When the third season of Netflix’s Castlevania came out, fans sympathized with the two characters who suffered the most in the entire series. The first one was Alucard, who was assumed to become like his father, Dracula, and the other was Hector, who could not find a shred of peace in his life no matter what he did.
These narratives were a little different from the original gaming series, and no one knew why these characters were treated so badly. However, the struggles of these characters might have nothing to do with the story, rather than the creator of the series, Warren Ellis. Ellis once pointed out that he hated the voice actor of Hector, which is why he decided to torture the character.
Later on, it was revealed by Adi Shankar, the Executive Producer of Castlevania, that he had some internal conflicts with Ellis, and Ellis decided to portray his hate by torturing Shankar’s favorite characters from Castlevania: Alucard and Hector.
Warren Ellis Wanted Hector to Struggle Because of Theo James
In an interview with The Verge, Ellis confessed to the fact that he hated the deep, heroic voice of Hector’s voice actor. He also pointed out that Theo James had the talent of perfectly portraying sad and disheartening voice cracks, which proved to be a good thing for the character. Thus, he decided to have fun with Hector and subjected him to sadness and disappointment.
Ellis revealed:
Not on my watch! Sorry, I didn’t say that. It’s terrible, because [voice actor] Theo James, he’s got that big resonant heroic voice that immediately makes me hate him. But also, he does this thing where he can let little cracks of insecurity and vulnerability into his voice, which fascinated me. The confluence of these two things meant that I had immense fun just torturing the poor guy.
Hector has had to endure a great deal of hardship since he was a child because his parents despised him for his abilities. Later on, Hector’s naivety led to Carmilla trying to take over Dracula’s rule, but she failed and imprisoned Hector. However, Hector survives and falls in love with Lenore, who dies at the end of Castlevania season 3, leaving him hopeless once again.
The Internal Conflicts Between the Creators of Castlevania
Almost a year later, Castlevania’s showrunner, Adi Shankar, revealed to FTW USA Today that his relationship with Ellis took a turn during the third and fourth seasons of Castlevania. The two stopped talking, and things became very ugly. There are reasons to believe that this internal dispute might have been the reason for the mistreatment of Hector and Alucard.
Shankar stated:
Without getting into the weeds on dirty laundry, [writer] Warren [Ellis] and I did not have a good personal or professional relationship after Season 3 and 4 commenced, and we stopped communicating directly around mid-2019. It turned ugly very fast. The wonderful folks at Netflix attempted to mend the bridge, but there is beef there.
Shankar has stated multiple times that his favorite characters in Castlevania were Alucard and Hector.
Therefore, there is a hypothesis that Ellis’ personal conflicts with the showrunner might have been the reason why he treated the two characters so badly and made them suffer throughout the third season.
You can watch Castlevania on Netflix.
