There is a lot to talk about in the final season of Castlevania. With surprising returns, shocking deaths, and some significant life-changing events, all of the main characters leave the season different than how they entered it. If you need the Netflix Castlevania ending explained, then there is nobody better to do it than creative director Sam Deats, associate director Adam Deats, and executive producer Kevin. ComingSoon was able to speak with all three of the creatives about the final season.
Check out the spoiler-filled conversation about the final episode of the show and get the Netflix Castlevania ending explained by reading our interview below!
Netflix Castlevania Ending Explained – Significant Spoilers Follow
Tyler Treese: Over the course of the series, we’ve really seen Trevor’s transformation. He starts off a bit of a drunkard and he really becomes the hero that he was meant to be and fulfills his legacy. Even though he’s seen the worst parts of humanity over these past couple of seasons, he still fights for it. Can you speak to that character development? Because he had no interest in that, you know, at the beginning and we’ve seen such a change.
Kevin Kolde: Trevor has been on his journey. Now he’s started to see the good elements in humanity. [He’s] finding that it actually is worth fighting for. People have treated him with kindness and he has sort of responded. He had a rough life which led him to the early version of him that we saw. I think as he has positive interactions, it impacts him in a positive way,
Sam Deats: I think that that is really a central theme of the whole show when you think about it, and what we’re seeing when it comes to Alucard and even Sypha’s arcs is that they’re having that same challenge that Trevor has faced. Where they have seen how the worst of humanity is challenging their desire to help them protect them, but they still ended up, in the end, choosing to see the best of people. I think that’s very important. Trevor sort of carried that theme through the show and influencing the other characters without even realizing it.
Alucard was in a bit of a crossroads at the end of Season 3. You could even see him going toward his father’s side after being betrayed by humans that he trusted. However, in Season 4, he sort of goes a different route. He also acknowledges that there’s almost a cycle he’s in and he’s kind of trapped to fate. One thing I thought was so interesting about the character is that despite being part vampire, he feels like one of the human characters in the entire series. Can you just talk a bit about Alucard, how much he’s been through and how you view the character?
Kevin: He’s clearly been through more than any of the other characters in a lot of ways in the show, right? It’s from the death of his mother, the reaction of his father, now having to kill his father, now losing the friendship that he had with Trevor and Sypha in Season 2, and sort of a betrayal that he dealt with in Season 3. So he could certainly go to a darker place, and I think that, that we see him in that mindset at the end of Season 3. Even at the beginning of Season 4, we don’t really know what route he’s going to take, but you’re, you’re right. In a lot of ways, his humanity is the strongest. I think that keeps him from those darker urges, but it’s a struggle and there are forces that help him sort of avoid, a darker fate specifically in Season 4.
Sam: I think that it was, in the end, always going to be that he was going to choose humanity. That’s a challenge and that’s always a hard thing. We always see that every day ourselves and how people can really be, but in the end, we see the good in people. Alucard, that character, despite everything still chooses to hope and to love and to be their protector. That was kind of a decision that we always knew it was going to be coming because of who Alucard is as a character and also influenced the decision to finally give him his shield this season. In the first couple of seasons, he was there to kill his father. That was his choice but this was finally deciding to not just go out there and do this one specific task but to actively protect people. Again, in the same way that Trevor had to kind of come to that conclusion early on, he ended up going full circle to being influenced by Trevor unknowingly and fall into the same role.
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The show has always done a really great job of balancing so many interweaving stories with different characters, but if poorly done, it could be very difficult to follow. Can you talk me through just that balancing act and making it work so well?
Adam Deats: Oh my gosh. I mean it’s obviously very difficult. Sam and the storyboard team, they’re the ones managing the bulk of that on the visual end. I would say that on the editing end, me and David Howe, we spend a lot of time… When you’re jumping between multiple set pieces like that, and areas, you kind of have to give that area individually a lot of time to breathe because if you’re doing it too fast, depending on the pace of the sequence… During our battle sequence, for example, you’ve got to keep the pace up. So there’s a musicality to it. You’re hitting those beats at a rapid pace, but for earlier in the season, when things are a little bit slower, we have to run things a little bit forward than you’d expect and give the audience time to kind of sink into the mood of a sequence. I think that a lot of it is just taking time when it matters. Thinking about the beats of the sequence, when things have to speed up.
Kevin: That credit goes to Warren Ellis in terms of creating the characters, the storyline, and managing those elements. I think we were fortunate in that we sort of approached the third season in the hope for a fourth season with how that story would play out, which allowed more [time] to sort of plot those things out. He does outline the season before he gets into the script. So those major beats are done, but I agree it’s challenging and it could be a mess [but] it never has been. I think it’s especially remarkable given that most shows, like most drama shows that would deal with complex storytelling [are] live-action would be hour-long shows, and like we’re dealing with a half-hour animated episode. So it’s, uh, you know, it’s, it’s come through in the writing and it’s never really been a thing where we’re like, “Oh, this isn’t working. We have to go back and redo it.” Warren has managed it from the beginning.
The romance between Hector and Lenore is so interesting because they both use each other to their advantage, but there’s also something there. Lenore’s death scene was really unexpected, but it showed so much character growth. Can you speak to their relationship and what that final scene really meant to you?
Adam: I think that there’s a little bit of a Stockholm syndrome thing going on between them. So yeah, they care about each other, but foundationally, my read is that there’s a little bit of abuse going on. Lenore, her situation, she just lost her friends and right before that she lost everything that she’s known and work toward. That last conversation they have is inherently a discussion about the nature of power and how it consumes people. Then once it’s in you, you might have second thoughts about it, but it’s hard to go back. So for her, she couldn’t go back, and she finally got in a sense, in my eyes, a release, a freedom from all of the stuff that [Hector]’s dealt with before at that moment. In the end, it’s all tragic.
Kevin: The whole conversation, the whole scene with Hector and Lenore in the final episode is one of my favorite parts in the series because it really sort of shows that they’ve developed a complex relationship beyond what you would have expected or what you would have seen in their early interactions. That they really sort of grown to care for each other and respect each other. It’s tough. Lenore has made a decision that she does not want to live the life that she has and Hector [is] sort of understanding that and respecting it. I mean, it’s difficult subject matter. Dealing with suicide is not light subject matter, so we don’t want to take it lightly. I think it’s one of the most touching parts of the series.
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I absolutely love the last episode, the epilogue. They found that city, Belmont. Can you speak to what it means personally to see Trevor Belmont’s story wrap up and to see all the heroes kinda leaving on a better note than where they came in?
Sam: A big part of it was kind of celebrating, especially when we moved over to the castle on the Belmont Hold, it was about sort of celebrating the legacy that Trevor has left, and letting that kind of sit and sink in for a while. I think that was important to give a lot of space between the end of Episode 9 and through to this part of Episode 10 to really think about and absorb that legacy.
In the end, we’re, happy to see that Trevor is going to be a part of building on that and not just leaving it, but a part of actually actively taking this foundation and breathing life into it. I think what’s really an important piece of the puzzle for me is him actually getting to be a part of that, even against his like gut sense of who he is, right? In the sense for Episode 9 of the season, he kind of makes a declaration to the big, bad villain of the season, “That it’s time for us to go.” That’s kind of an announcement of these old power structures. It’s time for them to go and he thinks he’s a part of that, but he’s not. That says a big part of his arc is that he doesn’t realize the value in himself until we can see it in Episode 10. We get to feel it.
Kevin: It’s gratifying. From the story standpoint, as Warren was working on the stories, there were certain moments at the end of Season 4 that weren’t resolved until the end. One of those was, “Does Trevor make it out alive?” How the Dracula and Lisa story would resolve. So when those scripts came in, it was great. It felt like not only did the characters have an ending, I felt like for the first time the sort of the shadow of Dracula, the impact of Dracula has really been removed from their lives. It’s not the ending of the story for them. It’s really the beginning, right? The beginning of a life without this thing hung over them for so long.
Dracula and Lisa returned at the end and decided to travel. They want to start a new future. What are your thoughts on that specific scene? Do you think they will experience that or will the cycle sort of begin anew?
Kevin: I mean, you hope that they have a happy ending, maybe, but I mean clearly there are issues that will arise or have to be addressed. We don’t address those story issues even in our minds because we’re not writing them, but Lisa is still theoretically mortal, right? At some point, she’s either going to die or Dracula and Lisa are going to have to make some other decision. They decide to not really let Alucard know that that they’re back because I think they want to allow Alucard to find his life outside of the impact and the shadow of things that has hovered over him for the previous seasons. So you hope if you’re a Dracula and Lisa fan that they’re gonna find that happiness, but you know.
Castlevania Season 4 is streaming now on Netflix.
