Here’s how rocker turned vampire Gabriel Bolivar exited The Strain. Guillermo del Toro has a long history with vampire movies, which fittingly began with his low-budget directorial debut Cronos. This revolved around a device that turns a kindly old man into a vampire and was hailed as a unique take on the genre. The filmmaker was later hired for 2002’s Blade II, where the title character is forced to team with a band of bloodsuckers to take on a new vampire strain called The Reapers.

The Reapers would serve as prototypes for the Strigoi found in Guillermo del Toro’s novel trilogy The Strain. The director co-wrote this series with author Chuck Hogan (The Town), with the first book dealing with a flight that lands in New York with all its passengers dead. The heroes soon realize a parasitic strain of vampirism is about to sweep the city and it’s up to them to stop it. The Strain was originally pitched as a show, so it was ironic the success of the books is what got a series moving. The Strain had its b-movie charms, though it was let down by some hamfisted writing and unlikeable heroes.

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The Strain came to an end in 2017 after four seasons and given how complete its finale was, a revival currently seems unlikely. The main villain of both the books and the series was The Master, an ancient being with the ability to body hop. One of the few “survivors” of the aforementioned plane attack was rock star Gabriel Bolivar (Jack Kesy, Deadpool 2). Early episodes detail his disturbing transformation into a vampire, and he becomes a loyal follower of The Master over the course of the first season.

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Gabriel got a major upgrade in The Strain season 2, as the Master’s original body was damaged following the season 1 finale. He needs a new vessel and Gabriel Bolivar is his selection. Technically, Bolivar “dies” when The Master takes him over, though his body gets taken for a wild ride while The Master inhabits it. Bolivar’s body meets its demise in The Strain season 3 episode “First Born,” where after an attempted exchange goes wrong, the Master’s “son” Quinlan (Rupert Penry-Jones, Black Sails) battles and beheads him.

While that should have been the end of it, the Master’s worm manages to quickly slink it’s way to a sewer grate and escape. The destruction of Gabriel Bolivar’s body only proved a minor inconvenience for The Master, who would soon find a new vessel on The Strain and continue his reign of terror.

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Padraig Cotter
(3486 Articles Published)

It’s pronounced Paw-rick, not Pad-raig. Now that’s out of the way, a brief introduction. Padraig has been writing about film online since 2012, when a friend asked if he’d like to contribute the occasional review or feature to their site.

A part-time hobby soon blossomed into a career when he discovered he really loved writing about movies, TV and video games – he even (arguably) had a little bit of talent for it. He has written words for Den of Geek, Collider, The Irish Times and Screen Rant over the years, and can discuss anything from the MCU – where Hawkeye is clearly the best character – to the most obscure cult b-movie gem, and his hot takes often require heat resistant gloves to handle.

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He’s super modern too, so his favorite movies include Jaws, Die Hard, The Thing, Ghostbusters and Batman. He can be found as i_Padds on Twitter making bad puns.

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