Recap / Castlevania 2017 S 2 E 7 For Love

After having forcefully moved Dracula's castle to the site of the Belmont's ancestral home, Trevor, Sypha, and Alucard prepare themselves for the final battle against Dracula and his army for the fate of humanity.

Carmilla looks on in confusion before withdrawing what remains of her forces, along with Hector.

Dracula's loyalists and Carmilla's soldiers continue to battle in the foyer, until the trio make their entrance and they quickly put their differences aside. As Dracula, some loyalists and Isaac finish dispatching some invaders, Isaac looks over the balcony, instantly recognising Alucard. They withdraw to Dracula's study, where Isaac reiterates his willingness to lay down his life. Dracula, however, has other ideas, reconstructing a magic mirror, which he uses to strand Isaac safely in the desert.

The trio finally confront Dracula, but can barely phase him. Eventually, Alucard deflects a massive fireball, which sees father and son being blasted through several walls, as Trevor and Sypha try to find a way to them. Dracula retains the upper hand, as Alucard tries to stake him (just missing his heart). Things look pretty dire for the dhampir, until Vlad realises that they're in Alucard's old bedroom. Realising what he's become, and that he can't kill his own son, he allows Alucard to stake him and gently reaches out as his body disintegrates. Trevor and Sypha finally catch up, having missed the father-son bonding moment, decapitating Dracula and incinerating what's left.

Their task now completed, the three heroes leave the now empty castle and watch the sun rise.

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Tropes for this episode:

• Armor-Piercing Question: Dracula laughs dismissively when Alucard grabs a wooden shard broken off in their throwdown in the library that's sufficiently shaped like a stake, asking if Alucard means to stake him. Alucard responds with "You want me to?", seguing into his deconstruction of his father's mad genocidal war as "history's longest suicide note".
• Badass Boast:
  • Alucard gives one when Dracula wonders how he can hope to stop his father:
    Dracula: You couldn't stop me before.
    (Trevor and Sypha flank Alucard)
    Alucard: I was alone before.
  • Even when at his vulnerable and weary, Dracula makes it clear that his son and hunters won't kill him so easily.
    Dracula: I am no ordinary vampire to be killed by your human magicks. I am Vlad Dracula Tepes... AND I HAVE HAD ENOUGH!
• Baddie Flattery: Dracula is legitimately impressed to see Trevor has the Belmont's Morning Star, and says that any other vampire would have been killed outright. Unfortunately, all it did was make him stop playing with the trio.
• Bittersweet Ending: Trevor, Sypha, and Alucard defeat Dracula and kill his generals and soldiers, but Alucard is still grief stricken that he had to kill his father to save the world.
• Death Seeker: When Dracula amusedly asks if Alucard intends to stake his father, Alucard says that he knows Dracula wants Alucard to kill him, saying he died with Lisa and the entire war was little more than "history's longest suicide note".
• Book Ends: The first and last words Dracula and Alucard say to each other this episode:
  Alucard: Father.
  Dracula: Son.
• Enemy Civil War: The heroes come upon the forces loyal to Carmilla and Dracula in the middle of fighting in the main hall. The realization of a bigger fish arriving causes them to stop their fighting. Though, those further in, closer to Dracula and ignorant of the actions in the main hall, keep fighting.
• Enemy Mine: Dracula's generals and Carmilla's forces join forces to fight the heroes when they walk into the castle.
• Facepalm of Doom: Sypha finishes the last of the war councilors with a fiery facepalm attack after Trevor ties him up with the Morningstar and yanks him down to the floor.
• Fire Ball: After the Morning Star fails to kill him, Dracula unleashes Dark Inferno on the trio. Sypha's magic is just barely able to hold it long enough for Alucard to push it back to Dracula and pierce it with his long sword, causing it to detonate.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: Trevor's opening attack on Dracula, which do not even faze the vampire. In fact, Dracula's response implies that this was a standard tactic for the Belmonts.
• Heal It With Fire: Sypha uses some rudimentary fire magic to cauterize her arm from a claw swipe from Dracula.
• Kill It with Fire: Besides her common use of it, Sypha burns the final remains of Dracula to make sure he is good and dead.
• Kill It with Ice: Sypha uses a sheet of ice to longitudinally bisect a vampire at one point. Before that, she dispenses with some mooks with a volley of ice spike missiles. And one of the Vampire generals gets frozen and shattered.
• Literally Shattered Lives: One vampire noble turns into smoke to avoid being killed by Alucard's sword. In this foggy state, she's frozen solid by an ice spell from Sypha, who smashes the ice to pieces.
• Love Redeems: What defeats Dracula in the end is not the Morning Star whip, Sypha's magic or the vampiric powers of Alucard, but the love Dracula had for his family. Realizing he is about to murder his own son in his quest for vengeance for the woman he loved most deeply stops Dracula's rage cold and leaves him a broken man.
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": The remnants of the Enemy Civil War all stop what they're doing mid-strike when they realize Trevor Belmont, Alucard, and Sypha are at the door. When Isaac sees the trio, he has the same reaction, though mostly because of Alucard.
• Mundane Utility: Sypha uses a pillar of ice magic as a makeshift elevator to get the trio out of the ruined Belmont library.
• My God, What Have I Done?: After beating Alucard to the brink of death, Dracula is about to finish off his son when he realizes that the room they are in was Alucard's room. Dracula begins to break down upon seeing the toys and the room both he and Lisa built for their son. Filled with regret and shame for what he was about to do, Dracula realizes that he's dead inside and allows his son to kill him without resistance.
  Dracula: My boy... I'm- I'm killing my boy... Lisa... I'm killing our boy... We painted this room. We... made these toys. It's our boy, Lisa... your greatest gift to me... and I'm killing him... I must already be dead.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The music that plays when Trevor, Sypha, and Alucard battle the generals and knights is "Bloody Tears", one of the most prominent recurring songs of the games.
  • After Dracula decides to stop playing with the trio, he attacks using Dark Inferno, one of his attacks from the games.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: The trio hold out against Dracula fairly well for a while, giving as good as they can take, but Dracula is just too powerful; only after having his own giant lava ball rolled back at him by a combined effort and Alucard has at his father alone does it devolve into this. Alucard holds out for a while, but eventually is reduced to either running away from or getting punched through walls by his father, and his stamina for taking such hits starts wearing out. Only when Alucard gets punched into his old childhood room does Dracula snap out of his infanticidal murder trance.
• No-Sell: Dracula stops each of the initial attacks of the heroes with no effort and holds against them longer than any other vampire or demon has. When Trevor repeatedly punches Dracula in the face, he doesn't blink or flinch from it. Dracula treats Alucard's sword going through both his arms like a splinter (even if it limits use of his arms) and Sypha's fire in his face like he has a light shining in his eyes. Being stabbed by Trevor and Alucard trying to stake Dracula is treated with mild annoyance. The Morning Star actually manages to hurt Dracula, and he admits that any other vampire would have been killed outright, but all it does is kill Dracula's patience. Alucard is the only one of the trio who can go toe to toe with Dracula and hurt him, and even then Dracula is clearly the stronger one. The only reason why they won in the first place is because he let them kill him.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: After Trevor, Sypha, and Alucard defeat the vampires in the main hall, the last of the Night Creatures in the castle attack them. Given that the trio are next seen alive in Dracula's throne room, it can be assumed the Night Creatures faired as well as the vampires.
• Pet the Dog: Dracula repays Isaac's loyalty by teleporting him out of the castle, saving his life just as he was prepared to die for him.
• Punch! Punch! Punch! Uh Oh...: At one point of the final fight, Trevor repeatedly punches Dracula in the face to predictable zero effect, without even making him flinch or move in any way from the haymakers. Also slightly {Subverted|Trope} because Trevor at no point ever goes into an Oh, Crap! moment from how ineffectual his blows are and just repeatedly keeps hitting Dracula with the apparent intent to do so until his fists break or something in the Vampire gives. In a moment both Hilarious and Awesome, this attitude is all Dracula needs to identify Trevor without a verbal introduction, his tone even briefly perking up from his prior listlessness now he's got reasonable distraction.
  Dracula: You must be the Belmont.
• Rasputinian Death: Dracula doesn't go down easy. Once he lets his son kill him by staking, the withered and decaying walking corpse is beheaded by Trevor, and then the remains are burned by Sypha.
• Rule of Three: Dracula gets staked three times, once by Trevor and twice by Alucard. Only the third time sticks, because the other two stakes missed the heart.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Alucard doesn't mince words with his father.
  Alucard: You died when my mother died, you know you did. This entire catastrophe has been nothing more than history's longest suicide note.
• Theme Music Power-Up: A remixed version of Bloody Tears is played when Trevor, Sypha, and Alucard take on Dracula's generals.
• Worf Barrage: Trevor, Sypha and Alucard throw everything they have at Dracula and all it does is make him angry.
• You Shall Not Pass!: Attempted by Isaac who offers to protect Dracula with his life. Dracula (likely seeing this as a Senseless Sacrifice) disagrees and teleports Isaac to safety.