‘Penny Dreadful’ season 3, episode 2 review: Can Victor make Lily fall in love with him?
The season 3 premiere of “Penny Dreadful” brought us so many delightful surprises. We got caught up on a lot of our favorite characters, we had the return of Patti LuPone and we were introduced to some of the biggest villains in horror fiction history like Dr. Jekyll and Dracula!
Dorian and Lily: They are enjoying benefits immortality and this includes murdering whomever they please. Tonight that included killing some unsavory people doing very bad things to a young woman – a woman that Lily has now claimed as her own. They offer her immortality and as well as revenge against the people who wronged her and she happily accepts their offer. How they will give her this gift still remains to be seen.
Ethan: Malcolm is headed to America to find Ethan, but even with his powerful friend, Kaetenay, he still has a long way to go and he’s not the only one hunting him. What Malcolm doesn’t know is that Kaetenay has a deeper connection with Ethan and that they know each other very well… and there is bad blood between them. With it being a full moon, Ethan sees an opportunity to escape by turning into a werewolf and killing everyone in the room, but he has some help and it comes in the form of the witch’s daughter.
Vanessa: In her sessions with the doctor, she talks about her guilt and shame concerning what she did to Mina and about her death. After telling the doctor everything, she tells Vanessa that she believes that she can help her and advises her to go do something that makes her happy. While she is out on a date with Alexander, Renfield goes through Vanessa’s taped sessions with her doctor to gather information for Dracula. Later he returns to Dracula and tells him that she told the doctor about Mina and that the doctor doesn’t believe her and with that we get our first look at Dracula – handsome, powerful and seductive.
Jekyll and Victor: We learned more about what keeps Jekyll up at night and it’s how his mother was treated by his father leaving her abandoned, alone, and untouchable. He thinks his father is evil and his mother was the angel that held him together – true duality of good and bad and with that we see what forms his two personalities. Jekyll takes Victor to his lab to show him the work that he’s been doing with the criminally insane and after seeing the lab Victor is worried. Jekyll assures him that he can make her tame… he just can’t make her love him. Victor asks him to show him what he is capable of doing and after a gruesome show, he sees that Jekyll’s treatment actually works. Is it going to be enough for him and will Lily ever love him again? He goes to her house and Lily tells him that there is nothing there for him anymore, but he wants to save her and tells her so. She kisses him goodbye and tells him that he will recover from his broken heart in time.
As intriguing as everything going on with Dracula and Vanessa is, we actually find ourselves most invested in Victor and his broken heart. His pain of losing his first love is something that most of us have felt and know how crazy it can make us. The idea that there is some magic way to bring back a lost love is also something that many of us have thought of during our darkest broken moments and that makes Victor and Lily’s story the highlight of this season so far. Episode grade: A-
What did you think of this episode of “Penny Dreadful”? Leave us a comment below and tell us what you think.