Castlevania Season 3 Ending Explained

This Castlevania article contains spoilers. Read our spoiler-free review here.

Castlevania season 3 has finally hit Netflix, bringing with it new adventures for Trevor Belmont, Sypha Belnades, and Alucard as well as new villains and monsters for them to fight. While the new season picks up right where the last one left off, it introduces quite a few new storylines as well as characters like the mysterious Count Saint Germain and Carmilla’s companions Lenore, Striga, and Morana. It also asks a few questions about the land of Wallachia that aren’t completely answered by season’s end.

Unlike season 2, this year’s installment doesn’t wrap things up quite as neatly, ending on several cliffhangers that hint at where a potential season 4 of the show might be going. But we do get some answers — or at least some hints — by the finale regarding some of the season’s biggest mysteries.

If you’re still a little unsure about what happened in the 10th episode, “Abandon All Hope,” we’ve got you covered.

What happened in Lindenfeld?

All seems well when Trevor and Sypha arrive in the walled village of Lindenfeld, where people are obsessed with apples and buying apples and eating apples, etc. But there’s more to this town than meets the eye. A creepy cult led by the soft-spoken prior Sala is conducting some kind of strange business inside the dilapidated monastery that looms over Lindenfeld.

While the villagers aren’t allowed into the priory, Trevor and Sypha investigate the cult’s HQ at the behest of the Judge, the leader of the town, who is worried that the prior is trying to seize control of Lindenfeld — and maybe something much worse. Joining the investigation for his own reasons is Count Saint Germain, who is trying to find a door into the Infinite Corridor (which we’ll get to in just a second). Together, the trio discovers the priory’s dark secret: they have a demon locked away in their dungeon.

What does the cult plan to do with the demon? Summon a door to the Infinite Corridor that leads to Hell, where they hope to find Dracula and bring him back to Earth. To do this, the cult feeds the souls of the people of Lindenfeld to the demon (those strange markings they carve into buildings around town are needed to perform the ritual).

It’s only through a last-minute maneuver by Saint Germain that the heroes are able to close the door to Hell and keep Dracula from coming through. But the battle leaves the town destroyed and its villagers dead.

As Saint Germain says during the fight, “All this to bring back bloody, fucking Vlad Tepes?”

Is Dracula actually dead?

Dracula himself plays no part in the story of season 3, and he doesn’t even make a cameo until the final two episodes. We see him first in episode 9, hugging his beloved wife Lisa in Hell, and then again in the finale, reaching a hand towards the portal created by the cult in Lindenfeld. The Dark Lord doesn’t speak a single line in season 3.

But what does his reappearance mean for the show? Well, for one thing, bringing Dracula back from the dead is the oldest trick in Castlevania‘s book. Even if he’s slain by a Belmont in one game, he usually returns as the final boss in the next. And when he’s not in the game, there’s usually someone trying to resurrect him. Or, if we’re talking Lords of Shadow, the story stars the man who will one day become the Dark Lord.

So it’s really not all that surprising that the show would try to bring Dracula back from the dead so soon after his demise, and the fact that the cult fails to do so doesn’t mean that he won’t be back in a later season.

For now, he’s still stuck in Hell, which means, yes, Dracula is dead. With Lisa once again in his arms, perhaps he even prefers it that way? But don’t be surprised if we actually get to see Dracula’s time in Hell from his own perspective in season 4.

What is the Infinite Corridor and where did Saint Germain go?

The mystery surrounding the Infinite Corridor is one of the best parts of season 3, as it not only introduces a bit of cosmic horror to the series but also the concept that a person can use this alternate realm to access other planes of reality and even travel to other points in time. The Infinite Corridor was actually taken straight from the games and was first introduced in 2005’s Curse of Darkness, which coincidentally stars Hector and Trevor Belmont.

While the cult wants to use the Infinite Corridor to bring Dracula back, Count Saint Germain (who is also from Curse of Darkness) has his own reasons for finding a door back to this otherworldly plane. Prior to the events of season 3, he lost a loved one inside the Infinite Corridor and now he desperately wants to find and reunite with this person. We never meet the person in question but do see them waiting for Saint Germain in one of the corridor’s many doors. It’s through this door, which leads to what looks like an upside-down reality, that Saint Germain travels in the finale, promising to see Trevor and Sypha again.

Where exactly did Saint Germain go? The fact that the door leads to a place that seems to be the reverse of our reality may be a nod to the big twist in 1997’s Symphony of the Night where, after defeating the dark priest Shaft in Dracula’s castle, Alucard must next traverse a reverse, upside-down version of the castle to fight the game’s true final boss, the Dark Lord himself. How a twist like this could play out in the animated series remains to be seen.

What was the Judge hiding?

It’s revealed at the end of the season that the Judge is not all that he seems. There are hints of this throughout the story, like when he leads a boy to an apple tree in the outskirts of Lindenfeld and is later seen nervously wiping his hands as he exits his backroom. Trevor and Sypha learn of the perverse “little pleasures” the Judge enjoys after he’s killed by Sala.

The heroes find the Judge’s death pit by the apple tree, where Sala lies dead, impaled by pikes while trying to escape Lindenfeld. Sypha notices small bones littering the pit and wonders if they belong to animals who accidentally fell into the pit. But when Trevor and Sypha discover a shrine of little shoes belonging to the missing children of the town, the duo discovers the horrifying truth: the Judge had been killing off kids by sending them to fetch apples from the tree. It’s twisted as hell and shows just how determined the Judge was to keep children from running in his town.

Who was the magician Isaac battled at the top of that tower?

Isaac faces off against an unnamed magician in episode 9, defeating him and putting an end to his reign of terror (the magician enslaved the people from nearby villages and forced them to build him a city). We never learn who this magician is, but it’s likely that he’s just a nod to the many evil wizards that have appeared in the history of Castlevania.

Additionally, the giant ball of bodies the magician creates to fight Isaac is a nod to a famous Castlevania boss known as Legion, which appears in many of the games, usually as a massive fleshy sphere of writhing corpses. It’s pretty gross and used to great effect in the animated series.

Why did Taka and Sumi try to kill Alucard?

Taka and Sumi’s betrayal is one of the biggest shocks of the season. They initially come to Dracula’s castle looking for the Japanese vampire Cho, who terrorized their home before she left to join the Dark Lord’s army. When they find the castle abandoned and Alucard tells them that Dracula and Cho are dead, Taka and Sumi ask the dhampir to teach them how to become vampire killers.

The partnership goes well at first, as Alucard teaches the young hunters how to fight and then introduces them to the Belmont family’s monster-hunting archive. But Taka and Sumi soon grow impatient with their teacher, who is hesitant to show them the engine that allows the castle to transport itself to other places. They feel that Alucard is dragging his feet on purpose and keeping the secrets of the castle to himself, so Taka and Sumi hatch a plan to murder the dhampir and take the castle for themselves. The young hunters fail, their throats cut by Alucard’s sword before they can thrust daggers into his heart.

The conclusion of this storyline feels a bit rushed, especially when it seemed throughout the series that Taka and Sumi actually cared about Alucard, whose exile in the castle had left him with no one. But their betrayal might serve another purpose down the line…

Will Alucard follow in Dracula’s footsteps?

The final scene of season 3 sees Alucard walking back into his castle and shutting the doors, Taka and Sumi’s corpses impaled on pikes just beyond the entrance to ward off future visitors. Alucard notes as he closes himself in that this is the kind of threat his father would have preferred.

There’s a bit of symbolism and foreshadowing to unpack here. Like Dracula before him, Alucard seems to cut himself off from humanity after being betrayed and losing people he cared about. While Taka and Sumi’s deaths likely won’t be enough to send Alucard on a murderous rampage, there’s a sense that he now feels more alienated than before (almost being carved up like an animal in your own bed will do that to you). Combine this with the fact that Alucard wasn’t doing well with his exile in the first place, there’s the possibility that his isolation could drive him mad, inadvertently turning him into the monster Taka and Sumi decided he was.

It would be quite the twist if Alucard suddenly found himself at odds with Trevor and Sypha in the battles yet to come. It should be noted that this is all speculation, but the stage seems to be set for the dhampir’s villainous turn.

How did Hector become Lenore’s slave?

Hector, Dracula’s traitorous Devil Forgemaster, is the character who suffers the most this season. Captured by Carmilla and forced to trek hundreds of miles in the cold while being beaten and tortured, Hector spends season 3 in a cell below the vampire’s castle in Styria, Austria. While Hector expects that he’ll eventually be killed or perhaps fed upon, Carmilla and her court of vampire allies/lovers — Lenore, Morana, and Striga — have other plans.

It’s “kind” Lenore who decides to befriend, and later seduce, Hector in order to make him do her bidding. After all, with a powerful Forgemaster like Hector on the vampires’ side, they’ll be unstoppable in the wars to come. Hector, failing to learn from Carmilla’s betrayal, is fooled by Lenore’s charm, eventually falling in love with her.

While making love in Hector’s cell, Lenore tricks the Forgemaster into renouncing his free will and giving himself to her completely, slipping on a “slave ring” as Hector declares that he belongs to his vampire lover (the dope thinks this is just a bit of kink and doesn’t know he’s basically giving up what freedom he has left). The ring casts a spell that binds Hector to Lenore, who can now command him to do as she pleases. It’s a pretty fucked up plan that surprises even Carmilla.

Lenore gives her sisters their own rings so that they too can control Hector, who is just completely broken at this point, and season 4 isn’t looking much better for him, with Isaac closing in on Styria with his own army of monsters. At least, if Isaac gets his way and kills the man who betrayed Dracula, Hector will be freed from this much darker fate.

What is Carmilla’s plan?

Despite the fact that the trailers set her up to be the new villain of the series, Carmilla spends a surprising amount of time indoors, planning her next offensive against the people of Wallachia from her castle. She decides to march her forces east, conquering and enslaving humanity along the way, to establish an empire to rule with her vampiric sisters. And with Hector as her slave, she can now force him to create an army of monsters for her war on mankind. We’ll likely see this war play out in season 4.