Gamers Can Feel Confident About 'Castlevania' Season 2

Vampires are such an inescapable part of modern pop culture that people get distracted by all the black leather and/or sparkles (depending on what kind of vamps float your boat) and forget what the OG literary vampires were like: creepy medieval demons from Eastern Europe. Luckily, that version of the vampir myth still exists in Castlevania, a new Netflix animated series based on a video game franchise about a family of vampire hunters facing off against Dracula. But once the dust settles (although dust is more of a Buffy The Vampire Slayer thing), will there be a Season 2 of Castlevania to look forward to?

It’s perfectly understandable if you haven’t heard anything about Castlevania coming to Netflix up to this point: as io9 pointed out, the show only got a single cryptic mention in a large February press release earlier this year. Once fans and journalists started digging, though, it started to sound like nerd heaven. The show is produced by Adi Shankhar, whom you might remember from his gritty Power Rangers short fan film in 2015, and Frederator Studios, which produced Adventure Time and Bravest Warriors. Celebrated comic writer Warren Ellis penned the script for Season 1, and the voice cast includes Hannibal star Richard Armitage, Battlestar Galactica’s James Callis, Preacher’s Graham McTavish, and Supernatural’s Emily Swallow. And, as Shankhar told IGN, it’s going to be “R-rated as f*ck.”

And that’s not all! According to Shankhar’s Facebook — which has since been set to private or deleted, but which was quoted by Comic Book Resources — Netflix is already committed to a second season of Castlevania in 2018. There’s no knowing exactly when the second season of Castlevania will launch beyond that, but, it’s possible that Netflix might chose to mirror how it launched the Voltron: Legendary Defender series, with the first season premiering in June 2016 and another season rolling out six months later in January 2017. However, unlike Voltron, Castlevania is more of a miniseries, with the first season only consisted of four 30-minute episodes.

In any case, it’s clear from this trailer that was released in June that Castlevania is going all-in on both the gory gothic vampire drama and the series’ video game roots. That’ll be extra exciting for fans of the franchise, as there hasn’t been a new game since 2014. They'll no doubt have fun spotting all the Easter eggs from the franchise's lore, like the iconic Vampire Killer whip that's present here.

I’ll admit that I haven’t played a single one of the 30 games that make up the Castlevania franchise, but boy, has my inner gothic literature nerd been awakened by this show. Odds are the show will probably pick up a lot of other new fans too when it hits Netflix on July 7.