The animation in Castlevania season 4 looks out of freaking control

Jesus, Castlevania season 4. You didn't have to go this hard. You impressed everyone in season one by simply being a decent anime adaptation of a videogame, still a rarity after all these years. Then you impressed everyone in seasons two and three by being actually great, with some jaw dropping fight scenes and rich character stories to boot. Season four could probably take it easy, but judging by the trailer above, the animators decided to go all out for their big finale.

In this season, we see Trevor & Sypha head back to the city where Dracula's wife was killed in the first season, triggering his vendetta against more or less all of humanity. Drac may be dead, but if you know anything about Castlevania you probably won't be surprised to hear that in season 4, someone's trying to revive him.

A showdown with Dracula reborn might be the big finale for Trevor & Sypha, but the trailer also shows continuations of season 3's storylines, including Hector being forced to raise an army of monsters and Isaac leading his own monster army on a path of carnage.

Season four will wrap up the Trevor Belmont era of Castlevania history, but we may see some of these characters again. According to Deadline, Netflix is interested in starting a new series with a new cast (Simon or Richter Belmont seem like obvious candidates).

A spin-off makes sense given how many centuries the game series covers, but there's another likely reason for this run of Castlevania ending with season 4. Last year, more than 60 women shared stories of sexual misconduct on the part of Castlevania writer and producer Warren Ellis, who, according to Deadline, had at that time already completed the scripts for this fourth season. "He has had no further involvement in Castlevania, and I hear he also has not been part of the conversations about a potential new show which likely won’t include him as a creative auspice," Deadline's Nellie Andreeva writes.

The fourth and last season of Castlevania premieres on Netflix on May 13th with 10 episodes. 

Wes Fenlon
Senior Editor

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.

When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).