Last episode of Van
Helsing their pet elder decided to send Vanessa into an old memory so she
could learn something about the B’ah, another elder.
This involved
literally putting her in the body of her ancestor, Lily Van Helsing. Where she
arrives takes a look around late 19th century Hong Kong. Of course she’s
surprised by this and her first reaction is to threaten violence on her maid
Siobahn. Because she’s Vanessa Van Helsing and made of rage. Siobahn is
confused but is willing to calm Vanessa down - it helps that Siobahn knows all
about her hunt of vampires and the fact she’s a third generation vampire
slayer, so probably expects a decent amount of eccentricity.
She’s not the only
generational vampire slayer, since the Hong Kong Governor’s wife is also
roughly descended from the vampire story and she points Vanessa in the
direction of Master Tsui, a local vampire hunter who can guide her towards some
vampires that need killing
More difficult is her
husband, Edward, who doesn’t believe in vampires and thinks his wife is
hysterical, delusional etc etc and should be a nice meek little “tamed” servant
who is “useful” to him and his ambitions and he’s totally against all this
suffragette nonsense. Because he fears her relapsing and embarrassing him he’d
rather she didn’t attend his formal dinner with the head of the East Asian
company. Which Vanessa is happy to duck out of since it means she can find
Master Tsui and go vampire hunting
She meets him and he
tells her about the ominous Shadow Walker, which serves the B’ah and is duly
spooky and very very different from the vampires they’ve faced. Master Tsui
takes Vanessa aside where he tells her that the Shadow Walkers and vampires
were usually a threat in rural areas - but there’s the bubonic plague
slaughtering people now which is driving the vampires to the cities where
there’s still an untainted supply of blood.
And she’s supposed to
train with him. Yes, we’re doing white-person-trained-by-Asian-martial-artist
thing. We really are. Vanessa’s even dropping karate kid references and he is
vaguely cryptic because of course they are. He criticises her technique because
it basically involves endless rages
Oh yes I laughed. Oh
how I laughed. A key point of her training is to stop her foaming like a
berserker on crack for 5 minutes.
Training montage
includes the blindfolded-with-a-sword scene because of course it does.
Yes, moving swiftly
on from this gross Asian martial arts fetishism because ye gods are we still
doing this?
She goes back to
husband who tells her that the important man he was having dinner with has been
killed by having his throat ripped out and his blood drunk. But she better not
talk about vampires you silly hysterical woman you. So she drugs him so she can
go out hunting
And finds a Yang
Shih, an important minion of The B’ah who keeps vanishing and reappearing and
being so very different from the vampires she’s used to. She manages to kill
him with some advice from Tsui who randomly turns up despite not knowing where
she is and even then can’t say “look out behind you” but has to deliver some
cryptic koan because they’re MILKING this damn enigmatic asian stereotype.
She’s injured in the
fight and realises that she isn’t in her standard immortal body and she needs
to take into account Lily’s fragility. And recruit Siobahn to sew up her wounds
- and an awkwardly timed arrival of her husband makes things further difficult
as he thinks she’s taken to self-harming to maintaining the idea that vampires
exist. He orders her and Siobahn confined to their quarters while he goes to
find Tsui.
He goes looking for
Tsui at an opium den (force in those stereotypes!) where he tells all his
problems and concerns to… the B’ah.
Vanessa and Siobahn
are not being held by any guard and rush to the same location to take down the
B’ah, joined by Tsui who realises they’re outnumbered so need to run. But
Vanessa knows she can’t leave Edward to his death because he has a role in the
future - which clues the B’ah in to the fact they’re in a memory dream
So a memory of the B’ah created by one elder is self-aware? I mean is this actual time travel, a memory? What is this?
Vanessa is poisoned
by as thrown knife - having the skill to catch it but not the healing factor
not to be hurt by it. They fight several minions but thankfully they’re
fighting in a room with easily opened windows - which Vanessa opens to splash
everyone with sunlight. But not before Tsui is mortally wounded. Disposable
mentor, of course! Oh and licking B’ah blood
B’ah escapes,
announcing they will meet again “not in dreams” because, again, we’re really
not explaining this whole elder memory thing. They learn she’s fled to San
Francisco
And Vanessa returns
to reality to ask the Elder what the point of all that was - and she realises
that the Elder, pledged to them, cannot kill Vanessa directly. But the Elder
can follow her instructions to send her into a vision/memory/time travel THING
to have the B’ah kill her.
Vanessa decides that
the “support” of an Elder who will try to kill her at any moment - and how she
has to word any instructions like she’s talking to an extremely pedantic,
homicidal genie - is not really valuable. So she stabs the elder
Personally I think
it’s because the writers realised that there’s a problem with them having a
portable nuke which the elder represents
