I’m Going To Need ‘Castlevania’ To Explore Maria’s Story Next

Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for Castlevania: Nocturne Season 2.The Castlevania franchise might revolve around the Belmont family’s exploits throughout the generations, but Netflix’s adaptation of the long-running video game series wouldn’t be nearly as compelling without its ensemble cast. Maria Renard (Pixie Davies), the adopted sister of Castlevania: Nocturne protagonist Richter Belmont (Edward Bluemel), has one of the most engaging and complex arcs as Season 2 mercilessly shifts her from an idealistic, fiery teenage revolutionary into a grieving daughter fueled by vengeance, who viscerally experiences the self-destructive danger of indulging those negative emotions. By the season’s end, Maria learns to overcome her darker instincts and gains a deeper understanding of her unique magic along the way. However, Season 2’s finale indicates that her anger and the poisonous temptations associated with it haven’t been fully dispensed with. Combined with the untapped potential inherent to her rare abilities, Maria’s future offers even more tantalizing storytelling possibilities. In other words, if Nocturne leaves Maria’s arc on that cliffhanger, we’re going to have some stern — but still loving — words.

‘Castlevania: Nocturne’ Season 2 Puts Maria on a Complex Moral Path

Castlevania: Nocturne‘s first season establishes Maria as a courageous character who champions freedom, justice, and equality for everyday people experiencing systematic oppression by the French monarchy. Hand-in-hand with her convictions, which sometimes necessitate violence, lies a tender heart. When one of the creatures Maria summons from different realms dies in battle for the first time, she grieves its loss. That same magic is impressive enough to catch the eye of the villainous Erzsebet Báthory (Franka Potente), who plans to turn Maria into a vampire and weaponize her powers for Erzsebet’s benefit. Instead, Tera (Nastassja Kinski), Maria’s beloved mother, offers herself up as a vampire servant in her daughter’s stead.

That profound loss, combined with the knowledge that her father is the Abbot (Richard Dormer), a local religious figure whom she despises, temporarily thrusts Maria down the troubling path Season 2 depicts. Her pull between the “good” she’s spent her young life aiming to uphold and the well of bleak emotions brought on by grief, fear, and anger plays into Castlevania‘s biggest strengths: namely, the murky morality surrounding what defines an individual as “evil,” and whether love can redeem someone’s past flaws. For Maria specifically, the French Revolution is already violent; just look at the spectacle they make of those bloody beheadings. Even after she learns to draw her magic from love instead of hate, Maria considers these public executions acceptable. In her words, the aristocracy deserves lethal punishment, just like the Abbot deserves his fatal fate. The Maria of Season 1 likely believed the same, but murdering her own father undoubtedly colors her perspective going forward — and it gives one enough pause to wonder what other moral obstacles might challenge her in the future.

Why Are Maria and Old Man Coyote Connected in ‘Castlevania: Nocturne’?

Image via Netflix

Although not a Speaker like her mother, Maria’s ability to summon interdimensional creatures and use them in battle technically makes her a witch. Although she draws these animals from another plane of existence, she knows next to nothing about that realm and why she can access it. It’s an ability that Castlevania‘s other magic users haven’t displayed thus far. Even more fascinating, the moral temperament of the animals Maria summons seems inseparable from her emotions. When the loss of her mother and her rage at her father’s culpability prompts her to naively kill the latter, Maria can’t control the dragon that emerges from her magic portal — and this grim moment is also when Nocturne first introduces the shadowy, shifting figure that swallows up her father’s corpse with a wicked grin.