Castlevania: 10 Most Complex Characters, Ranked

Premiering in 2017, Netflix’s Castlevania quickly made a name for itself among fans of the original video game, anime watchers, and Netflix’s general audience. Part of what gives the show its appeal is the adaptation of the video game’s characters into developed personas with arcs and backstories that add a level of depth.

A feat of immense storytelling ability, the writers of Castlevania made medieval and often supernatural characters relatable in their sentiments and motivations. The tragedy of love and loss, the tension between following your father and standing up for your beliefs, the oppression of religion on certain ways of life; all this in the backdrop of apocalyptic medieval fantasy land. To exemplify how the show achieves this success, here is a list of the 10 most complex characters in the show. Spoilers ahead.

10 Miranda

A short-lived character in season 3, Miranda is the only other forge master introduced into the series. She sends Isaac on his quest to overthrow the magician that has enslaved her village.

Miranda tells Isaac that in her old age she could only defend herself against the magician’s power, lamenting her status as the lone woman left in the village. It is odd that she seems to care for the villagers she settled with as forge masters seemingly don’t care for human life. She makes the list because of her mysterious past and her empathetic nostalgia for village life.

9 Saint Germain

Another character introduced in season 3, Saint Germain is a magician who specializes in alternate dimensions. He aids Trevor and Sypha in stopping Dracula’s resurrection at the Priory.

Saint Germain has a complex relationship with love. It appears that during an experiment to get to the “infinite doorway,” he lost the woman he loved in some other world. Life in their world doesn’t seem worth living, and he gives it up to be with her in an unknown time and space.

8 Lenore

Lenore is a complex character because of her duality. A seemingly young and beautiful vampire, her character begs pity as she seems so young to be damned to an eternity of life as a vampire. However, her personality seems to be the most sadistic of the four sisters.

Lenore uses her innocence to control Hector, much of the season is spent exploring their relationship, as she seems to be an earnest and reasonable person. By tricking Hector into eternal servitude, it shows her extreme self-awareness and reflects the life of someone who cares little for human life. What happened to a girl so young to turn her into someone so evil?

7 Carmilla

Carmilla is a vampire with a tragic backstory and a redemptive result that leaves her with deep ambitions. Seemingly kept as a slave to the vampire who turned her, the freedom associated with supernatural abilities and eternal life quickly turned into a prison.

Camilla’s murder of her former master left her with the capital to play politics amongst the vampire council. She uses her smarts and wit to enact a master plan for a large land grab of Wallachia. But Camilla’s cruelty is always calculated, her goals seem to be only to sure up her power and to provide for her “sisters” who may or may not have been subject to her old master’s evil.

6 The Captain

The captain of the ship that transports Isaac and his army toward Styria is like a philosopher of the sea, battling with Isaac over whether humanity deserves extinction. As a man who has done many cruel acts, he gives Isaac a maxim “If you don’t have your own story, you become part of someone else’s.”

The Captain’s maxim signifies a measured understanding of humanity, where a person’s perceptions of the world inform their reality. Without one’s own peace of mind and understanding of the world, Isaac is perceptible to the tales others taught him (Dracula’s quest to destroy humanity). The captain is unafraid of Isaac’s monstrous creatures, and it seems to be his wisdom that allows his cool disposition. He warns Isaac that humanity’s extinction will destroy kindness as well as cruelty, implying that both must exist together.

5 Dracula

Though he was mostly absent in season 3, Dracula’s complex relationship to humanity and love causes all the turmoil in the show. A love that literally causes the end of the world.

Someone who used to enjoy humanity, Dracula is a cruel man who kept secrets of medicine and technology from civilization in part because he didn’t think humans deserved to know them. Yet, he fell in love with a woman who expressed kindness throughout most of her life. Dracula himself, while cruel in action, is so forlorn by grief that he decides to destroy vampires in an attempt to destroy the human race, a complex and horrifying suicide.

4 Trevor

Trevor’s character is in a constant battle between birthright and betrayal. He only knows how to live when he is killing demons and fighting vampires. However, the people who benefited most from his services (humans) were responsible for wiping out his family after the Church gained power.

Trevor is constantly pulled between these two forces, allowing the show to expose not only the evil of demons but, often, the evil of humans. He often has more in common with the vampires he hunts than the humans he serves.

3 Hector

One of the most sympathetic characters in the show, Hector seems to be an innocent who is caught up in Carmilla’s scheme. His backstory shows how even a forge master can make his powers seem empathetic.

Hector’s bond with the creatures he creates is emphasized, where he cherishes giving life to dogs and small creatures that meet untimely ends. In this way, he uses evil as a force for good, a theme of his character that makes him vulnerable to Carmilla’s ambition. She convinces him that stopping Dracula is better for the world. Unfortunately, his good-hearted nature makes him a slave to Lenore, along with making the audience wonder if his good-hearted nature will redeem him, or be sanctioned as a hindrance to survival.

2 Alucard

Alucard, like Trevor, is torn between family and the world. In season 3, his narrative deepens via a flip. Someone who was constantly torn between a mother’s kind view of humanity and a father’s grief-stricken rage and genocidal inclination, Alucard is vulnerable to both.

At first, the champion of humanity, Alucard is betrayed by the two young vampire hunters looking to save their homeland. Season 3 ends with him taking his father’s side, making a new potential villain for season 4.

1 Isaac

The character with the most depth of the show, Isaac has a tragic backstory, a nuanced present, and an engaging future. After spending most of his childhood as a slave, he has a hatred for humans after seeing them at their cruelest.

Season 3 begins Isaac’s philosophical quest to find meaning in his life. After meeting the captain, Isaac has to question whether his desire to extinguish humanity is actually his desire. This is further developed as he meets Miranda and tries to turn an entire village into an army. After seeing the cruelty of their slavery at the hands of a magician, he decides to leave the city standing for others to occupy, or as a monument to the cruelty of slavery.

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