‘Penny Dreadful’ season 3, episode 3 review: Rory Kinnear breaks our hearts with his beautiful monster

Last time on “Penny Dreadful” we saw Victor get rejected by Lily once again, but now that he’s seen that Jekyll’s treatment works, he’s hopeful that he can gain her love and devotion back (if he ever really had it to begin with). Dracula is gaining more knowledge on Vanessa now that Renfield is spying for him (and she is unknowingly dating him) and Ethan has just escaped his captors by turning into a werewolf and killing everyone.

Ethan: The witch’s daughter wants to follow Ethan wherever he leads her and has sworn an allegiance to him. He accepts her help, reluctantly and we feel that there is going to be some sort of romance between these two no matter how much he hates her – fine line between hate and love on this show. So what is it that she wants from Ethan? She wants to help him embrace his darkness and rule the underworld with him. The English detectives are hot on Ethan’s trail, but after seeing the carnage he left behind, he now knows that he’s not traveling alone. The detectives are not the only one’s hot on the trail as Malcolm is close behind as well.

Vanessa: She is still dating Alexander Sweet, unaware that he is actually Dracula and we feel so incredibly sorry for her because she seems happy for the first time in her life. Once she finds out who he is she is going to never have hope again since his plan is to make her helpless and completely dependent on him. After encountering a vampire on their date, she cuts out early, much to Alexander’s dismay and anger which he later takes out on that vampire. Vanessa asks her doctor to hypnotize her so that she can remember the her time at the Banning clinic since the vampire that approached her told her that she has met his master once before there, but the only person she remembers being there is the orderly who brought her food… John.

Lily: She and Dorian are still training Justine to have ultimate power, but she still isn’t immortal yet. They push her anger by offering her the man that started her path of abuse, reminding her of every moment of pain and encouraging her to kill him, which she does – her blood offering. Dorian and Lily ask Justine to bring more soldiers to them to help build their army.

John: He is on a mission to find his family and heads back to the apartment he last saw his wife and son in, but no one lives there any more. After finding a lead he discovers another building where he thinks they are living and crawls up into the attic space to spy on them. He sees his wife and son… his sick son and he is over joyed to see them, but broken up inside that they struggle. This character feels such pain and suffering and every time we see Rory Kinnear on screen we are heartbroken with his beautiful monster that just wants to find a way to belong.

We are used to a slick and suave Dracula from years of literature and movies so to see Alexander the Natural science nerd, we were quite thrown off by him, but we are still interested to see how his relationship with Vanessa unfolds. We have been sorely missing John this season so to have a focus on him this episode was wonderful. Episode grade: B+

What did you think of this episode of “Penny Dreadful”? Leave us a comment below and tell us what you think of the season so far.