"Penny Dreadful" Ends Its Run Rather Unexpectedly

Sorry, Penny Dreadful, but that was a simply dreadful finale.

Sunday's installments of the Showtime drama — which ended up being a series finale for Penny Dreadful — were ultimately the two weakest episodes of the series' entire run, which would have been forgivable... until it surprised viewers by announcing that it had reached its conclusion with a chyron reading, "The End" before rolling credits. Wait, what?

Airing back-to-back, these two final episodes were at times simply painful to get through. The plodding penultimate episode offered up a seriously wonky timeline and some credulity-straining goings-on in London, during which supposedly thousands of people died in the plague fog while others — Patti LuPone's Dr. Seward for one — strolled through town as though nothing untoward was happening. (Even after the frogs came up through her pipes.)

Also worth noting: These episodes also barely featured Eva Green's Vanessa, who was in maybe two scenes in the finale ("The Blessed Dark") and none in the penultimate episode ("Perpetual Night"), which felt odd as it's her story arc that is building towards resolution here. The series set up a final battle between Ethan Chandler (Josh Hartnett), Lupus Dei ("the Wolf of God"), and Dracula (Christian Camarago) over the soul of Vanessa Ives — but ultimately Ethan kills Vanessa (a request that he denied her in Season 1 when she was possessed and viewers saw firsthand the consequences of her possession, unlike here) and Dracula just exits stage left with no explanation whatsoever. Where exactly was the change within Vanessa where she realized that she had erred giving herself to Dracula and bringing on the endless night? Where was any scene with Vanessa, really, other than a brief one of her "unhinged" with Dracula and one where a white-clad Vanessa meets her end in a room full of burning candles?

It felt incredibly anti-climactic and to have Ethan shooting Vanessa in her stomach after kissing her removed any real agency from Vanessa herself — perhaps creator John Logan didn't want Vanessa to kill herself (and make her ascension to Heaven more, well, complicated if you go in for that liturgy), but it felt like a sad end to a powerful character who had waged war against Satan himself for control of her immortal soul.

Not buying the spin that this was what Logan had planned from halfway through Season 2: the resolution here felt messy, rushed, and downright nonsensical at times, creating as many new dangling plot strands as it did tying up others. The fact that Season 3 wasted so much time mired in the Wild West (ugh) — with its main characters separate and isolated for nearly all of the season — AND it ended up being the final season feels especially unlikely.

While Perdita Weeks’ thanatologist Catriona Hartdegan made for an intriguing new character, she is ultimately left as a leather-clad cipher of sorts, an anachronism who contained so much story potential but whose inherent possibilities were simply jettisoned by the end. (The same holds true for Simon Russell Beale’s Ferdinand Lyle, who was ignominiously ejected from the series — a storyline that seemed to point towards the rise of an Egyptian mummy in the future — several episodes ago. Yes, the point was that Vanessa was isolated and lone, but that seemed to be more the work of coincidence than any effort from Alexander Sweet/Dracula.) What was the point of spending so much time with Dr. Jekyll (Shazad Latif), introduced this season, but never showing Mr. Hyde, who ,while teased, never actually manifested himself. (Other than a painfully obvious reveal that his inherited title is "Lord Hyde.")

Ultimately, Vanessa Ives reclaimed her faith and was welcomed to the Kingdom of Heaven, felled by her former lover's bullet, and the other (male) characters grieved her. Lily (Billie Piper), finally freed by Victor Frankenstein (Harry Treadway), leaves behind Dorian Grey (Reeve Carney), who fades into the background like one of the many portraits that line his grand hall. The Creature (Rory Kinnear) chose mortality rather than immortality for his poor dead son, and recited a final ode for dear Vanessa. Some beautiful images, yes, but these final scenes lacked the impact required by a series finale to stick its landing. Instead, it felt haphazard and forced, a poor end to a series that was brimming with passion and dark magic.

I loved Penny Dreadful so much, but these last two episodes soured me in such an unexpected and sad way. A shame, really.