She could have continued, but it was decided that there was no need to take the risk. Thus, season 5 of Van Helsing was thought to be the last. A good thing, given the programming chosen by the American channel SyFy for the final episodes. The future of the show was clearly in jeopardy. Either way, the series does have a conclusion.
When this season 5 begins, the Van Helsings are still separated. During the first three episodes, we follow Jack (Nicole Muñoz) who is sent by his mother to the past. In the middle of the Middle Ages, she finds herself trying to stop the arrival of the Dark One. A mission that she does not fully understand at first and which will prove to be loaded with surprises.
Despite his always limited budget, Van Helsing has consistently followed a narratively far more ambitious route than could be imagined. Few series are likely to pause storylines for multiple episodes, especially early in the season. Separating the different protagonists has nevertheless been frequent and it has helped as much for the development of the story as that of the mythology and the characters.
This season 5 does not disappoint in this sense. We discover the past before returning to the present to reconnect with Violet (Keeya King) and Ivory (Jennifer Cheon Garcia) on one side, and Axel (Jonathan Scarfe) and Julius (Aleks Paunovic) on the other. We will meet again key figures of the show who have the right to say their goodbyes. There are deaths and comebacks, new dangers, and ever-changing guesswork.
Few episodes are useless in this final season because the writers wanted to bring Van Helsing to its end in a natural and not rushed way – they complete the majority of the plots, moreover, leaving some slight openings for a possible expansion of the universe, without this being really necessary or disturbing.
Concretely, it was generally well done. It is to be regretted that Vanessa (Kelly Overton) was ultimately not very present or that the filming conditions imposed by the pandemic amplified the isolation of certain characters – which was already notable even before that. In other circumstances, you can imagine the finale would have been more explosive, but the show crew manages to make the scenes work with what they have, delivering action, emotion, and beheadings in the right proportions. So the limitations of the series haven’t changed and some have just been showier, but when you follow the show since its launch, it’s not for its aesthetic qualities that you keep watching it at this point.
At the end of her five seasons, Van Helsing was thus far further than one might have imagined when she started. You could even say that when its conclusion comes, it doesn’t look at all like it started. That’s a good thing because it saved her from getting bogged down in the clichés of the genre she used in her early days.
At the end of the day, this season 5 of Van Helsing is a continuation of the previous ones, offering a final act that does in broad terms what one would expect. The result is thus a fantasy horror series that never tried to be anything other than that, solid entertainment with a well-developed story that kept its interest and stakes until the end.
