indeed, Dracula is regularly sending out creatures to wreak havoc on humans.

Unlike Alucard, Belmont or Sypha (Alejandra Reynoso), most humans can’t easily use swords, whip and magic to defeat flying demons. In fact, when they combat something it’s usually in large numbers, with pitchforks, torches and a high degree of superstition (at least in the time period of Castlevania.) So, oddly enough, their own violence is what has incurred Dracula’s twisted wrath!

Similarly, Dracula’s loyal forge master Isaac ( Adetokumboh M’Cormack) wouldn’t be vengeful had he not been a whipped slave for much of his life. So cruel was his master, he commanded Isaac never to use the word love again! During a key flashback moment, we see Isaac finally gouge out the man’s eyes, then presumably blaze his own trail leading into Dracula’s deadly entourage. Now he self-flagellates to endure a world of horrors, and he believes Dracula will “bring about a pure and clean world of loyalty and love.” Keep in mind, this is despite him being a human!

Toward the end of “Old Homes,” Isaac extracts information from a fallen demon, potentially leading the vampires to Alucard and Belmont. Carmilla is also afraid of something powerful at the old Belmont estate, which may be able to destroy them.

That’s it for this Castlevania recap! What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments!