Dracula prepares for the public presentation of his Resonator, while Van Helsing carries out his revenge on Browning. Jonathan, now a member of the Order, helps sabotage the Resonator. Mina accepts her feelings for Dracula and Lucy transitions into a vampire.
The Breakdown
Mina, asleep in a chair, hears Dracula’s voice being projected outside. When she looks out the window, it is only his voice from a phonograph advertising the demonstration of the Resonator, to which Mina has been personally invited. Dracula gets his infusion of the sun solution and raves about how his revenge is almost complete. Van Helsing is preoccupied with his own revenge against Browning. Lucy is sick in bed and shrinks from the sunlight when her mother opens the blinds. Her mother is worried and wants to send for a doctor, but Lucy says she just needs sleep.
Mina goes to return the necklace Jonathan gave her, not thinking he’d be home. They have an awkward encounter where he tells her to keep the necklace, but also to stay away from Dracula. She says it isn’t like that between them, but cannot say she doesn’t love him when Jonathan asks her to swear she doesn’t. Dracula arrives at the Resonator to prepare for the presentation and asks Renfield to locate Jonathan, who has been missing for two days.
Meanwhile, the Order has organized a massive hunt with the help of a well-known seer, who brings the blood of Christ with him to help in the quest. Jonathan arrives at the Resonator and pretends to be upset when he tells Dracula that he killed Davenport. Dracula tells him to pull himself together and do his job. The seer begins locating vampires in London as Lady Jane dispatches teams to eliminate them. Lord Browning gets an urgent message from home and leaves Lady Jane to lead the hunt.
Jonathan brings in a group of journalists to photograph the Resonator and Dracula hesitantly agrees. The journalists, of course, are actually men from the Order sent to sabotage the machine. Dracula is anxious about how things are coming together and sends Renfield to find Van Helsing. Back at Browning’s home, his wife has received the ransom note from Van Helsing and a piece of her child’s finger as a warning. Meanwhile, Van Helsing maniacally destroys his lab and all his notes so that Dracula can never walk in the sun again. Renfield arrives and asks what is happening and Van Helsing stabs him.
Dracula holds a press conference while the men from the Order sabotage the machine. Kowalski, the chief engineer, nearly catches them in the act, but Jonathan covers for them. After the fact, Jonathan discovers the nature of the sabotage is extremely explosive and that everyone present will likely die. Jonathan rushes to warn Mina not to attend, but she is not at home. He finds the invitation on her table and rushes back to the demonstration to warn her.
Later, Mina arrives at the demonstration while Dracula watches anxiously for her arrival inside. Browning arrives at Van Helsing’s hide out with a bag of money and a conceal gun. Van Helsing surprises him in the dark and discovers the gun, taking it away from him. When Van Helsing reveals himself to Browning, he doesn’t seem to recognize him. Van Helsing says that he slaughtered his family, but Browning nonchalantly notes that it doesn’t really narrow it down.
Van Helsing pulls a lever that releases a trap door beneath Browning, plunging him into the cellar where his children are being kept. He calls to them as they emerge from the shadows, but it becomes immediately apparent that they have been turned into vampires. They begin feeding on Browning as Van Helsing set the building on fire, burning them all alive.
Dracula starts the demonstration, explaining that all the lights around them are wireless and everyone is amazed. Meanwhile, the seer finds Dracula and Lady Jane finally realizes that it’s Alexander Grayson. She rushes to the Resonator presentation to take him down. At the presentation, Dracula finally sees Mina in the crowd and seems heartened by her presence.
He starts the demonstration. Jonathan rushes through the crowd and warns Mina about the sabotage and tries to get her to leave. Mina rushes on stage and warn Dracula, who desperately tries to shut the machine down, but it won’t turn off. Dracula demands to know what Jonathan has done, and he explains the nature of the sabotage, which seems to leave Dracula hopeless. There is nothing he can do. Mina sounds the fire alarm and they rush everyone away from the machine. Dracula stays to try to stop the explosion as Jonathan grabs Mina and drags her away. The machine explodes.
There is rubble and death everywhere. Jonathan and Mina are alive, but Mina is disgusted with Jonathan for helping to orchestrate the death of so many innocent people. Jonathan turns around and finds that his friend from the paper is dead in the street. Lady Jane searches the rubble for Dracula. He’s still alive and they have a battle in the crater left by the explosion. None of her holy weapons have any effect on him and he throws her onto a spike. She asks him not to turn her, saying that he owes her that. He kills her mercifully.
Meanwhile, Lucy awakes looking healthy and renewed. Her mother is sleeping by her bedside and she asks her to come and hug her. Her mother is relieved, saying that she thought she had lost her forever. Lucy reveals a set of vampire fangs and begins feeding on her mother. Mina, who doesn’t believe that Dracula died in the explosion, arrives at Carfax to find the Triptych of Ilona. Dracula appears behind her and they embrace. They talk about how they loved each other in a past life, which is partly true, and they wonder how it’s possible. They kiss and then they have sex.
Back at Van Helsing’s lab, he takes out the relics that immobilized Dracula when he first resurrected him. Jonathan arrives at the lab after receiving a message from Van Helsing. He tells him that he can tell him everything he needs to know to destroy Dracula, including his real name.
The Analysis
This has been the most ridiculously over-dramatic episode yet. Jonathan continues to be bleary-eyed and sullen, and is somehow still surprised by his short sightedness when he makes severe errors in judgment. How he could have though that the sabotage to the Resonator would be harmless is beyond me, but then that blindness is part of what makes a great tragic character. And I’m sorry, but that final love scene between Dracula and Mina was something right out of melodrama. It wasn’t realistic, or moving, or particularly sexy. It was just kind of weird.
The one scene I was a fan of, however, and was just as over-the-top as anything else, was the scene where Van Helsing destroys his lab. It starts out so subtly, with Van Helsing carrying out some simple tasks and lightly whistling a song we all know is going to escalate pretty quickly. Featuring “In the Hall of the Mountain King” as a song that connotes chaos and madness is a pretty obvious move, but I appreciate the Looney Toons connection in a series that can be pretty cartoony.
Despite that, Thomas Kretschmann’s performance in the scene is something else. The symphony is all in his head, but he takes such pleasure in those moments of reckless abandon and wanton destruction – especially for a character that has been playing the longest game in the world when it comes to revenge – that the audience takes pleasure and a sense of freedom from it as well. He is, and has been from the start of the series, incredible to watch. He is perhaps the only character and actor worth watching in this sea of hollow faces.
That being said, the show wrapped the season up nicely in case it gets picked up for another season – but also in case it doesn’t. They have obviously wrapped up some storylines that were hanging in the air, but created new ones for exploration should the show move on. Will Jonathan and Van Helsing team up to take down Dracula? How will Mina react to Dracula’s secret vampire life, and does she kind of know already? What happens now that Lucy is a vampire? Surely that was a rash mistake on Dracula’s part, because now whatever moral code she had keeping her selfish and vindictive impulses in check has been chucked out the window. What happened to Renfield? And will Jonathan’s face ever get back to normal or did it just get stuck like that? And will he ever stop crying? I mean, it’s just perpetual now, like a condition or something. He’s always just sweating and crying and red faced. It’s weird.