“Carmilla” Season Three, Act Three Recap: Happily Ever After

It turns out Laura is kind of in the Upside Down, an alternate universe that is dark and scary. J.P. and the library zapped Laura here so that she could get Vordenbergā€™s heart, because in this reality Laura didnā€™t kill him…because Laura was fed to Lophi. LaF and Carmilla are there, but theyā€™re different. After Laura died, Perry went to work for the Dean and LaF is all alone in the library, abandoned by all their friends. LaF says they make money selling antidepressants, itā€™s the saddest.

Carmilla is the worstĀ off, though. She never got to tell Laura how she felt about her or stand up to her mother, so sheā€™s ridden with guilt and heartache. So this Carm is like a lovesick puppy, following our our season three Laura around and she will do anything to keep Laura in this timeline. Mattie is alive and practically giddy to grab Vordenbergā€™s heart to stop the apocalypse. However, it doesnā€™t go so smoothly. Mattie notices that Our Laura has her locket, but itā€™s broken. She wonā€™t give up Vordieā€™s heart until Laura explains why sheā€™s dead in the other timeline. As Mattie threatens Laura, the Library zaps her back to our timeline.

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Laura is shaken up by what she saw in the other timeline and LaF is especially disappointed that Laura wasnā€™t able to get Vordenbergā€™s heart. The only chance they have now to stop the Dean is to stab her with the sword of Hastur right after she opens the last seal. Sheā€™ll be mortal, but that would mean Perry would die too. Now that Laura has been responsible for two deaths (Vordenberg x2), the idea is becoming more and more attractive. Carmilla is definitely for it. But LaFontaine is not giving up on Perry yet.

That leaves Laura and Carm to finally discuss if either of them is going to make it out alive. Carmilla wants to go alone, the blade of Hastur would kill her if she used it again but it would be worth it. Laura doesnā€™t want Carmilla to sacrifice herself, or to be an empty shell of a person if Laura doesnā€™t make it. She wants them to be equal partners. Carmilla agrees: theyā€™ll kill the Dean together. Iā€™d say this was a very adult decision to make, except Laura makes a secret deal with the death goddess anyway.

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Danny shows up to drop off Kirsch. She has kind of realized that just because youā€™re a vampire, it doesnā€™t mean you have to be just boring evil. So sheā€™s blowing this popsicle stand, but wants to make sure Kirsch, the only person who stayed by her, is safe.

So Kirsch gets to be camera man! The next morning in the pit, Laura and Carmilla confront the Dean after she completes her spell. Unfortunately the sword doesnā€™t work. LaF returns because theyā€™ve scienced the shit out of this by mixing pieces of the four talismans into nanobots, injecting them into the Dean, and using electroshock to control them. But that doesnā€™t work either. Do you remember in the seventh Harry Potter book when the elder wand became a game of hot potato and you just kind of rolled with it? This is kind of like that. Basically the spell needs Lauraā€™s heart, so the dDean rips it out of Lauraā€™s chest. Youā€™d think this would kill Laura immediately, but no. She is slowly dying in Carmillaā€™s arms and watching the Dean complete her ceremony to bring back her lover from hell. I knew this was all about love! What a Slytherin power move.

The Dean became a beggar and a slave to her love, descending into literal hell and scorching the earth. But her beloved wasnā€™t there waiting for her. It was one-sided, all-consuming, and dangerous. It was pretty romantic and Annie Briggs brings so much power to this scene, but thatā€™s not the point. Ultimately, it isĀ kindness from a small human girl that frees her. Leave it to Laura Hollis to feel that everybody, including a murder goddess, deserves better. Laura freely gives her heart to the Dean, who then sheds her mortal coil (Perry) and gets to return to her plane of existence. Heaven? Hell? Who knows. Perry wakes up and she and LaF leave hand-in-hand. I had really hoped they would kiss? Perry went to hell and back and she doesnā€™t even get to be in a canon ship.

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Carmilla is devastated of course, and calls out to God!Dean that she is ready to die. Instead the Dean restores Carmilla’s mortality. And the first thing Carmilla does is bargain it in a game with Mattie: Carmillaā€™s life for Lauraā€™s. The death goddess is a benevolent one, so she gives Carm an easy riddle to solve. Laura wakes up and continues her monologue about going to Paris, thankfully Carmilla shuts her up with a kiss. They crawl out of the pit and walk across the campus holding hands. Theyā€™d better travel to Paris immediately.

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Carmilla was one-in-a-million, y’all. Very few web series, if any, have really tapped into the zeitgeist of queer fandom the way this one did. When I first heard of Carmilla two years ago I thought I was out of my teen vampire angst phase, and yet every season premiere, every new episode, or every act, I felt the fangirl ache in my belly and love in my heart. While the show has taken lots of inspiration from Buffy and Veronica Mars (and Warehouse 13, I think, with its sentient library and campiness), all of those series werenā€™t made for us. Carmilla was.

This was a deadly year for queer characters, and we really needed a happy ending. Iā€™m sure we all knew that Carmilla wouldnā€™t betray us or bait us (especially when they released a movie trailer ahead of Act 3, in which Laura and Carmilla are on an actual beach together). But it still feels really good to see it: Laura and Carmilla (and LaF and Perry) walking off into the sunset together.

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Karly

Karly has written 9 articles for us.

38 Comments

  1. 1) Annie Briggs is the real MVP, she blew me out of the water with that performance
    2) I see the writers truly never knew what to do with Danny, total disservice to her character
    3) The real mystery was how Laura survived for like 10 minutes with no heart

    • 1) Yes
      2) Yes
      3) When you’re a vital part of the not-yet-complete plans of the goddess of death, you tend to be pretty good at surviving.

  2. LOVE IS THE ANSWER

    SLEEP MURDERING A BALL OF YARN

    THEY BOTH FIT IN THE CHAIR AT THE SAME TIME

    these are some incoherent thoughts I have about Act III

  3. Lovelovelovelovelove this show, the cast, the crew, their dedication, passion, commitment.

    The performances were stellar all around. I am so in love with how in love Laura and Carmilla are, and NN & EB’s performances showed it so perfectly. Natasha’s usually stoic vampire shifted so fluidly into emotional wreck territory, and the fact that it’s so unusual for her made it so much more gut-wrenching. The other-universe Carm was also great, she seemed to get absorbed back into her own history, she was much more poetic and less student-y. I guess those Silas kids rubbed off on her in our universe.

    Elise was of course the backbone and heartbeat of the final part of the series, as always. She gives such a beautiful strength and innocence and determination to Laura’s character. We can see how torn she is about the other universe, how she would love Carmilla in any universe, how deep down she could never do anything but what’s right. Laura’s death, while COMPLETELY (i mean seriously) impossible (she had no heart and she was talking for like 10 mins) still had me in tears. Elise’s performance was amazing, her only concern was Carmilla. And equally Natasha playing Carm’s reactions were just breathtaking.

    Annie Briggs was stellar as usual, and i loved seeing her switch between her two characters. Plus, Kaitlyn’s LaF made it 20x as good, to see them interact so…disjointedly, and how dispondent they were about it just made me so desperate for them to reunite. I wish Kaitlyn’d had more time to shine though.

    Same with Danny, RIP. Sharon’s performance of the regretful Danny almost made up for the fact that we saw so little of her through this season, it was killer. I really think she came to love Kirsch, in whatever way, and she played it with fantastic subtlety and heart. Also, Can’t forget Sophia. Her air of gravity and grandeur really kept the tone of the show going when it could have morphed into cheesy nonsense, that “see you around sis” broke me. And i even felt sad about JP dying, even though i’d had no interest in him at all through the show. His situation was just so messed up.

    ALL that being said though, Act 2 was definitely much better than Act 3. Unpopular opinion: this felt rushed. There were like 20 mistakes in the subtitles, there were big, obvious line flubs (300 centuries Carm, really?) at one point you can see and hear someone behind the camera actually walk off set like it’s a low budget porno. I was also pretty unclear about how exactly everything got resolved. (I find that a lot of these Canadian shows, which i LOVE still, give me problems with fuzzy mythology. IDK maybe they’re just smarter than me & better at inferring what happened?) I also wish there had been a bit more closure for the secondary characters, but maybe we’ll see that in the movie.

    Don’t take any of that as me not being so, SO happy about the ending, and the show in general. I love it, and i’m so grateful for it. I think that maybe some of those things could be fixed in a remaster, idk, but i hope they can because this show is so great and i don’t want the little things to detract from its sheer brilliance.

      • Don’t think the Library’s dead. as by the sounds of things it was actually the god Enki inhabiting it; pretty hard to kill a god. Even Inana still exists after all that.Pretty sure JP is dead though, I think the dean used him to open the sixth seal instead of using Carmilla, he was Enki’s high preist.

    • Yeah, was anyone else bothered by the fact that LaF and Perry just looked at Laura’s corpse and just peaced out? The last couple of episodes really bothered me, as far as story and just the general rushed feeling. But by god, everyone kicked so much ass with their acting skillz.
      Even with season three’s sometimes strange choices, I will always and forever love this series. The characters, the relationships, everything was just so, so amazing. #alwayaacreampuff

    • Well, no. Two queer couples walked off into the sunset and a movie is on the way? That’s more happily ever after than literally any queer TV I can think of ever in history.

          • What is clickbaity about “we really needed this?”

            Like that was literally just heather, an actual dear human lesbian writer, saying “wow, 2016, am I right? We truly needed this.” Like I think I just rewrote exactly what she wrote, in essentially her words. We did need that.

            And it also just bums me out that we live in a time where stuff people write on established sites like AS has to be pithy enough to catch our likes, but earnest enough to not be clickbait. What a freaking tightrope. Can these people not get ANY benefit of the doubt?

  4. Small things I didn’t like:
    1. I wish they didn’t tell us about the movie before dropping the third act, watching the last episodes without really knowing their fate would have been a different kind of experience (even more #feels is what I’m trying to say).
    2. Am I the only one who was bothered by the music during the emotional scenes? I thought it was weird and really distracting (and it made no sense having it only in this last part).

    Apart from these insignificant things, I don’t know how to explain how much I loved this little web series. It made me laugh, cry, feel like a fourteen year old in the best kind of way, and at every nerdy reference I fell in love with it more and more. So, a huge thank you to the amazing cast, the writers, the crew, the creampuffs, everyone who contributed to make this little thing so huge.

    • I felt like the music worked in some scenes but not in others. Danny’s music seemed really heavy handed but I liked that Carmilla and Laura were dancing to music. But you’re right, since it only started playing in this last act of the series, it really stood out.

    • One thing i found a bit silly was that in Alt Universe Laura is barely hiding behind the sofa, and Carm and Mattie did not notice her at all. Youre supposed to be Vampires with super senses, surely your range of sight covers all corners of the room.

  5. I’ve been waiting for a vampire to turn human for their Happy Ever After since I misguidedly shipped Buffy and Angel nearly 20 years ago.

    Man we have earned this happy ending.

  6. The quality this season skyrocketed past what I thought a web series was capable of. I’m relieved that they released the third Act all at once, because waiting between some of those episodes would have been a horrific experience.

  7. So thankfful for this show, this cast, these writers!

    I have one question though, do not kill me, but I think I am missing something..
    What is with LaF that is referred with “they”?

    • No problem! LaF is nonbinary, which means they don’t identify as either male or female, so they use they/them pronouns! It was briefly mentioned in season 2, but Laura’s Dad said it in one of the earlier episodes of season 3.

    • Laf is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns. Characters refer to them as “she” for half of Season 1 (either because they don’t know or because Laf hasn’t come out, it’s unclear), but afterwards everyone uses “they.” The only time the pronoun thing is explicitly touched on is when Laf meets Laura’s Dad for the first time, so it’s easy to miss.

  8. Yay!
    Does LaF really feel that way about Perry though? I thought they were more into JP. So not kissing Perry right after JP died made sense to me…

    • Well LaF was close to J.P. for sure, and at the end of season Laura said they were “kind of dating?” but it was never really confirmed and the writer said that Laura can be an unreliable narrator sometimes…and I don’t know a LaFerry shipper can dream, ya know?

      • My hope is it means the film will give us long-term stable coupley Laura + Carm, and we can have angsty realising of feelings with Laf and Perry.

  9. Love this show so much. Talk about an oasis in a desert. I actually liked knowing the outcome would be good because I’ve got no stomach for surprises any more. Some scenes made me flashback to Clexa.

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