VAN HELSING – Season 4 Episode 6 – SPOILERS

Departing characters are sometimes featured in an episode that has little or nothing to do with the main storyline just before they leave the show. They did it for Mohamed, Axel (who did not leave) and Scarlett, at the end of Season Three. Jackie May wrote the departure episodes for Axel and Mohamed, as well as this one, which is the send-off episode for Phil.

Axel (Jonathan Scarfe) and Phil (Vincent Gale) follow a dirt road to the east in pursuit of Max, who has taken Phil’s wife and son hostage. (For some reason, Max did not take US Route 30.) Phil begins the episode feeling frustrated and discouraged.

PHIL: “Why did it take so long for you to get us out of that place?”

AXEL: “I’m gonna make it right. I’m gonna find this prick and I’m gonna kill him.”

PHIL: “No no no. That’s for me.”

AXEL: “If that’s the way you want it.”

PHIL: “I gotta make it right, too.”

What Axel doesn’t tell him is that the rescue attempt was delayed by his own attempt to “make things right” by killing Vanessa, which he eventually decided not to do.

The vampires they encounter traveling through what is probably Nebraska are not Daywalkers, but they are well organized and charge a blood toll for passage through their territory. (That turns out to be why Max needed hostages, which makes one wonder why he didn’t pick different people — ones that wouldn’t make Axel and Phil follow him.)

Max contacts an enterprising farmer named Matty (Bradley Stryker) who fattens humans for vampire food, and exchanges Jennifer for a bucked of fatty blood with which to pay his toll. We learn that fatty blood is prized by vampires because it sustains them for a longer time. (If they can draw sustenance from blood lipids, why not other sources of fat, like bacon? Do vampires drink blood only because they cannot tolerate solid food?)

At one point, Axel and Phil are captured by vampires, who stab them and discover (to everyone’s surprise) that they do not bleed. It is unclear how this is possible. Both have bled from wounds on numerous occasions since acquiring their rapid healing powers. Their wounds must heal so rapidly now that little blood escapes. This would make it impossible for vampires to feed on them even if they could stand the taste, much to the displeasure of Hansen (see previous post).

Jennifer (Holly Elissa) and Owen (Alexander Brophy) are eventually rescued. In the process, Owen gets to shoot Max in the neck and stab him in the leg, but Phil gets his wish, and gets to kill Max, who first explains how his present condition came to be. “I was turned into a vampire at the Citadel,” he tells Axel. “Turned by Dimitri himself. I was turned back the day of the rebellion attack by the one they whisper about. And then I was turned into whatever the hell this is by a Daywalker.”

After Max’s death, Phil parts ways with Axel. “I’m out. I’m done,” he says. “I can’t go back there. I’m gonna cross that river [probably the Missouri]. I’m gonna take my chances. And I’m gonna take care of them [Jennifer and Owen], if they’ll let me.” Phil gives Axel the keys to Max’s jeep, since Rhonda (the truck) is no more.

NOTES

Jill Morrison (Shelley in “Christ Pose“) will be Faye, assistant to Captain Quinn, in the second season of PROJECT BLUE BOOK. Morrison told Colleen Bennett of Nerd Alert News: “Faye works for the U.S Army base as the assistant to Captain Quinn. Quinn and Hynek begin working together to uncover ‘truths’. I can’t say much more at this point, but Faye is very dedicated to her job and is fiercely protective and strong. In many ways, she must be this way, as a military woman in the 1950s. The time was so different for women in society. Because of this, she is very capable and intelligent. She holds power because of her firmness and dedication to working in a top secret office.”

The ten-episode second season of PROJECT BLUE BOOK (which will deal with Area 51 and Roswell) wrapped filming in and around Vancouver on 4 November, and will air on The History Channel beginning in January. A trailer is available on YouTube.

Bradley Stryker (Matty) will be Sheriff Nevelson in LET HIM GO, an adaptation of the 2013 novel by Larry Watson that stars Kevin Costner and Diane Lane as Margaret and George Blackledge, a couple trying to rescue their young grandson Jimmy from the clutches of the Weboys family, who are living off the grid in the Dakotas. The novel is set in 1951, several months after Lorna, their late son’s widow, married Donnie Weboy. Margaret tries to convince Lorna to return to Montana with little Jimmy, and the Blackledges soon find themselves doing battle with the entire Weboy clan. Filmed in rural Alberta, LET HIM GO will be released in the US sometime next year.







