WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Castlevania Season 4, now streaming on Netflix.
With Netflix's Castlevania series completed, it offers plenty of revelations, with one being that Dracula was never the true villain of the series. While he serves as an antagonist for two of the four seasons, his original plans for war actually created far more villainous characters than he ever could've been.
While Dracula was alive, he married Lisa and had a son, Alucard. Lisa worked with medicine, and while healing others, she was targeted by the people of Targoviste, believing she was a witch. With Dracula unable to rescue her, the people burned her at the stake out of fear. Focusing his pain into anger, Dracula massacred the town out of revenge, beginning a long war against humanity.
By the second season, Dracula's vampire army included the scheming Carmilla and other vampire leaders worldwide. Since Dracula's grand vengeance was born out of sadness and anger, he didn't have the same desire as the other vampires, who wanted to enslave humanity. Instead, he rather die to be with Lisa. This was evidenced in Season 2, Episode 7, "For Love," when Alucard confronted his father and told him, "You died when my mother died; you know you did. This entire catastrophe has been nothing but history's longest suicide note!" In the end, Dracula got his wish after realizing the monster he had become and allowed Alucard to stake him through the heart, but with his death, the real villains seized their opportunities.
Many vampires, including Carmilla, believed Dracula was unfit to rule and desired to take his place. Following his death, a power vacuum was created that Carmilla and her vampire sisters took advantage of. Carmilla's plans entailed enslaving humanity and using them like cattle. However, while showcasing her real plans to Lenore, it became evident that she wanted to conquer the world out of spite against the men in power who wronged her. Over the years, her trauma and desire for power festered, twisting her mind until her plans evolved to become as dangerous as Dracula's, but unlike Dracula, Carmilla's plans were fueled by a desire for power and revenge rather than pain and sadness.
The final two seasons also revealed some of the worst villains in the series aren't vampires; they're those who worshipped Dracula or are just evil in nature. The monk Sala, who resided in the town of Lindenfeld, wanted nothing more than to bring Dracula back from the dead and was willing to sacrifice an entire town to do it. This was transpiring under the nose of the town's leader, The Judge, who would often lead children into the woods and trap them in a pit, taking their shoes as mementos after they died. Due to the lengths they would go to for their desires, these enemies showed an unpredictability that makes them a greater threat than Dracula.
Though Dracula's plan was undoubtedly nefarious, the final season found a villain who could easily top that. As the physical embodiment of death, the supernatural entity sought to revive Dracula so his plan could continue and the countless lives lost could feed his hunger. Ultimately his plan failed but succeeded in showing how evil Death was compared to the man he was trying to revive.
Though he was a tormentor for the first half of the series, Dracula's evil couldn't compare to those that came after him. The finale shows him and Lisa in hiding together, proving that he was never the show's true villain, just a man in pain who only knew violence as a response.
Castlevania stars Richard Armitage as Trevor Belmont, Alejandra Reynoso as Sypha Belnades, James Callis as Alucard, Theo James as Hector, Adetokumboh M'Cormack as Isaac, Jaime Murray as Carmilla, Jessica Brown Findlay as Lenore, Bill Nighy as St. Germain, Jason Isaacs as The Judge and Rila Fukushima as Sumi. The entire series is available now on Netflix.