Nocturne Season 2 Makes The Show’s Biggest Mystery Even More Confusing

“Castlevania: Nocturne” season 2 sets up a lot of interesting threads for a potential season 3 and wraps up most of the big arcs from season 1. At the same time, the show hasn’t fully answered one of its biggest mysteries, which has to do with the new kind of night creatures created by Abbott Emmanuel (Richard Dormer).

In the original “Castlevania” series, night creatures are created by devil forgemasters, human sorcerers who use a specific breed of dark magic to channel souls from hell into dead bodies, transforming them into monstrous creatures. These forgemasters each channel their spells through a specific, unique tool, and the monsters they create are loyal to them. In most cases, the souls channeled into the night creatures don’t seem to be the same ones that the bodies housed in life, but there are some apparent exceptions to that rule. In general, though, night creatures are shown to be pretty mindless.

But that all changes in the first season of the sequel series “Castlevania: Nocturne.” Emmanuel uses a different method of creating them via a massive machine of arcane power, which works much more quickly than the methods seen in the original show. The results are different as well, as many of the subsequent night creatures seem to retain both their humanity and their free will, to a certain extent. This begins with Edouard (Sydney James Harcourt), and in season 2, many other night creatures show the same strange humanity. While the second season doesn’t explain this, it does drop a few more clues that add to the mystery. Let’s get into it.

The simplest explanation of Emmanuel’s strange night creature phenomenon is simply that his alternate forgemaster method results in different kinds of creatures. In season 2, most of the soldiers from the French Revolutionary Army whom he turns into monsters retain some element of autonomy and a connection to their previous lives, which allows Eduoard to turn them against Erzsebet Báthory (Franka Potente) at the end of the season. The machine even turns Drolta Tzuentes (Elarica Johnson) into a vampire/night creature hybrid after she’s killed by Alucard, which allows her to venture out in the daylight and amplifies her strength significantly, seemingly without her losing any part of her former identity.

In season 1, we see that Emmanuel uses some sort of Enochian spell book to work his dark machine, and after his death in season 2, Olrox (Zahn McClarnon) looks through it. While examining the book, he encounters a dark spirit of some kind, which he calls “Old Man Coyote,” or “Mephistopheles.” This being’s true identity and goal remain a mystery, but it’s clear he was manipulating Emmanuel and may have even told him how to construct the machine. That might mean Emmanuel wasn’t using traditional forgemaster magic at all, which could account for the anomalies in his night creatures. And since it was really the machine and its incantations creating the creatures, not Emmanuel himself, it stands to reason that they wouldn’t be quite as loyal.

Of course, without knowing Old Man Coyote’s true motives, it’s hard to say anything for sure. With luck, we’ll get another season of “Castlevania: Nocturne” to explore the mystery further.

While it would be nice to have a bit more clarity on how the forgemaster magic works in “Castlevania,” the mystery is far from a plot hole. The franchise has always embraced a pretty open interpretation of its supernatural lore, far from the “hard magic” systems of many fantasy stories. Annette (Thuso Mbedu) uses a very different kind of magic than the Speaker powers of Richter (Edward Bluemel) and Juste (Iain Glen), all of which are different from what the forgemasters do. The original series revealed that there are many worlds in the “Castlevania” universe, and that means a veritably unlimited variety of witchcraft and sorcery.

“Nocturne” has done a lot to expand the world of “Castlevania” into new arenas and mythologies, which it blends with the more traditional vampiric lore of the video games in fascinating ways. With luck, Netflix will see fit to renew the show for another season, which could shed some more light on how all these different supernatural pieces fit together.