Penny Dreadful(2014-16,
created by John Logan;
cast:
Eva Green, Timothy Dalton, Rory Kinnear, Josh Harnett, Billie
Piper, Harry Treadaway, Reeve Carney, Simon Russell Beale, Olivia Llewellyn,
Danny Sapini, Helen McCrory, Patti LuPone, Tamsin Topolski, Sarah Greene)
In the second season of
Penny Dreadful, feminism, sexual
liberation, political correctness, secularism, drug addiction, and
religious syncretism expand their influences. Some events in
Season Two seem to be an attempt to graft modernity onto
Christianity as if they were compatible, even symbiotic. But one
can instead interpret
these events as modernity's efforts to assault, corrupt, and
undermine Christianity.
We last saw Ethan Chandler (Josh Hartnett) transform into a
werewolf as two Pinkerton agents were arresting him. He now awakes
in the Mariner's Inn, surrounded by savagely torn corpses. In
Season One, London was plagued by such murders. It was suggested
that Jack the Ripper had returned. Sir Malcolm Murry (Timothy
Dalton) suspected vampires, until a police inspector explained
that the bodies were not drained of blood. We now know that
Chandler, in werewolf form, is the culprit.
As Chandler tells Vanessa Ives (Eva Green) that he must leave
England, their carriage is attacked by monsters: red, bald women,
branded with pentagrams. Vanessa scares them off by snarling a
strange language. The Verbis
Diablo. The devil's tongue. The monsters, she later
explains, were not the vampires of Season One. These creatures are
Nightcomers. Witches.
As with Season One's opening, Season
Two's first episode finds Vanessa praying fervently before a
crucifix. But the Nightcomers have so frightened her that, this
time, she first draws a scorpion on the floor, in her own blood.
She is practicing religious syncretism, incorporating "pagan
glyphs" into her Catholic prayers. She sees no conflict, imagining
that "white witchcraft" will reinforce Christian grace, adding an
extra layer of protection against the Nightcomers' Satanic
witchcraft.
Vanessa thinks her scorpion glyph
will repel the Nightcomers. Yet they torment her while she prays.
She later cries, "They were here. No, they weren't here. I
can't tell anymore. I thought I saw them but they weren't there. I
can't tell the difference whether they're real or in my head. I
can't live with this anymore. But they're in my prayers now. Even
my prayers aren't safe."
Why is that? Are Nightcomers so
powerful that they can overcome "good witchcraft" and Christianity
combined? Or does practicing the former lessen the grace
granted by the latter? Is Vanessa's syncretism a sin that only
welcomes the Nightcomers further in? Or, as with Job, does God
allow the Nightcomers to torment Vanessa to test her faith? As
Vanessa insists, and events will prove, "God has a plan."
Season One established that Vanessa
has psychic powers. She reads the tarot. She made mental contact
with the vampire Mina. Now we see Vanessa practicing witchcraft.
In a flashback episode -- "The Nightcomers," a critical dramatic
and thematic turning point in the series -- we learn how
Vanessa developed her powers and first met the Nightcomers.
After her release from the Banning
Clinic, but before joining Sir Malcolm in London, Vanessa tried to
learn why she was different.
She visited Joan Clayton (Patti LuPone), a woman known as The
Cut-Wife of Ballentree Moor. "You know why they call me
that? Because when the girls need a little baby killed inside
them, they come to me. I cut it out. Cut-Wife. Fetching name, you
think?"
Clayton is a Daywalker; a "good
witch." Centuries ago, she belonged to a coven led by her sister,
Kali (Helen McCrory). (The same Madame Kali who led the
séance in Season
One.) When the coven sold their souls to Satan, becoming
Nightcomers, Clayton refused. The coven stayed young and
beautiful; gifts from Satan. Clayton grew old and crotchety.
Clayton also practices syncretism.
Her cottage on the moors displays both pagan totems and Christian
crosses. And a book of Satanic magic. "The poetry of death. If
ever the day comes when my little scorpion is crushed and beaten,
if her God deserts her completely, only then does she open it. And
on that day, she will never be the same. She will have gone away
from God. Forever."
"Little scorpion" is Clayton's term of affection for
Vanessa. "You're strong willed and agile, like the scorpion."
Vanessa accepts the scorpion as her totem. Like a witch's
familiar. A protector. It's why she draws a scorpion, in her own
blood, when praying to Christ.
Clayton teaches the Verbis Diablo to
Vanessa, but warns against using it too often. "If you believe
in God, better you pray with all you got in you. Only if all else
fails, you speak the Devil's tongue. But mark, girl, it's a
seduction. And before you can blink twice, it's all you can speak.
And so does a Daywalker become a Nightcomer."
Clayton regards Satan as a last
resort. In case of emergency, break glass. She's a pagan witch who
enlists both Christ and Satan. You can't get more syncretistic
than that.
She teaches Vanessa about the tarot,
and herbs, and spells. Vanessa helps Clayton perform an abortion
on a village girl. Although she knows it's wrong, Vanessa shows no
hesitancy. She comforts the girl. "God forgives all." Thus
does Vanessa encourage the girl in the Sin of Presumption;
committing a sin (rather than resisting) because one expects
forgiveness.
Thus is feminism's creed of
self-empowerment and individual choice corrupting Vanessa's
Catholicism. Clayton asks Vanessa to stay and continue her work
after she dies. "Ballentree Moor is a poor forgotten place,
with many girls who need help. This place needs its cut-wife."
Yet despite her compassionate appeal, Clayton has more love for
humanity than for humans. "The peasants! Pay me little for my
craft. Fuck them. Worse than animals."
In
this, she is like many modern progressives. And like progressives,
Clayton accuses Christians of hypocrisy. "They send
their girls to me, but for this very service they despise me. So
it is always for those who do for women."
Overall, Clayton seems to represent
an "inclusive" progressive spirituality, in contrast to an
"intolerant" patriarchal Christianity. "Old as I am, I know
nothing. Why people in this world hate what is not them. Why they
fear all they don't know."
Well, perhaps it's because some things man was not meant to know.
"The secret things belong to the Lord."
(Deuteronomy 29:29)
One night, Kali comes to Clayton,
demanding that she hand over Vanessa. Satan still seeks Vanessa to
be Amunet to his Amun-Ra. Clayton refuses. So Kali turns to Sir
Geoffrey Hawkes (Ronan Vibert), a wealthy landowner who wants to
annex Clayton's land to his estate.
Sir Geoffrey is less a character
than a parody of "the patriarchy." Rich, cruel, arrogant. A
religious hypocrite who publicly champions the local priest, yet
privately submits to Kali in sadomasochistic sex rituals. He also
tries to rape Vanessa.
"The Nightcomers" ends on a
ridiculously heavy-handed note. Manipulated by Kali, Sir Geoffrey,
the parish priest, and a torch-bearing mob of peasants burn
Clayton for witchcraft. (Despite this being the 1880s.) And if the
message were not clear enough -- patriarchal Christians are
intolerant hypocrites who are really doing the devil's work --
they brand Vanessa's flesh for consorting with a witch. Brand her
with a cross.
How to interpret
"The Nightcomers"? Just because Sir Geoffrey is wrong to
use Christianity as a tool for selfish gain and murder, does
not mean that Vanessa is right to supplement
Christianity with witchcraft, even if her intent is good. To do so
is corrupting rather than empowering. This will become explicit a
few episodes later.
The flashback ends as Vanessa
finishes telling her tale to Sir Malcolm, Chandler, Victor
Frankenstein (Harry Treadaway), Ferdinand Lyle (Simon Russell
Beale), and Sembene (Danny Sapani), explaining who the Nightcomers
are, and how she came to learn the Verbis Diablo.
Just as sin was a major theme in
Season One, a word on everyone's lips, the characters in Season
Two obsess over love. They seek love, discuss it, puzzle over it,
suffer for it, and sin for it. As Frankenstein ruminates, "What
is love but a kind of creature waiting to be unbound? A malady.
What does it bring any of us but confusion and bedevilment?"
As Frankenstein prepares the corpse
of Brona Croft (Billie Piper) for reanimation, he begins to desire
her. He strokes the soft curves of her dead body. He fondles her
lifeless breasts. Still a virgin, what today might be called an
incel, he flirts with necrophilia.
Brona has no memory after she is
brought to life. Frankenstein tells her that she is Lily
Frankenstein, his second cousin. She lost her memory in an
accident, and Caliban (Rory Kinnear) was her intended. Henceforth,
she is called Lily.
Frankenstein grows possessive of
Lily. He convinces Caliban to allow Lily to stay with him for a
bit, so that he might teach her how to function in society. With
Vanessa's help, Frankenstein buys dresses for Lily. But Lily finds
the corset constricting. Frankenstein jokes that were women not
restrained, they'd rule the world. He also assures her that the
outfit enhances her beauty.
"All we do is for men, isn't it?"
says Lily. "Keep their houses. Raise their children. Flatter
them with our pain."
Lily's remark reveals more than a
desire for female emancipation. She resents men. She says their
children, not our children. As if childbirth were a
punishment that men inflict upon women.
The lovesick doctor tells Lily to
remove the corset. He has no desire to cause her pain.
Having been fired from the Grand
Guignol, Caliban finds a new job at the Putney Family Waxworks. He
tells the Putneys that his name is John Clare. It is how he will
henceforth be known. He begins to fall in love with the Putney's
daughter, Lavinia (Tamsin Topolski). She speaks kindly to him. And
because she is blind, Clare hopes that she might love him despite
his disfigured face.
Vanessa is shaken by the
Nightcomers' attack. To help her find peace, Sir Malcolm takes her
to a soup kitchen for London's sick and poor. He donates regularly
and occasionally volunteers. There Vanessa likewise finds peace.
There she befriends John Clare. They share three scenes in the
soup kitchen over the course of Season Two, each a thing of beauty
and literary grace.
In the second scene, they discuss
the difficulty of navigating love. Clare says he recently met a
woman yet is uncertain how to proceed. Whether he means Lavinia or
Lily is uncertain.
Although Clare claimed to be
"modernity personified" to Frankenstein, and expressed contempt
for romantic poetry, he spoke from bitterness. Clare yearns for
beauty, romance, and pure, monogamous love. But bitterness at not
having these compels him to violence. And yet, he is
modernity personified. We moderns might yearn nostalgically for a
nobler past, yet we are physically trapped in a coarse
post-Christian world.
Inspector Bartholomew Rusk (Douglas
Hodge) of Scotland Yard suspects that Chandler was involved in the
Mariner's Inn Massacre, as it's come to be known. Rusk harasses
Chandler for much of Season Two, seeking evidence. Rusk is a noble
figure. He lost an arm fighting the Boers in South Africa, but he
displays no self-pity.
Hecate Poole (Sarah Greene) likewise
tries to insinuate herself into Chandler's circle. Hecate is a
Nightcomer. One of Madame Kali's daughters. In her human form,
Hecate stages a near accident, allowing Chandler to rescue her
from a runaway horse. She is savvy enough to know that Chandler
can't resist a damsel in distress.
But not savvy enough to invent a
convincing story. Over a meal, Chandler sees her for a fraud
(albeit not for a witch). Assuming that his father hired Hecate to
lure him back to America, Chandler dismisses her, with an
approving nod to feminism. "Maybe the Pinkertons are hiring
women now. If so, I applaud them for it, because I am all for
emancipation. My father failed with them and he failed with you."
Continuing his investigations into
ancient myths, Lyle discovers that not one, but two chief
devils -- brothers -- were evicted from Heaven after Creation.
Satan and Dracula. They are now fighting over Vanessa. Whichever
devil wins shall become Amun-Ra, and claim Vanessa as his Amunet.
Then the Apocalypse.
Lyle observes that many faith
traditions posit an evil female figure who brings darkness into
the world. "Something thought unholy in the erotic power they
held over men," Sir Malcolm muses, reiterating the theme of
sexual sin that runs through
Penny Dreadful.
Lyle also discovers a medieval
reference to Lupus Dei.
The Wolf of God. He doesn't know how this Wolf figures into
the Apocalypse, but according to the source, Satan is obsessed
with this Wolf. Even afraid of it. Viewers can guess that it's not
a wolf, but a werewolf. Chandler.
Three Nightcomers invade Sir
Malcolm's house. Chandler is shocked to recognize Hecate among
them, in Nightcomer form. Vanessa again speaks the Verbis Diablo
to expel them, but not before they steal a lock of her hair.
Presumably for a voodoo doll. But worse than that, Vanessa is
increasingly turning to sorcery to supplement her Christian faith.
Chandler encourages that. After the
attack, he tells Sir Malcolm, Vanessa, Sembene, and Lyle that
while he was in the U.S. Army, he helped eradicate an Apache
tribe. They were defeated because they were not prepared. Just as
Sir Malcolm's household was not prepared for the Nightcomers. That
must not happen again. Chandler advises, "Sturdy locks. And a
shitload of weapons. Every weapon at our disposal. Every
superstition. Every ritual."
Chandler is advising religious
syncretism. The more gods, the better. In the following
montage, Sembene hangs African pagan totems in the kitchen.
Chandler burns Native American ritual incense and kneels in a
Christian prayer. Vanessa prays before a crucifix and draws a
scorpion blood glyph on a door. Lyle dons a Jewish prayer shawl.
Sir Malcolm polishes guns in the drawing room, adding secular
firepower to the household's many deities.
Having seduced both Chandler and
Vanessa in Season One, Dorian Gray (Reeve Carney) pushes the
envelop with his new love, a transwoman prostitute of color,
Angelique (Jonny Beaucamp). However, Dorian will prove yet again
that he is incapable of loving anyone. He merely revels in
offending polite (Christian, patriarchal) society. "In this
house we celebrate the unusual. We set the tune and the world
follows. ... The thrill of the forbidden. There's nothing to match
that."
But at least for now, Dorian appears
to have found a soulmate in Angelique, who admits, "I live to
shock."
Determined to entice Vanessa to
Satan, Madame Kali strikes up a friendship with Sir Malcolm. She
tells him that Madame Kali is her stage name. Her real name is
Evelyn Poole. (Many characters in
Penny Dreadful have
multiple names.)
Sexual sin continues to corrupt.
Episode Five ends with a montage of three sinful encounters (plus
one temptation), put to foreboding music, as if the participants
are courting doom. Frankenstein beds Lily, an act of both
fornication and necrophilia. His morphine addiction will worsen.
Dorian sodomizes Angelique. Their relationship will end in murder.
Sir Malcolm commits adultery with Kali. During their lovemaking,
Kali's spell drives Sir Malcolm's wife to suicide.
During this night of sexual sin,
Vanessa and Chandler pass in the hall. They eye each other,
aroused. Yet restrain themselves. Vanessa has learned in Season
One that illicit sex opens her to Satan.
Sir Malcolm returns the next
morning, so enchanted by Kali that when he learns of his wife's
suicide, he is mostly concerned about his wife's blood ruining the
carpet.
Vanessa is shocked. Chandler
dismisses it, observing that Sir Malcolm had long been estranged
from his wife. "Not every death is the tragedy we think it
should be." But Sembene realizes that Sir Malcolm is under a
spell. "This is not him."
Kali returns to her castle with a
lock of Sir Malcolm's hair, attaching it to his fetish doll. Just
as she did with Vanessa's hair. Kali has a large collection of
fetish dolls. Each contains the heart of an infant. At Kali's
bidding, Hecate murders a couple and steals their baby. Kali
extracts the baby's heart for Vanessa's doll.
Like Vanessa, Lyle is guilty of
dabbling in the occult. He ignored Deuteronomy's warning that
"The secret things belong to the Lord." In Season One, he
hired Kali to entertain his guests with a
séance. Now Kali
tells him, "You thought me a fraud at first, albeit a terribly
good one. A theatrical spiritualist beyond compare, n'est-ce pas?
But then the occultist dabbler found himself amongst the real
thing."
Viewers of
Penny Dreadful
have long surmised that Lyle is gay. His marriage to a wealthy
woman is one of convenience. We now learn that Kali has photos of
Lyle's "sodomite encounters" and is black-mailing him. Actually,
Lyle is a double agent. He wants to help Vanessa, yet spies on her
for Kali. A tragic figure, he wants to do right, but his sexual
sins and occult games have led to moral corruption: betrayal of
friends and servitude to Satan's witches.
Dorian throws a "coming out" ball to
honor Angelique. Dorian is also fickle. At the ball, he steals
Lily away from Frankenstein. Dorian recognizes Lily as the dying
prostitute who thrilled him by coughing up blood on his face in
Season One. When her name was Brona.
Sir Malcolm attends the ball with
Kali. As do Hecate and her two sisters. They stalk Vanessa, who
has visions of blood. Visions of the Apocalypse she will usher in
as Amunet. Then Vanessa faints.
Chandler doesn't attend the ball.
It's the night of a full moon. He asks Sembene to chain him in the
basement. Chandler doesn't know that he's a werewolf. Only that he
has blackouts and when he awakes, "There's usually blood."
He wants Sembene to observe and discover what occurs during his
blackouts.
The next morning, Sembene tells
Chandler, "The Shamans in my mountain call it Uchawi
Mabadiliko. The changing from one skin into another. The ones so
cursed do not always fully remember it, this ... becoming. Is it a
sickness? Or is it something else? Is it a blessing, the purpose
of which we cannot yet see? I say this is what it is. For I know
you, my friend, Ethan Chandler."
Like Vanessa, Sembene believes that God has a plan. And
like everyone else, Sembene has sinned. "I have been much
feared and hated in my life. By my people. By yours. These marks
mean I was a slave trader. This is my sin to live with." He is
also the ultimate syncretist. "I believe in everything."
Vanessa didn't see the Nightcomers
at the ball, but she sensed their presence. Believing herself
unsafe in London, she returns to Clayton's cottage on the moors.
Chandler comes with her, both to protect her and to hide from
Inspector Rusk.
While sharing a marijuana joint (a
habit she frequently indulges), Vanessa and Chandler discuss their
need to restrain the "monsters" and "demons" inside themselves.
What happens when they're released? asks Chandler. "We're most
who we are," says Vanessa. "Unrestrained. Ourselves."
Vanessa identifies her sinful
desires with her true self, which must be restrained. This
challenges the modern view that people should always "be
themselves." She is espousing traditional Christianity. The belief
that human nature is evil. Man is fallen. His
natural inclinations lead
to sin, and thus natural human desires must be restrained. Despite
her sins, there is hope yet for Vanessa.
Chandler knows of Vanessa's past
possession. Vanessa doesn't know that Chandler is a werewolf, but
she senses a darkness in his past. "Whatever you have done...
whoever you have made yourself... I'm here to accept you. We're
together for a reason."
But that doesn't include sex. It
nearly does, one dark and stormy night. But Vanessa breaks off at
the last moment. "No! We are dangerous!" She restrains her
natural desires because, for her, fornication opens the door to
Satanic possession.
Yet Vanessa succumbs to worse
temptation after running into Sir Geoffrey, still the arrogant
patriarchal caricature. His attack dogs menace Vanessa and
Chandler. Sir Geoffrey gleefully explains that he uses starvation
to train them. He gloats at having burned Clayton and branded
Vanessa.
Enraged, Vanessa opens Clayton's
book of Satanic spells. The one Clayton warned against. "If her
God deserts her completely, only then does she open it. And on
that day, she will never be the same. She will have gone away from
God. Forever."
Trying to save Vanessa's soul,
Chandler plans to shoot Sir Geoffrey before Vanessa can act. But
he fails. Vanessa's spell beats Chandler's bullet to the kill.
Chandler returns to the cottage,
feeling despair and disgust. "Do you feel better now? Now that
you're a murderess? I suppose that's what you learned here, isn't
it? From your nice old lady friend. How to kill babies. How to
kill men. You do belong here. ... You'll never get your soul back.
Not ever. Do you understand that?"
"Yes." Vanessa appears shaken, but
accepting of her fate. She succumbed to the temptation of
revenge, rather than trusting God to dispense justice at some
future date. Satan will use this against her. Even so, Vanessa
still prays to God, hoping for forgiveness and redemption.
Back in London, Angelique discovers
Dorian's portrait. The portrait that keeps him young. That depicts
his true, hideous soul. Despite having professed his devotion,
Dorian murders Angelique. He shows no remorse. He is already
courting Lily, much to Frankenstein's displeasure.
Clare sees Lily with Dorian, and
becomes enraged. Lily was meant for him. In their past
conversations, Lily played the Nice Girl. She told Clare that,
because she had no memory of their courtship, she wished to move
slowly. Be friends at first. Now Clare sees that Lily only wanted
to go slow with him. She's quick to date other, better looking
men.
Clare breaks into Frankenstein's lab
to confront Lily. He intends to force her into being a faithful,
loving, traditional wife. But Lily too is Frankenstein's creation.
She too is modernity personified. A liberated woman. She mocks
Clare's ugly face and love of poetry. "Don't we make a
beautiful couple, thee and me? Shall we wander the pastures and
recite your fucking poetry to the fucking cows? You are blind,
like all other men."
When Clare attacks Lily,
intending to discipline her like a wayward wife, she overpowers
and shoves him to the ground. Then reads him the riot act.
"We flatter our
men with our pain. We bow before them. We make ourselves dolls for
their amusement. We lose our dignity in corsets and high shoes and
gossip and the slavery of marriage. And our reward for this
service? The back of the hand. ... Never again will I kneel to any
man. Now they shall kneel to me."
More than any character in
Penny
Dreadful, Lily embodies radical feminism. Marriage is
"slavery." Even equality is not enough. She yearns to rule men.
Lily reveals that she long ago
regained her memory. She knows that she and Clare are the immortal
dead. She now seeks to enlist Clare as an ally. Knowing that he
wants a woman, she says, "I'll bring you a dozen. We'll fuck
'em together."
But that's not what Clare wants. Yet
Lily, the former prostitute, is too crude, cynical, and broken to
realize that. She says they should kill Frankenstein, and then,
"We were created to rule, my love. And the blood of mankind will
water our god. Us and our kin and our children and our
generations. We are the conquerers. We are the pure blood. We are
steel and sinew both. We are the next thousand years. We are the
dead."
Like Nietzsche, Lily is calling for
a new god to replace the Christian God. A god of the "pure blood"
who will rule for "the next thousand years." She has supplemented
her radical feminism with National Socialism. (Well, Planned
Parenthood founder, Margaret Sanger, did advocate for eugenics.)
As Satan and Dracula prepare for the Apocalypse, modernity is
pushing Christianity off the stage, making room for the secular
revolutions of the 20th century. What do they offer? Lily tells
us. "We are the dead."
The scene is brilliant --
thematically, aesthetically, and psychologically. As Lily, Billie
Piper traverses a long character arc and wide emotional range.
From frightened of Clare, to mocking him, raging against him and
all men, and finally, wooing him as "my love" in an attempt to
recruit him for her revolution.
Yet despite these contradictory
emotions, Lily is psychologically consistent. A former prostitute,
she is deceitful. Skilled in manipulating men by feigning fear,
promising love, or using anger, mockery, and false praise.
Lily is also a fickle, hypergamous
female. She loses interest both in killing Frankenstein and
enlisting Clare when she learns that Dorian too is immortal -- and
rich and handsome (unlike Clare). Lily makes the same offer to
Dorian, that they spawn a race of immortals to rule the world. She
also demands that he kneel before her. Dorian, having never met so
strong a woman, and always eager for new erotic thrills, happily
submits to Lily's sexual domination.
Clare is repelled by Lily's evil,
yet he craves companionship. Not knowing that she has dropped him,
he ponders her offer, telling Putney. "True evil is above all
things seductive. When the devil knocks at your door, he doesn't
have cloven hooves. He is beautiful and offers you your heart's
desire in whispered airs. Like a siren beckoning you to her
ruinous shore. You save your soul or you give it to her."
Clare chooses his soul. He decides
against Lily. But he has hopes for Lavinia, who tells him. "You
are my true friend." Alas, it was a ruse. She tricks Clare,
trapping him in a cage. The Putneys plan to open a freak show to
complement their horror waxworks. Clare is to be their first
exhibit. But he breaks free of the cage and murders the Putneys.
He spares Lavinia.
After Sir Malcolm breaks free of
Kali's spell, he laments the destructiveness of unbridled erotic
love. "This thing divorces us from our wits and our dignity.
Our purest instincts are undone. We become strangers to
ourselves." Loading his gun, he goes to Kali's mansion,
seeking revenge. Instead, he is captured by Kali's Nightcomers.
Kali plans to use Sir Malcolm to lure Vanessa.
Vanessa and Chandler do indeed
return to London to save Sir Malcolm. Chandler warns Vanessa not
to go at night, when Nightcomers are most powerful. He reminds her
of their capabilities.
Vanessa replies. "And you, Mister
Chandler, know exactly what I'm capable of. This is my work now.
For it is not a battle of firearms. It is a battle of faith. And
yours is not strong enough."
It's a curious and confusing
statement. Chandler knows Vanessa was capable of murdering
Sir Geoffrey with a Satanic spell. Yet she seems to be referring
to her Christian faith.
Having lost Lily to Dorian,
Frankenstein's morphine addiction worsens. Vanessa tries not to
judge as she watches him shoot up, acknowledging her own use of
pot.
Frankenstein regards drugs as a
modern substitute for God. "Scientifically speaking, life's
nothing but a series of chemical reactions. So, to accelerate or
decelerate that process is of no great matter. It gives us that
illusion of power in a life with little, does it not? And yes, it
becomes an addiction, this seeking transcendence. Much like your
addiction to God."
"I'm sorry she hurt you,"
says Vanessa. "I'm sorry you feel so unloved."
Hecate surprises Chandler in his
room. She comes with an offer. According to prophecy, Amunet will
choose Satan or Dracula as her consort. The pair will then begin
the Apocalypse by attacking God. But Heaven has its champion in
Chandler -- Lupus Dei -- empowered to destroy the evil
couple.
Hecate urges Chandler to switch
sides and "to serve not the emaciated Galilean God, but to
stand alongside the great winged Lucifer as he reconquers Heaven's
bloody throne. You have been given a great power. One day you will
use it and take your foretold place over these mortal animals."
When he is ready to defect, says Hecate, "I will be your
greatest ally."
She is both jostling for position
and hedging her bets. She had been undermining her mother's
authority throughout Season Two. Hecate is both envious of Kali
and thinks (and hopes) that her plans will fail. After which,
Chandler's defection will win Hecate a promotion over Kali in
Hell's hierarchy, and a powerful lover to boot.
In
The Screwtape Letters,
C.S. Lewis describes Hell as a place ruled by fear and torment,
the demons always conspiring against one another. Kali and Hecate
are mother and daughter, united in service to Satan, yet each
would happily destroy the other.
Back at her mansion, Kali likewise
urges Sir Malcolm to switch sides and betray Vanessa. When he
refuses, Kali implies that Vanessa is Sir Malcolm's illegitimate
daughter. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised of your tiresome
obsession with Miss Ives. You're so very close, after all. You
knew her when she was born, didn't you? ... You saw her grow into
the fine young woman she is. ... You watched her rather carefully,
I'd say. ... She was always your favorite. It's good we care
for our daughters."
Kali's intimation sheds new light on
Sir Malcolm's reference to Vanessa -- "I already have a
daughter." -- at the end of Season One. And we know he
was having an adulterous affair with Vanessa's mother. If Vanessa
is a product of sin, it explains why Amunet choose her as the
vessel for reincarnation. Satan prizes defrocked priests. Amunet
likely values a devout Catholic born of adultery.
Chandler thinks he convinced Vanessa
to wait until morning to rescue Sir Malcolm. But Vanessa leaves
without telling anyone. When they find her gone, Chandler,
Sembene, Frankenstein, and Lyle go after her.
At the mansion, Hecate traps
Chandler and Sembene in a stairwell. Sensing he is turning into
werewolf, Chandler is about to commit suicide to save Sembene. But
Sembene stops him. "No. I am just a man. You have been chosen
by God." Thus does Sembene sacrifice his life, both for
Chandler and for God's plan.
Satan also tries to drive Sir
Malcolm and Frankenstein to suicide, showing them images of their
past sins, the people they have killed, the monsters they have
created.
Kali takes Vanessa to her room of
fetish dolls. Satan speaks, in Vanessa's voice, through the doll
made in her image. He tempts Vanessa with a normal life. A happy
marriage to Chandler, beautiful children. A happy illusion, after
which she will die and be his bride.
Satan also tries to undermine
Vanessa's faith with guilt, accusing her of murder. Kali adds,
"You claim to stand with the angels, while your every action
speaks otherwise."
Satan says, "There is no more
powerful inducement to me than this. Know yourself."
Yet Vanessa uses those words against Satan. She is resigned to
having lost her soul, but if she is to be damned, she will be
damned on her own terms. "You offer me a normal life. Why do
you think I want that anymore? I know what I am."
She then speaks the Verbis Diablo,
defeating Satan with his own black magic.
Seeing Kali defeated, Hecate
releases Chandler from the stairwell. The Wolf of God kills Kali.
He is about to kill Vanessa, then stops. Recognizing either
Vanessa or Amunet. Vanessa recognizes Chandler, realizing his dark
secret. She reaches out to touch him, but Chandler rushes from the
room.
Feminist fans have praised Vanessa
as a woman "too strong for Satan," but it would be a mistake to
credit any mortal with the strength to defeat Satan. Vanessa is
the reincarnation of Amunet, a fallen angel empowered to choose or
reject Satan or Dracula. It was Amunet, not "a strong woman," who
defeated Satan in this encounter.
Nor does Vanessa celebrate her
"empowerment." She is distraught over using the Verbis Diablo,
rather than faith in Christ, to defeat Satan. She despairs of ever
regaining her soul.
In their third encounter, she bids
good-bye to Clare in the soup kitchen, believing there is no place
for her among normal people. Clare is likewise leaving London.
Having failed with both Lily and Lavinia, he sees himself as unfit
for human company. He asks Vanessa to join him. She declines, but
leaves him with a kiss. "I think you are the most human man I
have ever known," she tells Frankenstein's monster.
Season Two ends with everyone
dispersing across the globe. Believing himself damned,
guilt-ridden over killing Sembene, Chandler turns himself in to
Rusk, confesses to the Mariner's Inn Massacre, and requests a
quick hanging. He is instead extradited to America to face other
criminal charges. Sir Malcolm leaves England to bury Sembene.
"I'll bring him home to Africa from whence I should never have
brought him. Let him lie in his native earth." Having lost
Lily to Dorian, Frankenstein escapes into addiction, barely able
to find a vein that hasn't collapsed. As in Mary Shelley's novel,
Clare sails for the Arctic Ocean.
In a powerful final scene, Vanessa
takes down the crucifix she has so long prayed to, and puts it in
her burning fireplace. She gazes out into the night. "So we
walk alone."
Yet the Apocalypse draws near. In
Season Three, Dracula and Satan will make their final bids to win
Vanessa, and she will, perhaps, have a chance to regain her soul.
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