Reviews
‘Devil May Cry’ Season 2 Is a Double-Barreled Blast of Demon-Slaying Debauchery [Review]
Netflix has its share of animated series that feature vicious demon evisceration. However, Devil May Cry is the only series where Avril Lavigne’s “Sk8er Boi” plays over a makeover montage and Drowning Pool’s “Let the Bodies Hit the Floor” crescendos as a character has a traumatic flashback, and their PTSD begins to kick in.
Devil May Cry is blissfully lost in the 2000s, and it effortlessly taps into the pop culture aesthetic that was present when Devil May Cry first landed on the PlayStation 2. Netflix’s series continues to tonally nail the gaming franchise’s style and ethos, even if the storytelling, world-building, and characters don’t always mesh with their source material counterparts. After a promising debut, the second season is just as strong as the first, if not even a little better once it discards some of the first season’s unnecessary baggage and grows more confident in its writing.
After season one’s chaotic cliffhanger, Devil May Cry doesn’t waste any time as it launches right into new nightmares. Dante and company must assemble demonic artifacts so that Mundus can be defeated and Hell on Earth doesn’t literally come to pass. It’s a solid enough foundation for an eight-episode season of television that never stops moving or looking ahead as a result. Devil May Cry’s second season is well-paced and never strays from its grander purpose and the apocalyptic clash that it culminates in. It’s also appreciated that it doesn’t needlessly draw out Dante and Vergil’s reunion. Rest assured that these two cross paths – and blades – well before the season’s end.
Devil May Cry S2. Johnny Yong Bosch as Dante in Devil May Cry S2. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2026
The storyline seems to largely be pulling from Devil May Cry 3: Dante’s Awakening, albeit while still taking many liberties with the source material. This means a heavy focus on Vergil this season, who gets to pick up a lot of the slack while Devil May Cry demonstrates a surprising degree of restraint before Dante reenters the picture. This impressive act of withholding is only possible because Devil May Cry now has Vergil – and Lady, for that matter – to lean on for its signature absurdist action spectacles.
This season also adopts a structure where Dante and Vergil’s childhoods are juxtaposed with their fractured relationship in the present. This helps reflect the full complexity of their relationship and just how far it’s fallen. It’s an approach that’s hardly revolutionary, but it still gives this season a little extra dramatic juice and an emotional center that makes sure that it’s more than just heightened battles of good versus evil. That being said, Vergil’s backstory and the fate that he’s subjected to are truly awful and a fitting depiction of Hell.
Devil May Cry spends a lot of time telling characters that loved ones are weaknesses and impediments against perfection, only to then reinforce that unity is always better than destruction. A family member’s shortcomings are just an opportunity for someone else to step in and pick up the slack. That’s what family is. This may seem glib and obvious, but Devil May Cry really interrogates the power and meaning behind that word. Everything in Devil May Cry’s second season boils down to family.
Devil May Cry S2. (T) Ray Chase as Mundus and (B) Robbie Daymond as Vergil in Devil May Cry S2. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2026
This makes it all the more interesting that these episodes entertain the deeply cynical idea that malevolent corporations are using two superpowered siblings as bargaining chips against each other. Their divine purpose ultimately fuels corporate profits and market dominance. The Devil May Cry games were always deeply sarcastic and sardonic, but this adaptation is decidedly more nihilistic about society, even when it’s not being taken over by hell demons.
This season also really leans into the self-aware propaganda that’s released by DARKCOM in an effort to appease the masses and control the narrative, that’s all very Robocop-coded. It’s an interesting element for season two to expand upon as the series tries to broaden its scope and add a few more irons into what’s already a very crowded fire. That being said, most people aren’t going to get overly excited by lengthy boardroom scenes with bureaucrats. There are also some heavy-handed moments that involve the liberation of innocent demons that feel forced and a little too “Saturday Morning Cartoon” for Devil May Cry. They’re just sporadic enough that they’re never a real distraction.
This is Devil May Cry, so at the end of the day this is a series that needs to truly deliver on extravagant action setpieces. Fortunately, the second season still kicks off with a bombastic assault on brutal hell beasts – all while the soundtrack blares with Papa Roach and Evanescence. From that point forward, Devil May Cry continually raises the bar for its carnage. Studio Mir does great work with this property, but the chaotic carnage still falls short of the impossibly high standards that Powerhouse set with Netflix’s Castlevania series.
There are really gruesome, exaggerated sequences that deliver a level of brutality that’s hard to find in this style of animation outside of Invincible. At the same time, it’s so impossibly removed from reality that it functions like a manic fever dream. At one point, Dante fires a rocket launcher and then rides the missile into battle. There are some messy massacres with soldiers that allow for a more reckless body count. Devil May Cry oddly succeeds as a loving tribute to the works of Go Nagai.
Devil May Cry S2. Johnny Yong Bosch as Dante in Devil May Cry S2. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2026
This second season works just as well as a companion piece to Devilman Crybaby as it does for any game from the Capcom franchise, especially when it comes to the season’s concluding clash. On the topic of the final fight, it’s the type of nonsensical pandemonium that gamers have come to expect from any of Devil May Cry’s boss battles.
On a grander scale, it’s impressive how this season handles Mundus as the central antagonist. It’d be very easy for Mundus to operate like some superfluous shadowy figure who barks orders from afar without actually proving his power. Devil May Cry uses the bulk of its premiere to highlight Mundus’ incomprehensible power and why he’s such an apocalyptic threat. Mundus’ God-like nature and the enormity of all this bring Netflix’s Blood of Zeus to mind, which admittedly had a lot more to say with its exploration of omnipotence and mankind’s fragility.
This season suffers from being slightly repetitive with so many battles that come down to the same blade-based combat and choreography. Devil May Cry sometimes expects the introduction of an exaggerated weapon to be enough to replace creative strategies and clever plot twists. Repetition aside, this season features some genuinely unique demon designs, even if a lot of this blood-soaked carnage blends together. The design for Jester is eerie perfection and considerably more distinct than season one’s White Rabbit.
Devil May Cry’s second season is an easy weekend binge that maintains the madcap tempo of the first season. Winning chemistry between Dante and Vergil, as well as a narrative that isn’t afraid to put other characters in the spotlight, helps this season overcome some of the past season’s hurdles. This is a tight, economical season that doesn’t overstay its welcome, but part of the charm and impact is weakened the second time around. This season’s world-building teases plenty of more adventures to come. Two seasons in, Devil May Cry needs to be careful not to become a parody of itself, which at times already feels like a parody, and still find ways to raise the stakes.
If nothing else, Devil May Cry is the best television series you’ll see this year that blares Korn during its final showdown.
Season two is now streaming on Netflix.
Reviews
‘Her Private Hell’ Review: Nicolas Winding Refn Returns With a Hypnotic, Inscrutable Neon Fever Dream
Nicolas Winding Refn considers his first feature film in ten years, Her Private Hell, a resurrection. At the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, the filmmaker revealed that his return was inspired, in large part, by his own mortality. His need to create art kicked into overdrive after beating death in 2023, when his heart stopped for 25 minutes.
Her Private Hell is pure art, too, bearing the filmmaker’s neon and synth signatures, as well as a deep disinterest in scrutable storytelling. Much like The Neon Demon, Refn’s latest demands you bend to its wavelength: an expressionistic vision more interested in the artistic process than the narrative.
That’s not to say that Her Private Hell lacks plot; this sci-fi horror noir features two central overlapping plots. At the forefront is actress Elle (Sophie Thatcher), who lives in the penthouse suite overlooking a hazy neon metropolis with her father, Johnny Thunders (Dougray Scott), and young stepmom Dominique (Havana Rose Liu), who happens to be Elle’s former best friend before marriage got in the way.
To say that Elle has daddy issues would be an understatement, made worse by insecurities, the arrival of a new acting ingenue (Kristine Froseth), and a vicious killer prowling the city: the Leather Man.
The secondary plot follows the enigmatic Private K (Charles Melton), an American soldier in Japan with resolute vengeance on his mind. Whereas Elle’s world exists in a space of glamour and opulence, Private K pummels his way bare-knuckled through the sweaty backstreets ruled by local crime syndicates down below.
Refn, who co-writes with Esti Giordani, manages to corral a variety of seemingly disparate genres and influences into a clinically cold and cryptic whole. The filmmaker infuses his signature style with everything from ’60s sci-fi to Golden Age Hollywood melodrama to Japanese folklore, hung on the framework of a Dario Argento-style Giallo. There’s a prominent psychosexual edge to both Elle and Private K’s separate journeys, one that dials up to zany excess when it comes to the former character.
There’s an overarching sense of mystic mythmaking to Her Private Hell, with elusive seamstresses, played by Shioli Kutsuna and Aoi Yamada, dipping in and out like folkloric, omnipotent kitsune as they seemingly preside over the increasing chaos that entails brutal knife fights, Freudian melodrama, and a supernatural killer that brutally rips his victims apart. All of it told with Refn’s detached, sterile style.
It’s less a conventional movie and more a stream of consciousness, a collection of inspirations and personal thoughts and themes. Nothing is really explained in this nonsensical fairy tale fever dream. Thatcher gives herself fully to the spoiled Elle, whose affluent privilege makes her a bundle of raw, primal emotions that erodes her sense of identity and reality. It makes her the tonal and visual opposite of the elusive Private K., and much credit goes to Refn, Melton, and Thatcher for wringing compelling performances out of such nebulous, vague characters.
As with most of Refn’s work, you’re either on his frequency or not. Her Private Hell is wholly uninterested in explanation or convention. It’s also heavily disjointed and unhurried in its eclectic, sparse amalgamation of genre inspirations. Still, it’s tough not to fall sway to the magnetic allure of its exquisite, pulse-pounding sights and sounds, complete with an incredible score by legendary composer Pino Donaggio.
While it never fully pulls you into its tangled web of artistic musings, there’s a lot to admire in a technically stunning feature this fearless in its incomprehensibility and ambition.
Her Private Hell releases in theaters on July 24.
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