Van Helsing: Season 4 – review

Director: Various

First aired: 2019

Contains spoilers

Van Helsing is the SyFy series now in its 4th season and based on the Zenoscope Comics. I previously reviewed Season One, Two and Three and if you check those reviews you’ll see that I started off a tad doubtful on season 1 but it raised itself up and rather enjoyed seasons 2 and 3 in a schlocky kind of way.

Unfortunately this season faltered for me. How? Well let’s see (beware serious spoilers for previous seasons).

Bathory and Sam

The end of Season 3 saw the Oracle (Jesse Stanley) – now revealed to be Bathory – trying to seduce both Vanessa Van Helsing (Kelly Overton, True Blood) and Sam (Christopher Heyerdahl, Sanctuary, Matthew Blackheart Monster Smasher & Are You Afraid of the Dark: Tale of the Midnight Madness) into becoming the fourth elder (note that several elders were defeated in season 3, but they were not THE elders it seems… I’ll come on to that). Vanessa’s sister Scarlett (Missy Peregrym, Dark Angel: Love in Vein & Reaper: I Want my Baby back) sacrifices herself and Vanessa remains good, with Sam becoming the elder.

Kelly Overton as Vanessa

So, Vanessa has a brief alliance with rescued (and resuscitated) ancestor Lillian Van Helsing (Julie Lynn Mortensen) and when I say brief, Lillian is dead with undignified haste and this is one of the issues with the season. Everything seems so throwaway with it and very shorthand. Vanessa has a road to Damascus moment of non-violence and goes down the road. Once Vanessa's ally, and Scarlett’s lover, Axel (Jonathan Scarfe) tries to kill her and forgives her in the blink of an episode and Vanessa quickly meets one girl, Jack (Nicole Muñoz, also Sanctuary, Hemlock Grove and Chupacabra Vs the Alamo) and we meet Jack's sister Violet (Keeya King). Both of whom turn out to be Van Helsings (and allegedly scientifically made from eggs harvested from Vanessa).

Tricia Helfer as Dracula

These new characters are thrown towards us with none of the build that we had with Vanessa’s character and it feels off. The aim, it appears, is for the main Elders (now referred to as brides, so distinguished from all the elder vampires we previously met) to resurrect the Dark One… The Dark One being Dracula (Tricia Helfer). So, Dracula has been gender swapped, which works just fine. However, we get very little Dracula action (though there is a promise of more in season 5.

Dracula calls to you

I might be being unfair but it just all seemed mightily rushed, as though they were running towards a finale that never happened really because things just actually ran towards a fifth season rather than creating a season arc in their own right. Interesting new characters such as Max (Richard Harmon), a new antagonist, was used fairly well but was gone all too soon. A group broadcasting gladiatorial slaves just appeared, were clearly broadcasting to an audience, and then vanished (to be fair our protagonists vanished them). Apparently, there was a whole vampire unaffected world out there that we had not heard about.

I found this one rushed and a lot less entertaining than the last couple of seasons. 5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.