Ivory’s Quest, Coyote Callie, Vanessa in Dreamland
VAN HELSING – Thoughts on the end of Season Five – SPOILERS
Ivory takes one last look back before heading out in search of the remaining Sisterhood
Callie (Macie Juiles), who was rescued from Seattle’s vampire-infested streets by Vanessa and Mohamed (Trezzo Mahoro) in Episode 1.4, and turned up (sometimes unexpectedly) in nine other episodes, is alive and well and making a living smuggling people into (and probably out of) vampire territory. We had not seen Callie since she was among those left behind in Denver after it was overrun by daywalkers in Episode 4.1. In that episode, Hansen (Neal McDonough) ordered the remaining human population destroyed by poison gas to prevent their being turned. Callie must have somehow survived that.
We meet Callie as she delivers Ivory (Jennifer Cheon-Garcia) into the badlands outside of the Wall that protects D.C. from the vampires and poison clouds beyond. Ivory has told a tearful Jack (Nicole Muñoz) that she must embark on a solo quest to find and assist the remaining sisterhood, whether they be vampire or human. (Jack promised to wait for her.) After saying goodbye to Callie, Ivory draws her sword and strides purposefully toward an unidentified city in the distance (and hopefully into a spinoff).
Callie watches as Ivory departs. “See you down the road,” she says, perhaps prophetically
During her stay in the Dark Realm, Vanessa (Kelly Overton) acquired several new abilities:
— the ability to create a force field that can absorb the inertia of bullets and then redirect it. She stops the White House guards’ bullets with something like the Slow Zone on The Expanse, and then throws them back at their source.
— telekenesis. She snaps the necks of another batch of guards remotely after giving them a Dr. Who style “last chance to give up” warning.
— the ability to create vortices that act as portals in time and space. In Episode 5.1, she created the time portal that sent Jack to the eighteenth century, and in Episode 5.13 creates one that allows passage through a wall into the Oval Office.
Assuming the transformation spell had worldwide effect, imagine how Doc reacted when Jolene (who was never bitten by a Van Helsing) mysteriously becomes a vampire, and then reverts to being human half an hour later.
— the ability to mind meld. She joins her mind to Bathory’s mind and is able to absorb and contain Bathory’s madness. (Bathory is still unable to overcome the influence of the Dark One and commits suicide.) Vanessa also joins minds with Axel (in Episode 5.9) and gets a full description of local vampire leader Nina.
— the ability to create a glamour spell strong enough to deceive the Dark One. The best of all the scenes in these final episodes involve the interactions between Dracula (Tricia Helfer) and Vanessa-masquerading-as-Nina (Ali Liebert).
When the Dark One realizes she is losing the battle with the Van Helsings, she casts a spell changing all humans into vampires (except for Van Helsings and those bitten by them). The spell is reversed once Vanessa inhales the Dark One (whose natural form seems to be a cloud of black smoke) whom she has forced out of Olivia with magical incantations absorbed from Bathory. This is the first time on the show that humans have been turned vampire by occult means, and implies that vampires might be turned human in a similar way, if one knew how.
Ali Liebert as Nina in the Van Helsing episode “Carpe Noctis”
Other than the Dark One, only Vanessa might have such knowledge, but imprisoning the Dark One within her causes her to lapse into REM sleep, from which she cannot be awakened. At his own request, Axel is assigned to care for the sleeping Vanessa once again, and we are shown that in her dream she is reunited with Susan and Dylan in her old Seattle apartment.
Van Helsing saliva is a cure for vampirism, but it is not a vaccine. Vice President Eli Newton (Peter Bryant) is bitten by Jack to prove that she is not a vampire trying to trick him. When he does not turn, he believes her. He still becomes a vampire when the Dark One casts her spell.