Warning: SPOILERS ahead for Netflix’s Dracula.
The ending of Netflix’s Dracula season 1 answers a burning question about the nefarious vampire and his greatest weakness after a surprise time jump to the present day. Created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss (Sherlock), Dracula loosely adapts the classic novel by Bram Stoker but also diverges from it wildly, taking the dark lord of the night in a new direction while exploring Dracula’s legend and mythology to shed new light on the Count’s character and vulnerabilities.
Dracula is structured like seasons of Sherlock, with three 90-minute episodes. The first chapter, “The Rules of the Beast,” is told from the point of view of Jonathan Harker (John Heffernan), the English solicitor who became a prisoner in Dracula’s Transylvanian castle in 1897. After he escapes and finds sanctuary in a Hungarian convent, Sister Agatha Van Helsing (Dolly Wells) interrogates Harker to learn the vampire’s weaknesses. However, Dracula attacks the convent looking for Harker and slaughters everyone, sparing only Harker’s fiancée Mina Murray (Morfydd Clark) and Agatha. The middle chapter, “Blood Vessel”, is set aboard the Demeter, the ship Dracula commissioned to take him to England. The vampire also manipulated the crew and selected the passengers himself; while Dracula planned to kill everyone aboard, he wished to use the voyage as ‘practice’ for how he would ingratiate himself into English society. However, Dracula also secretly brought Agatha on the journey and the nun turned the tables on the vampire; she managed to sink the Demeter, killing herself and Dracula - or so she thought.
The final chapter of Dracula, “The Dark Compass,” revealed that Dracula survived for 123 years beneath the sea and awoke in the United Kingdom of 2020 - only to find Agatha’s identical descendant, Dr. Zoe Helsing, in charge of the Jonathan Harker Foundation, an organization dedicated to trapping and studying Dracula. The vampire was sprung by his attorney Frank Renfield (Mark Gatiss) and ingratiated himself into modern-day London, where he targeted a beautiful socialite named Lucy Westenra (Lydia West) and turned her into his newest vampire bride, nicknamed the Bloofer Lady. Meanwhile, Zoe, who is dying of cancer, drank a sample of Dracula’s blood, which placed her in touch with the essence of her ancestor Agatha. Together, the Van Helsings deduced the truth behind Dracula’s greatest weakness and how to ultimately defeat him.
Why Dracula Fears The Cross (His Weakness Is Death)
Zoe and Agatha eventually realized that Dracula’s weaknesses - needing to be invited into a residence, fatal vulnerability to sunlight, and fear of the cross - are all tied together and symptomatic of Dracula’s overwhelming fear of death. The vampire exists to feed off of mortals and prolong his own life, but what truly frightens Dracula is the fact that he lacks the courage to face death itself. As Agatha explained to him, Dracula is descended from an ancient line of warlords who died on the battlefield - all except for him, and thus he lives in secret shame of his cowardice. Dracula’s fear of death manifested in a series of habits that express his deepest shame, such as feeling rejected by the living and fearing the warm light of the sun.
Most of all, Dracula fears the cross but not because it represents God’s absolute goodness. Rather, the cross symbolizes Jesus’ courage when he died to redeem Mankind during the Crucifixion - the type of courage Count Dracula completely lacks. This inability to cast his gaze upon the cross is unique to Dracula and not shared by other vampires; in 1897, Dracula’s bride Elena (Lujza Richter) showed no fear of the crucifix Harker tried to ward her off with.
Why Dracula Chose Lucy As His Best Bride
Dracula always created brides for himself and he dreamed of being able to procreate; however, in Lucy Westenra, the Count found his best bride of all. Despite the fact that she is engaged to an American named Quincey Morris (Phil Dunster), Lucy is a rebellious free spirit who feels she was cursed for being beautiful (“everyone always smiles at you when you’re beautiful”). But Dracula wasn’t drawn to Lucy, whom he found through a cell phone he stole another of her beaus, Dr. Jack Seward (Matthew Beard), because of her looks. Rather, Dracula is captivated because Lucy has absolutely no fear of death.
Lucy voluntarily lets Dracula feed on her and happily returns for more, which impresses the vampire. As she gradually transforms into a vampire, Dracula begins teaching her how to hear the “sweet music” of the “children of the night” (i.e. the undead buried in their graves), and Lucy earns the nickname “Bloofer Lady.” But when Dracula fully turns Lucy, her family believe her dead, hold a funeral for her, and cremate her. Lucy survives the cremation but is left horribly and irrevocably burned until Jack stakes her through the heart, which turns the Bloofer Lady into dust. Yet it was the fact that Lucy had no fear whatsoever of the one thing Dracula truly dreaded that attracted and fascinated the vampire - so that he felt she was his best bride of all.
Van Helsing Beats Dracula With Death (But Both Can Return)
Zoe Helsing is dying of cancer, but this turns out to be another weapon in her arsenal because it means that her blood is poisonous to Dracula - as the vampire learns when he tries to feed off of her. And because in Dracula, “blood is lives,” when Zoe drinks the sample of Dracula’s blood she took, it means that the essence of her ancestor Agatha is able to contact Zoe through the vampire’s hemoglobin. Together, the two Van Helsings deduce Dracula’s crippling fear of death and their gambit to expose him to direct sunlight - thereby showing him his fatal vulnerability is actually a manifestation of his own shame and cowardice - works.
Dracula, who always liked and respected Agatha’s intelligence and wit (which Zoe also inherited), surprisingly takes mercy on his nemesis. Now understanding that it was his own death he feared all along, Dracula musters the courage to face his own dread by drinking Zoe’s cancerous blood. The result is twofold: it’sa mercy for Zoe that allows her to die painlessly, and it also finally kills Dracula, who succumbs to Zoe’s poisonous blood. It looks like both the Count and Zoe die at the end of Dracula season 1.
And yet, while this was a compassionate final gesture from the vampire towards Zoe (and Agatha), it’s left ambiguous whether Dracula and Zoe did actually perish. It’s possible both somehow survived her cancer (and Zoe was turned into a vampire), which could mean that both lead characters could return if there is a Dracula season 2.
How Netflix’s Dracula’s Ending Compares To The Book
Netflix’s Dracula ends very differently from Bram Stoker’s novel. In the original story, which takes place entirely in 1897, Dr. Abraham Van Helsing leads a vampire-hunting team consisting of Jonathan Harker, Lord Arthur Holmwood, Jack Seward, and Quincey Morris all the way back to Transylvania and they eventually kill Dracula outside of his castle, though Quincey dies during the fight. Their vengeance against the Count was motivated by how he turned and killed Lucy and then corrupted Mina Harker, Jonathan’s wife. Stoker’s novel treated Dracula as a manifestation of pure evil, and the vampire was a villain who lurked in the shadows.
Moffat and Gatiss’ Dracula adapts certain beats from the novel, but they make the Count the main character, gender-swap Van Helsing, and draw an entirely new conclusion. It also includes the startling time jump to 2020 London, where Dracula learns how to Skype and finds his victims by swiping through dating apps. In Dracula, Van Helsing’s gambit of destroying the Count’s 50 boxes of Transylvanian soil happens on the Demeter during the voyage to England, Quincey lives, and Mina only plays a minor role in the story (Dracula even dismisses her as unimportant), which is another significant departure from Stoker’s tale. Moffat and Gatiss were also far more concerned with exploring Dracula’s vampire mythology and crafting new rationales for his powers and vulnerabilities. It’s up to the fans to decide if Netflix’s Dracula’s radical changes to the classic tale have a worthy bite.
Next: What To Expect From Netflix’s Dracula Season 2
