'Van Helsing' Season 4 Ending Explained: The true origins of Jack and Violet and the mysteries of the orange powder
Spoiler alert for the season finale of 'Van Helsing' Season 4
There’s a lot to unpack in the Season 4 finale of 'Van Helsing' and a lot of questions that need answering. We find out what happened to the Dark One (Tricia Helfer) and learn more about President Archer (Jill Teed) and the "real world".
However, what is the mysterious orange powder, what does it do, and are we going to enter Season 5 of 'Van Helsing' without any actual Van Helsings?
Jack and Violet may not be Van Helsings after all
When Jack and Violet entered the Dark Realm last episode, they came out decidedly worse for wear. The finale shows us what happened to them while they were in the Dark Realm.
Unable to fight Dracula due to her nigh-omnipotent control of the Dark Realm, Violet and Jack sit down as Dracula explains that the pair were not created as a weapon to destroy her, but instead, as a means of escape for her.
She shows the sisters a vision of their father, Wilhelm (Dakota Daulby) being forced through his dreams of Dracula to sleep with a pair of women and pass on Dracula's blood to them, making Violet and Jack his biological daughters with no connection to Vanessa (Kelly Overton) at all.
Of course, this could be an out and out lie told by Dracula to demoralize her enemies — especially as we've seen actual flashbacks to the moment when Jack and Violet were first created in the lab, while Dracula has only shown the girls' visions she may have very well made up.
The Dark One's Long Game
Another revelation the Dark One makes is that the dreams, voices and visions that brought Violet, Jack and Vanessa together in the first place were all psychic visions from Dracula herself, further cementing the idea that Jack and Violet's destiny was always part of Dracula's plans, leading the sisters to her.
What's more, Dracula has been working on enthralling Jack for a while now. When Jack was last in the Dark Realm, she opened a coffin that suffused her with dark energy, but later shows up with no mention of that happening.
That plot thread is finally resolved, as it turns out that that was when Dracula planted a seed of darkness in Jack that only grew with a psychic seed when Bathory (Jesse Stanley) interrogated Jack and branded her with a pentagram, allowing the Dark One great influence over Jack.
Why Dracula went through all that trouble is unclear, as she's able to take out an unaffected Violet with ease. The page that the sisters brought with them to be able to return to the real world is all the Dark One needs to escape, but having that kind of influence over Jack certainly doesn't hurt.
Dracula is free, and so is Bathory
When she arrived in the real world, it seemed like she was possessing Jack's body, but as it turns out, the Dark One was merely shapeshifting, and turns into her true self to drain President Archer's (Jill Teed) blood, and shapeshift to take her place.
She frees the Oracle from her prison, and Dracula, as president, is now in a position of immense power — though how much power a president has in a post-apocalyptic America is yet to be seen.
From blue to orange, the new anti-vampire bioweapon has mixed results
At the Sunshine Unit, Axel (Jonathan Scarfe), Julius (Aleks Paunovic) and Colonel Nicholson (Aaron Douglas) discover a field dusted with a mysterious orange powder that they theorize may be an advanced version of the blue vampire repellant.
It seems that the orange powder is very effective at killing vampires, as it's taken out a group of daywalkers — but supercharging one more. For reasons that are not made clear, one of the daywalkers has been strengthened by this powder, taking out the Colonel, and possibly Axel and Julius as well.
While this new kind of super-daywalker can still be killed by decapitation, the battle leaves Axel and Julius in dire straights, as breathing in the orange powder has nullified their healing abilities as well.
Violet and Ivory on the hunt
Violet and Ivory (Jennifer Cheon Garcia) have their healing abilities intact, however. Dracula may have snapped Ivory's neck, but that doesn't stop her for long, and she frees Violet to help her destroy Dracula before she goes free.
Unfortunately, the two are too late, as Dracula and Bathory fly away in a presidential helicopter while Violet and Ivory are taken out by soldiers loyal to the person they think is President Archer.
Where is Vanessa?
When we last saw Vanessa, she was dragging the Dark One with her into the Dark Realm. Though we see the Dark One, Vanessa herself remains out of sight — although her voice comes to Jack, who is trapped in one of the many coffins littering the Dark Realm. Is Vanessa dead, or do things just work differently in the Dark Realm?
It's just one of the many questions that Season 5, which will be the show's final season, has to answer. Season 5 of 'Van Helsing' is slated to premiere in 2020.