Castlevania is one of the series that I have been privileged to cover since the original Netflix animated project premiered back in 2017. It has certainly been a wild ride seeing one of gaming's most venerated (and most neglected) bloodlines get the big-budget Netflix anime treatment. I've made no secret of feeling decidedly mixed on the original four seasons of Castlevania. The first “two” seasons (one season clumsily split into half, if you ask me) were quite excellent, despite Warren Ellis' sometimes overbearing writing. Season Three, on the other hand, was a hot mess, falling prey to every one of the bad habits lobbied at Netflix shows that have been given too much money and nowhere to go; its story was inert, its character writing became woefully inconsistent, and all of the wicked atmosphere and invigorating action from the first seasons was nowhere to be found. Season 4 was a decided step up, though still not what I would call my “ideal” Castlevania show.

Finally, in 2023, we got a series that seemed to finally get how to adapt Castlevania. Its cast of characters was much more balanced and well-written thanks to the capable hands of new scribes Clive Bradley, Zodwa Niyoni, Temi Oh, and Testament. The gripping new story revolving around the French Revolution gave the series a much-needed opportunity to layer a fresh coat of paint atop its usual Gothic aesthetics. The action, which was always a highlight even when Castlevania couldn't get its scripts together, was somehow even better, thanks mostly to having an even bigger toy chest to play with on account of its cast's much more varied powers and skills. The music, by series mainstay Trevor Morris, managed to inject some wonderfully baroque and operatic elements while still sneaking in some of that classic video game flair. While not what I'd call “perfect”, Castlevania: Nocturne got so much right in its inaugural season that it made me fall in love with the whole bloody saga all over again.

In 2025, Castlevania: Nocturne is back to conclude the battle and I won't bury the lede any longer, folks: This is the best that the Castlevania television project has ever been. Every single element that I singled out for praise up above? They've each been honed to a razor's edge and polished to a gleaming, so much so that I have been wracking my brain for days since I finished watching the show to find meaningful criticisms to balance out the effusive praise you're about to read. I might not have been able to call the first season of Nocturne “perfect”, but after what I just experienced watching this second season…well, I'm struggling to come up with any other superlatives that fit.

Pretty much every minor niggling issue I had from the first batch of episodes is handily resolved in this season. Bathory, who took her sweet time showing up at the very end of Season 1, is a monstrous villain that you love to hate. She completely earns the reputation as a cataclysmic threat that must be stopped at any cost. The series' Revolutionary France setting was always incredibly cool, but Season 1 never managed to do as much with the themes of the time and place as I'd like. This season has me completely covered, as it weaves questions about the lengths to which we are willing to go to destroy evil and upend the safety of the world that we know into the fabric of several characters' storylines, and to great effect. Maria, especially, has some of the most emotionally compelling material to work with out of the entire cast, and I was riveted by some of the confrontations she has with her mother, her father the Abbot Forgemaster, and Juste Belmont. There are single scenes in these episodes that pack more of an intellectual and emotional wallop than damn near anything that Ellis managed to squeeze out of four entire seasons of the original show.

Annette, too, is served even better this time around, with her strong connections to her Haitian culture providing ample thematic connections to France's upheaval while also tying much more directly to the conflict with Bathory and Drolta (the latter of whom makes a return to the stage that should only be surprising to people who somehow don't know that this is a cartoon about severely undead murder freaks with a penchant for the dark arts). Now, I know that some internet weirdos have been moaning for years about Nocturne's choice to give so much screentime to characters who have the gall to be either female, Black, or - God forbid - both. Those people are idiots, and their complaints have never had much merit so far as Castlevania is concerned, but I don't want anyone to think that this season neglects its Belmonts and Draculas. Richter is an incredible hero, even when he gladly takes a backseat so that the women in his life can handle their own business, and he proves that he has more than earned the right to wield the Vampire Killer by the time the season is done. Alucard, too, is as delightful as ever. Moreso, even, since his storyline sees him interacting with characters that we care about and contributing meaningfully to the plot, instead of whatever the hell Warren Ellis was trying to do with him in Castlevania the First's later years.

I can't forget about the spectacle of it all. From the beginning, SAM and Adam Deats' work at Powerhouse Animation Studios has earned Castlevania a lot of much-deserved praise for making the battles between the Belmonts and their prey look, to use the proper academic term, “supremely and totally badass.” Well, friends, as has been the trend with the rest of Nocturne's second season, they've raised the bar. For one, the sequences that don't involve kickass weapons doing unspeakable things to undead flesh finally look as good as the ones that do, which was always a sticking point in these shows. There's a lot of introspection and personal conflict weaving throughout the bloodshed in Nocturne, and the animators do a lovely job of selling it all. The only time the drama doesn't completely land is when the animation is doing too good at capturing the character's emotions compared to the voice actor's subdued delivery, but you know what? I've just come to accept that as a part of Castlevania's house style.

More importantly is the fact that the action in Castlevania: Nocturne season two just rips so fucking hard. I know, I'm a professional critic, and I should probably find more eloquent and elevated language to describe how this season made me feel, but I'm sorry, the climax of this season contains some of the most impressive animated spectacles that I've seen in my life. A part of that may have to do with the excellent (but tasteful!) nods to classic Castlevania weapons and powers, sure, but an even bigger factor of the show's success is that the choreography and direction work hand-in-hand to produce some world-shattering clashes that are still perfectly crisp and easy to follow. I don't know if people still get up in arms over whether or not these Western-led animated series count as “anime”, but I'm here to tell you that Castlevania: Nocturne made me feel a level of giddy, childlike hype over animated super-violence that I'm not sure I've experienced since Gohan obliterated Cell with that one-armed Kamehameha wave in Dragon Ball Z. I jumped up and screamed as the vampire blood practically soaked through my television screen. It is anime!

There you have it, folks. It may have taken a few tries, but with this second season of Nocturne, the animated Castlevania franchise has finally produced a true masterpiece. Is it literally flawless, as so many people think is implied when that word gets thrown around in the context of a review? Probably not, I guess. Is anything? I think, when it comes to art, the word “perfect” has a different operating function. It doesn't describe flawlessness, but rather an experience so uniformly excellent at what it sets out to do that it makes nitpicking a fruitless endeavor. I hope to God that we get more Castlevania adaptations from the Powerhouse crew (and it makes me giddy to imagine what these folks would do if they got to play around in Aria of Sorrow's sandbox). If this truly is Castlevania's final bow as a Netflix Original Series, I can't conceive of a more fitting note to end the performance on. It's pretty much perfect.