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Timothy Dalton as Sir Malcolm in Penny Dreadful (season 3, episode 8). - Photo: Jonathan Hession/SHOWTIME - Photo ID: PennyDreadful_308_0176

This review is based on the last two episodes of the series: “Perpetual Night” and “The Blessed Dark.”

“Leave now, while I allow it,” is what Dracula says to our intrepid heroes of the Demimonde before they engage in an all-out brawl with his den of vampires. It’s a heart-pounding scene, excellently shot, clearly choreographed, and amidst the intense scares are quiet moments of dread leading toward an unfathomable climax that leave viewers wondering what will become of Sir Malcolm, Ethan, Victor, Kaetenay, Seward, and Katerina? The scene overall is a perfect encapsulation of Penny Dreadful—well paced, terrifying, action-packed yet quietly entrancing—and that line, “Leave now, while I allow it,” is what seems to have been Showtime’s or John Logan’s (or both’s) attitude toward the series: an ultimatum in which the show could drive toward its endgame at full speed, or be cut off at the knees by the forces of networks or creative shortcomings.

That would be the indication, anyway, given the dramatic escalation of the plot to Vanessa’s sudden death, and those final words, “The End,” after the last frame of the Creature, John Clare, kneeling mournfully over her grave.

In its own article about the series ending, TV by the Numbers reports that it was “a decision Logan and Showtime arrived at mutually.” In an interview with TVLine published since the episode aired, Logan also said he had seen this endgame coming down the road, and that it was a perfect ending for all the characters involved.

Wes Studi as Kaetenany in Penny Dreadful (season 3, episode 8). - Photo: Jonathan Hession/SHOWTIME - Photo ID: PennyDreadful_308_0193

I personally disagree. Not just because I love Vanessa—my goodness, I love Vanessa as a character. And it’s not because I had the rug pulled out from under me with the season finale/series finale switcheroo. The thing is, this would have been excellent as a season finale, but as a series finale, it undoes several elements that came before.

First and foremost is the show’s feminism. This show has had such a progressive view of women for the time period, and in general. It has been empathetic to the pain caused by women’s subordination, and provided a bit of a fantasy (for the time period) in which women can prevail over the men who would dominate them. Vanessa has shown this most of all through her defiance of Lucifer and her will to vanquish Dracula (at least until the end of “Ebb Tide”), but so has Lily (played with compassion and flair by Billie Piper) in her gambit for a revolution against the men of the age, and eventually her struggle to free herself from Victor and Jekyll.

These plot lines even seem like they’re going to pay off for a while too. Of course, we all assumed that the team would go to Vanessa to help her overcome her surrender to the Dragon, but it also seemed like Lily would get her due as well, whether by violence or by baring her soul, and her most painful memories, to her captors. The team does go to Vanessa, and Lily does get free. Our two most prominent heroines seem destined to shine, triumphant, against the grime of hell and London.

But then Vanessa says she has to die for Dracula to be thwarted—that Ethan, her champion and Lupus Dei, must kill her—even though she knows he can be defeated by a bullet, like any man. And Lily? She returns to Dorian’s empty house, in which he has restored the perfect loneliness and desolation of his immortality, her revolution dashed, her would-be forces scattered to the winds…even though there were many more women who had been loyal to her, and only one Dorian (who may not have been able to die, but could still have been subdued). Just like that, our women are cast back down, run up against the harsh reality that they could glimpse the sunlight of a better life but never touch it. They could move toward it, work for it, and want it badly, but never live within its light. This is especially disheartening for me. As presented—hastily in this shortened season—these developments seem more like wonton regressions instead of a meditated motion in these characters’ arcs.

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This feeling also carries over to Ethan’s story. He was just embracing his role as the Wolf of God this season, his part to play as Vanessa’s champion against the forces of darkness. While the show has always been nuanced enough to say that salvation can be found in dark things, the oversight of the rules Logan and his writers established—that Dracula could be killed with a bullet—negates Ethan’s importance, and even makes him work against the destiny that he has begun to accept, and that has been written out on Egyptian artifacts, and in Apache caves. When Ethan shoots Vanessa, he doesn’t just rend flesh and bone, but the solid mythology that Penny Dreadful’s creative team have been revealing over the show’s 27 installments.

Finally, the series also continues to leave some of its storylines out in the cold. Lily and Dorian never get to play in the larger picture of the series, and the Creature finishes his story just as isolated as when he tore his way through Proteus in Season One. I’m not saying every series needs to tie up in a neat bow—see The Leftovers for a sublime example of television that doesn’t answer all the questions and yet feels emotionally cohesive and narratively whole—but all Lily has done is draw vague thematic parallels to Vanessa’s more operatic depiction of a woman dogged by men’s ambitions and tastes, and there has never appeared to be a larger reason for her character’s storylines’ importance in the show.

(Isn’t it fitting, though, that the show feels disjointed at the end? It always has been about broken things).

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Amidst all that, however, I think that Dracula emerged the most unscathed from the hasty ending of the series. In “Perpetual Night” and “The Blessed Dark,” Dracula mainly becomes the muscle, but Christian Camargo’s portrayal makes him a foreboding force of nature, brute strength channeled with an iron will. But he is the most unscathed. All the most satisfying villains on Penny Dreadful are the ones subdued after our heroes work through their inner demons. However, when Vanessa “accepts her God,” as Logan puts it, and has Ethan kill her, the series ends with Dracula receding swiftly to the background, to fight our heroes another day.

Which is something beautiful about the finale—it is sudden, and more than a bit ramshackle at the end, but in only three seasons, this series has breathed life into its characters that feels as if it extends beyond the screen. Like Abel Korzeniowski’s score, the entire cast’s acting, the production design, the conversations and still moments the characters share, and the truths Penny Dreadful’s creative team has found in the darkest places, that quality of liveliness past the series’ death is exquisite.

Penny Dreadful may not have ended on a high note for me, but it ended relatively on its own terms, and being essentially what viewers fell in love with at the the start. I will always appreciate it for that.

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Eric Mayrhofer

Eric is a Hogwarts student whose letter got lost in the mail. While he's waiting for his owl, he does social media during the day and fiction at night. He loves reading, and currently adores anything by Cathrynne Valente, Elizabeth Strout, Steven Millhauser, Patrick Ness, and of course, JK Rowling the Twitter Queen. When he grows up, he wants to be a water bender. In the meantime, he pursues his MFA.