#like it’s not deep it’s cheap it exist for the sole purpose of these parallel it has nothing to do with storytelling

[christophernolan]

lol comparing Alicent losing a son that she willingly sacrificed, who isn’t even dead, to Rhaenyra whose son was TAKEN from her, please I’m sorry but there is no parallel. I appreciate the hustle of some people but like.. see reason

[roominthecastle]

Thank you for taking the time and typing up your reply, @alma37.

Now I get where you were coming from. You are def much more attached to Zoe than I am. You don’t need to produce any other arguments and “I like it better this way” is a perfectly acceptable answer. And while I don’t believe Agatha’s return is completely at Zoe’s expense -- given that she would have died anyway --, I understand the pain of watching a favorite character used as fodder for another one’s story.

You’ve also raised some interesting points and the exact questions I’ve been pondering myself, so I’m gonna take this opportunity to just unload my thoughts here. Please don’t take this as me trying to talk you out of your opinion or preferences bc I don’t wanna do that.

This is mostly just me trying to explain my preferences to myself.

"after Blood Vessel, as much as Dracula liked her, I could not see him and Agatha together”

oh yes, theirs is an infinitely fucked up dynamic, there is no debating that. they are enemies, so murder attempts come w/ the territory, which is not every shipper’s cup of tea and that’s understandable. However, every relationship involving Dracula is fucked up this way by default since he automatically brings his "inclinations” into it. I guess one could write him already “tamed” and w/ less issues but then it wouldn’t really be him. This is a major thing I love about this show, how they are not afraid to portray him as a full-fledged monster who just keeps coming at you w/ a razor smile -- partly bc he literally can’t help himself. He is a predator who -- to once again quote the commentary -- operates w/ a “torturous sense of fairness” that, to me, echoes the amorality you can observe in the animal kingdom: there is no reasoning with a hungry lion once it’s spotted a zebra; it’s in its nature to hunt prey in order to survive. Empathy or morals don’t factor into this basic conduct.

Dracula has this hard-wired primal drive, too. And Agatha points it out early on when she calls him a beast who doesn’t understand the rules governing its behavior but simply follows them. Of course, he has a point, as well, when he claims he’s more than that. He is. Otherwise, he would just be absolved of all the killing he does, which would feel cheap and unjust and would rob his character of all the fun complexities. Underneath the veneer of a sophisticated nobleman there is a beast, and underneath that grotesque (protective) display are human remains and loads of festering mental health issues. But the only person who bothers to look at these layers and how they inform each other is Agatha. Her equally unyielding drive for knowledge & understanding is the power that allows her to counter him, exert control over him, and tap into his deformed human core in a way nobody else has ever been able to. She does this to save others from him but also to satisfy her own dark fascination, and in the process I think she also comes to feel for him. They reach a level of intimacy that makes this outcome inevitable, imo.

This, in my eyes, makes her pretty much the only person who has any chance at having a more meaningful relationship w/ him that lasts longer than his feeding time. This is also what comes across in Dracula’s indirect advice to Zoe: if she hopes to match him, she will need to conjure Agatha from his blood. He essentially gives her the key to his own destruction (which is also his way out), then retreats and waits. This has the same self-regulating vibe as him convincing himself that his immense supernatural power has ordinary loopholes like needing an invitation to enter or the sunlight. Shame is a control tactic and self-shaming is a form of self-control, albeit a very problematic one. He puts in checks and balances which you wouldn’t do unless deep down you knew you needed to be “checked and balanced” by someone who’s willing to take on the thankless task. He cannot do it, he can’t face himself (he literally smashes mirrors and turns from every reflective surface), but Agatha is willing and able to drag him back into the light.

This is why the parallel to Petruvio & his wife works so well. The design to Dracula’s mind (and therefore the way out) is scattered across time and many myths. Agatha collects these and uses them to lead him out of the prison he’s made for himself, which has its visual parallel in the maps being hidden inside the wife’s portrait.

In other words, I cannot see Dracula with anyone else long term since he sees everyone else as a toy and/or a prey -- a means to an end. That’s how he sees Agatha at first, too, and it takes some time for him to realize that he made a mistake. This delayed realization can also be attributed to his bestial drive that has subdued the rest of him for so long, he really cannot cut through its wiring on his own; he came to exist to continue his existence, and the pointless circularity of this is the biggest trap: despite leaving loopholes, he’s still a prisoner of his own hunger & shame. Feeling for others would make it infinitely more painful but shedding empathy only provides a temporary release. Still, life lived solely for oneself is never fulfilling no matter how long it stretches forward, and the insatiable hunger Dracula feels gels nicely w/ this.

It’s Agatha who breaks the circle when she makes him confront the human origin of all this mess. Once she gets through to him, once she makes him remember, we can witness what Mofftiss call the “beginning of morality” and empathy seeping back into Dracula, and his existence takes on meaning when he chooses to sacrifice his immortality to take away her mortal pain. To me this feels like a direct call-back to the scene where he asks her if she is willing to die to save that terrified child and she tells him she would die to save any terrified child bc “there is a nobler purpose to my life than simply prolonging it.” But Dracula only comes to feel this nobler purpose where Agatha is concerned (baby steps :). He still doesn’t care about anyone else but that could be a juicy problem to tackle next season if there is one. *crosses fingers*

“they needed Agatha to stay human until the end of TDC - but, in that case, why bring her so late in the episode?”

I’m afraid only the writers can answer this one. But my best guess is that there are other characters from the novel -- Lucy especially -- they wanted to play with a little. Since I like them, too, and like how they planted them into this modern setting, I have no problem w/ Agatha taking her sweet time resurrecting. This was also a nice way to show just how bored & lost Dracula is in her absence (side note: him using Tinder as a takeout menu + complaining that he has to exercise now that everything is delivered and doesn’t have to be hunted down will never not be hilarious AF). I have seen a few fans complain about the pacing of ep 3 but I think it provides a nice, strategic contrast to the more dynamic previous episode, again highlighting why Agatha’s presence in his life was so invigorating and how her absence is the opposite -- he is a 500-year old warlord yet his life is now somehow... banal bc he has no worthy match.

“If he really want Agatha so badly, and since Zoe doesn’t come after him (she has other things in mind, understandably), why does he not? To see if his little ply worked? If his dear Agatha is back? The only time Renfield talks about Zoe, Dracula doesn’t seem remotely interested.”

I think he is interested (his suggestion to use bats as surveillance cracks me up every time) and he is waiting. He keeps tabs on the Harker Foundation from a safe distance and, to me, looks rather crestfallen when Renfield tells him that his lady friend (aka Van Helsing aka his “Agatha incubator”) left and seems to have lost all interest in Dracula. I think he expected a different outcome. It’s speculation but I think he expected Zoe to drink his blood (bc it doesn’t come as a surprise later when he notices the changes in her) and expected it to have an effect sooner and time is running out since Zoe is dying. Zoe was supposed to act similarly to the bed of his own native soil (she is a “bed” of Agatha’s DNA) and regenerate Agatha even if it’s temporary. So he is both staying away (survival is still key) and wants her to come after him again -- a delicious contradiction he can’t untangle by himself.

Lack of (threatening) interest, however, is a clear sign that Agatha is not back. If she were, he def wouldn’t have to go and check. She would waste no time seeking him (and indeed she wants to go after him the second she manifests and, as Zoe remarks, Dracula isn’t surprised to find her at his doorstep -- another parallel to ep 1 where it’s Agatha who anticipated him coming for his bride). I think he was waiting for her return just like Agatha was waiting for his in ep 2 (another parallel). It’s Renfield‘s remarks that drive this point home for me as he has a front row seat to what Dracula is like during these 3 months: “I wonder what it is you actually want,” and “What are you doing with your time?” I think it’s no coincidence that both of these questions get answered only w/ Agatha’s return. Dracula basically idles in the meantime. And the fact that it takes Agatha 3 months to properly manifest, when Zoe is the weakest, is def a testament to Zoe’s strength of character. She is a Van Helsing, after all. And they vanquish the monster in the smartest, most elegant way: by making him feel something other than blinding hunger for the first time in centuries.