It was an apocalyptic battle that ended with a prayer.
So was Vanessas life.
Theyre all still standing; she isnt.
Credit: Jonathan Hession/Showtime
I expected this to go the other way.
Thats the point, really: Vanessa dies so thateveryone elsecan live.
Vanessas death is the culmination of an internal struggle.
In her words, Let it end.
Is that what THE END means?
Could this show go on without Vanessa?
Is there life after her death?
She believes that there is: Her final moments bring Vanessa back to the faith she thought shed lost.
She lived up to that legacy.
Now that Marjorie knows its possible to die and come back, shell accept nothing less.
But she didnt know the Creature before.
Dont ask this, he begs.
To make him suffer as I did.
To become something so unnatural, so hated.
The Creature wraps his son in a shroud and carries his body into the water.
Hes not going back home.
As the oldest ofPenny Dreadfuls immortals, Dorian knows this better than anyone.
He compares himself to the portraits that line his walls: beautiful and dead.
Like the Creature, Dorian sees the mercy in death.
You dont know, she tells Victor as soon as she gets him alone in that Bedlam lab.
There are scars that make us who we are, but without them, we dont exist.
She has a story for him, and its about to suck all of the air from the room.
One cold night, a man who didnt want to pay struck her so hard that she couldnt move.
Why didnt I just get up?
It was all I had to do: just get up.
She died alone, Lily tells her captor through her tears.
Her name was Sarah.
hey dont take her from me.
Lily chokes him for a second, then kisses him and leaves.
Im the sum part of one womans days, she tells Victor.
No more, no less.
Lily cant become Dorian, so she cuts ties with him and disappears, scars intact.
Could she run into Ethan again down the line?
They could both use a friend.
Malcolm asks, at the end of his rope.
A friend, Seward answers.
So many friends for Malcolm!
Meanwhile, Ethan is off meeting Dracula face to face.
He tells the vampire that his destiny is joined with Vanessas; he has no idea.
Kaeteney is the wolf who turned him.
Even destiny has an element of choice involved, even if the choice belongs to someone else.
Anyone on this team could choose to abandon the fight, but none of them do.
Im a New Yorker, Sir Malcolm, she shoots back, revealing a pistol in her pocket.
We know our way around random gunplay.
NEXT: Sealed with a kiss
A fight rages between our characters and a seemingly endless stream of vampires.
Her hair is down and shes pale, with red circles under her eyes, but shes still Vanessa.
It hurts me more than I thought it would, seeing you, she greets him.
No man, even Ethan, can change who she is.
He frames it in explicitly religious terms, telling her that God waits ahead even for her.
My battle must end, she tells him.
Or there will never be peace on earth.
This was always Ethans destiny: to help Vanessa deny the devil his prize.
Ethan fights it, but not much, because he also understands killing as an act of mercy.
Vanessa takes Ethans gun and places it in his hand, asking him to kill her with a kiss.
With a kiss, he repeats.
But as soon as theyve kissed, he goes rogue, launching into the Lords Prayer.
She joins in on, Thy will be done.
He drifts off on, Forgive us our trespasses, and she finishes alone, crying.
And he shoots her.
Vanessa falls into Ethans arms, her face lighting up as she dies.
Oh Ethan, she smiles.
I see our Lord.
Outside that door, our team has won its own fight: Dracula is the only vampire left standing.
Ethan carries Vanessa out to a balcony, and the fog lifts.
Malcolm, Cat, Victor, Seward, and Kaeteney stand in the sun.
He wants to run away on one of his expeditions, but he wont.
He owes it to himself and Vanessa to figure out who hell be without her.
Ethan promises to see him through it: Youre my family.
We end on Vanessas funeral, as the Creature watches from a distance.
He comes in search of comfort after his wifes rejection, but he finds a hearse instead.
The older you get, the worse the world looks.
Everyone on this show knows the feeling.
