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By Thomas M. Sipos
Rumors abound that
Penny Dreadful creator John Logan outlined four seasons, but that at the end of Season Two, Showtime decided the third would be the last. Thus Logan condensed two seasons into one. He denies these rumors, yet, like the last season of
Game of Thrones, the third season of
Penny Dreadful feels rushed and incomplete. But despite its flaws, Season Three has its moments and a closure that is both beautiful and profound.
We open several months after Vanessa Ives (Eva Green) defeated Satan by speaking the Verbis Diablo. Feeling that she has forsaken God, she is an emotional wreck. She lives in darkness, windows covered. Months of dirty dishes, pots, and utensils lay strewn about the mansion, upon tables and floors, crawling with insects. She sits on the floor, eating like an animal.
home > archive > 2020 > this article
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By Thomas M. Sipos
In the second season of
Penny Dreadful, feminism, sexual liberation, political correctness, secularism, drug addiction, and religious syncretism expand their influences. Some events in Season Two seem to be an attempt to graft modernity onto Christianity as if they were compatible, even symbiotic. But one can instead interpret these events as modernity s efforts to assault, corrupt, and undermine Christianity.
We last saw Ethan Chandler (Josh Hartnett) transform into a werewolf as two Pinkerton agents were arresting him. He now awakes in the Mariner s Inn, surrounded by savagely torn corpses. In Season One, London was plagued by such murders. It was suggested that Jack the Ripper had returned. Sir Malcolm Murry (Timothy Dalton) suspected vampires, until a police inspector explained that the bodies were