'Van Helsing' Episode 11 review: 'All Apologies' gives us a hint at a vampire-free world even as it doubles down on its mysticism
Throughout the season, there have been teases of a safe haven. Of a place beyond the apocalypse, where humans are safe from the vampires and do not need to worry about the danger they pose. Somewhere where people have returned to a pre-Rising society, and people can return to some semblance of their former lives. A glimpse of that world is seen in this episode, and it really serves to illustrate just how weird the plot of ‘Van Helsing’ has gotten.
As the lab-grown Van Helsing-lings, Violet (Keeya King) and Jack (Nicole Munoz) plan their next move, Hansen (Neil McDonough) is tortured by the remaining brides for information. Hansen holds his own, and a psychic guilt-grip interrogation by Bathory (Jesse Stanley) in the guise of Violet (who, incidentally, makes an excellent Bathory) shows just how much he genuinely cares for his daughters.
With two star Van Helsings now, the party splits, with Violet, Julius (Aleks Paunovic) and Axel (Jonathan Scarfe) going after the pages while Jack and newly returned human, Ivory (Jennifer Cheon) going on to rescue Hansen from the Brides.
As fun as it was seeing Jennifer Cheon as the savage Ivory, her human character is just as compelling on screen, as she and Jack take out Michaela (Heather Doerkson), just as Michaela makes herself less vulnerable by putting her heart in a wooden box. Where Ivory takes Michaela head-on, Jack takes out members of the Sisterhood, biting them back into humanity with a speed that’s so effective you have to wonder why it’s not been the default option for so long. Jack stakes Michaela through the heart - a heart that lies outside of her, in a wooden box, in a moment straight out of a fairy tale - leaving just one Bride left on the side of the Dark One.
Over at Fort Collins, Axel’s truck full of rotting clothes has to be one of the more genius ways of smuggling people in. The ingenuity doesn’t stop there, as Julius gets “killed” to be given free rein of Fort Collins once he resurrects in the morgue. The show continues to feature clever new ways of using healing factors that are refreshingly clever.
Axel is taken to be interrogated by the army personnel station at Fort Collins. He’s immediately identified, having had given them his name. Axel’s been in a post-apocalyptic world for so long, he looks surprised to have forgotten that the military still has records, search engines, and working printers, even. It’s a mark of how deeply embedded in a post-Rising world he’s been. It’s a great contrast with a Fort Collins general’s own surprise to see Julius back from the dead, and the wealth of bizarre mentions Violet lets out in a single second. “Hold on,” he says, trying to wrap his head around things, “What’s an Oracle?”
Violet finds Hansen at Fort Collins - ironic, considering that she was the one okay with leaving him to the mercy of the Brides - only she meets him in his Wilhem (Dakota Daulby) form. The dual forms work well, as the tragedy of Willhelm’s backstory is given its own form, separate from the Hansen illusion. Wilhelm has been badly harmed by his interrogators and remains in his true form. It will be a shame to lose Neil McDonough’s Hansen, but a literal transformational return really strengthens Wilhelm’s fighting for the side of good, again.
The ‘Van Helsing’ aesthetic sets itself apart by balancing its vampires, rooted in magic lore and savagery, with rusty, dusty post-apocalyptic modern-day technology. The show tends to oscillate between one extreme or the other, and where it can’t, it forces the two together in strange new ways that are a large part of what makes the show stand out. Every now and again, though, the show will lampshade just how ridiculous things are, and in ‘All Apologies’, the balance of myth and military wobbles to amusing effect at Fort Collins. There may be a world safe from vampiric troubles, with its own American president, even, but it’s not a world that the show’s leads can ever truly reside in, not until the vampires have been dealt with, once and for all.
The next episode of ‘Van Helsing’ airs December 13, on Syfy.