Way back in 1906 we
catch up with Lily, a Van Helsing ancestor. She has herself committed to an
asylum so she can then break out, kill a rapist with dazzling fighting skills
and try to take down a vampire…. Which then manages to kill her with weirdness.
More weirdness, yay
So in 2020 we have
the Van Helsing sisters and Axel hunting down Susan!Elder’s totem. The elder
helpfully tells them repeatedly “you’ll know it when you see it.” Like
porn, apparently (why she couldn’t have said “it’s bracelet!”? I don’t know).
They follow the Elder to an asylum - getting a guide along the way who the
elder eats because she’s a vampire and it’s what they do
Scarlett and Axel are
duly horrified by this while Vanessa is pretty indifferent. Vanessa is also
becoming even surlier - which is impressive - with lots of brooding silence and
snarling at Axel and her sister. Honestly this personality shift would be more
notable if she weren’t already a seething ball of poorly focused rage.
Oh and her eyes keep
glowing red which is sorta worrying. And Scarlett just wants to connect with
her sister but finds that hard because Rage Ball.
So they explore the
creepy asylum at night and Vanessa suggests splitting up because YE GODS THIS
WOMAN HAS NEVER SEEN A HORROR MOVIE EVER. Axel and Scarlett, being much
more genre savvy, put a hefty fuck no on that one. They also leave the elder
behind because she’s evil and unhelpful
They find a room full
of a brand new kind of vampires - these vampires fight by just standing there
and glowing blue at their targets. This causes the screen to vibrate and a
whole lot of weird noises which seem to represent some kind of mind zapping.
There’s also telekinesis. They’re kind of menacing but they kind of just stand
there and zap. Scarlett pauses to scream now and then but is otherwise able to
cut quite a path through them. Axel is even more debilitated but even he
managed to shoot several of them while Vanessa doesn’t seem all that
inconvenienced at all
I do like the contrast of Scarlett and Vanessa’s fighting style: Scarlett’s elegant skill and Vanessa’s berserker brutality
The vampires are
killed pretty easily. They’re probably better off focusing on biting people.
Scarlett bites one of them and lo she can change vampires into humans again.
He’s Dr. Karloff and has no idea where the Totem is but he does tell them all
about their ancestor. Because he reads historical files for fun? I mean,
really?
So pulling out the
files they study this and decide that the Elder’s totem is clearly buried with Lily…
...because she’d take
it into the asylum with her when she already handed off her elder blood to her
husband in case goes wrong. And this same totem would then be buried with her
by the asylum and not claimed by her clearly-aware relatives or appropriated by
corrupt staff. This makes no sense at all… absolutely none.
They find what Dr
Karloff says is the grave while Scarlett and Vanessa talk about why Vanessa is
such a terrible monster, how they’re both totally not into Axel, honest and how
Scarlett wants to be sisters. Vanessa feels a little guilty and confesses that
since her eyes went all red she’s no longer just using blood as a boost - but
now she craves it. And she’s generally worried about turning.
Meanwhile Dr Karloff
is with Axel and he knocks Axl out for some fun electroshock. It turns out he
wasn’t a doctor, he was a patient and he killed the doctors then got changed by
the weird vampires and now wants to be evil because
this is how the media treats mental illness. Axl escapes and kills him turning it
all into basically a nonsense delaying tactic before we’re directed to the
actual grave
Also this vampire mentally ill person apparently decided to read through old files so she could actually recognise the Van Helsing name… i mean this already made little sense when he was an actual doctor but now it’s even more dubious.
They go to where the
new grave is and run into the real chief mind-frying vampire that killed their
ancestor. Vanessa sends Scarlett back with Axel so they don’t get their brain
fried while she glares and snarls at him. He tries to fry her brain, fails and
throws telekinesis at her every time she gets too close.
Until the elder turns
up and squishes the bad vampire effortlessly
They can no grave rob
their ancestor - finding her body is shockingly well preserved and looks like
she’s still alive. She also has the Totem bracelet which they refuse to give to
their pet Elder. And, again, why she couldn’t have said “it’s a bracelet” I
don’t know.
Vanessa also finds a
shiny sword which the elder begs her not to touch (which Vanessa duly ignores)
- the sword has blood stains on it and the elder warns her that it means it’s
been in touch with the elder known as The Barr. And Vanessa needs to stay the
hell away from it. This may be the one useful element of this episode - the
Elder killing the psychic vampire as if it were utterly effortless while
Vanessa & co were helpless in the face of it shows just how out of their
league they are. They are not ready to take on an elder: so the elder decides
to mind control her into hallucinating olde times. Because this will help.
Apparently
No-one explains why
psychic vampires are a thing. Or why the bracelet was buried with Lily. Or how
Karloff knew anything about the Van Helsings. Honestly this whole episode
contained so much handwaving
