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If there’s one thing Adi Shankar wants to impress upon fans about the upcoming second season of Netflix’s Devil May Cry, it’s that the animated series is getting bigger. Much bigger. So much so that Shankar is comparing it to the gulf between 2005’s Batman Begins and its 2008 sequel, The Dark Knight.
“Season 2 is just way, way, way bigger in terms of scope and scale,” Shankar tells IGN. “So it’s the difference between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. That’s the comp. Or Halo 1 and Halo 2, where in terms of just scale and scope – orders of magnitude bigger and larger. And the tone is just completely different on top of that. The tone is very, very different, so it cuts deeper.”
That was the main takeaway from our recent conversation with Shankar, the creator and showrunner of Devil May Cry and the godfather of the so-called “Bootleg Multiverse” that ties the series together with fellow Netflix projects Castlevania and Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix.
Having come to terms with his demonic heritage in Devil May Cry Season 1 and overcome the White Rabbit (Hoon Lee), Johnny Young Bosch’s Dante is ready to step fully into a larger and more colorful world. And just in time, too, because he’s discovered that his long-lost brother Vergil (Robbie Daymond) is still alive. The return of Vergil changes everything for Season 2.
Watch this exclusive new teaser trailer for Devil May Cry Season 2:
Dante’s Evolution in Devil May Cry Season 2
Season 1 ended on a surprisingly dark note for the upbeat demon hunter Dante. Though he managed to defeat the White Rabbit, Dante found himself imprisoned and locked away by the demon-hunting agency DARKCOM, while countless innocent Makaians suffered under their new imperial overlords.
It’s fortunate that Netflix renewed the series for a second season last year, or else fans might have been left with quite a bummer of a cliffhanger ending. Though, as Shankar explains, he was never that concerned about whether he’d be able to continue his story.
“I just have way too much self-confidence. It’s almost to the point of delusion. So I was like, ‘Oh, that’s never going to happen. We’re good,’” Shankar says. “I also acknowledge that this is a delusional self-confidence… So these things don’t enter my mind, because my philosophy now is to just control the controllable. And anything that’s out of my control, I just don’t even let it into the thought process.”
As dark as Season 1’s ending is, Shankar says that fans shouldn’t necessarily expect Dante to dwell on his betrayal or embark on a quest for revenge. He’s a man with a pretty singular goal, and that goal is finding his brother.
“He’s not a character that is fueled by revenge. He’s not Batman,” Shankar says. “I’m not saying that he’s not going to attempt to get revenge or that he isn’t, but I think… that if there’s an inciting incident that made you the person you are, it involves your long-lost brother. … We’re just approaching this with psychological realism or emotional realism, which has been kind of the thesis of my show.”
Shankar continues, “I look at these things as films broken up into chapters. But when you look at this film, it’s been approached with psychological realism. Really, what he’s doing, if you kind of look at it, is the real battle that he’s trying to confront right now is his own loneliness. If you look at the core pain the character of Dante feels, it’s loneliness and he lacks the tools to articulate it. So what he wants is what he lost as a child, which is a feeling of family.”
Shankar’s thesis about Dante is that gamers respond so strongly to the character because he embodies a sort of juvenile mentality and energy they can identify with. Dante is a character who refuses to grow up. And at the end of the day, isn’t gaming all about escaping the pressures and realities of being an adult for an hour or two at a time?
“I think what makes that powerful is it’s not that he’s refusing to grow up because he’s Peter Pan. It’s refusing to grow up because he’s gone through things that would’ve destroyed anyone else,” Shankar says. “So he’s combated the darkness in his life with light, and that light presents itself as making light of situations.”
None of this is to say that Dante doesn’t grow as a character in Season 2. Season 1 was all about forcing the character to come to terms with the fact that he’s the half-demon son of the legendary Sparda. Having accepted that revelation, Dante is better able to move forward in Season 2. He’s no longer so conflicted about his heritage.
“I can safely say it’s less of a struggle in Season 2,” Shankar says. “I think in Season 1, he was a character who hadn’t really been tested because… we were meeting the youngest version of Dante that had ever been presented in an audiovisual format. There’s a greater level of comfort in terms of stepping into who he actually is, both emotionally and also in terms of just the skillset and whatnot. I mean, you guys saw the reloading clip. This is a dude who knows what’s up now.”
Dante and Vergil: Brothers Reunited
Again, the biggest change with Devil May Cry Season 2 is that Dante now knows his brother Vergil is still alive. The addition of this one character to the mix changes everything about the series.
“This is why it’s a completely, completely different show,” Shankar teases. “Vergil’s not a character you can just kind of drop in… he’s a tone-changing character. That’s not the only reason the tone is so different and the scope and scale is different. Whereas the Dante you met in Season 1, he’s a little jokey. Little jokey. Vergil’s not that guy. Vergil’s very, very serious. So the scope and scale of his power level is one that kind of reorders things. That causes everyone to notice. Let me put it that way.”
Is Vergil the series’ main antagonist for Season 2? Shankar is hesitant to reveal too much on that front, but he does note that Vergil shares one crucial element in common with Season 1’s White Rabbit. They’re both psychologically complex characters that exist in stark contrast to Dante himself.
“First of all, as just a storyteller, I’m never one to repeat myself. I don’t want to tell you whether Vergil’s the antagonist or not, but there’s more layers to him,” Shankar says. “I think that feeling that we got from the White Rabbit, and part of that is just because there was so much complexity to the psyche, we’re going to get a lot more of that across the board this season. So not just for Vergil, but for all the characters.”
Shankar is excited to dig into the complex emotional core of that fractured brotherly bond in Season 2. But as much as the show leans on its animation to tell the story, it really falls on voice actors Bosch and Daymond to sell the dynamic between Dante and Vergil.
“There were more resources given to us for Season 2… Just in terms of when you have more resources, you can crank up a lot of elements, so that was cool. But I think there’s a lot of nuance and complexity that Johnny and Robbie were able to add, which I mean, look, I’m the one who cast them, so I knew they were able to deliver it. I knew that they could bring it, so I don’t want to say they carry the show, but they do carry the performance, which is what great actors do.”
Shankar continues, “And also, I think just the fact that Vergil’s alive, it’s something we teed up at the end of Season 1, that Vergil represents a wound for Dante. And now the fact that he’s not only alive, but has been alive. Now, so that’s opening up a lot of emotional baggage. So as an actor, that’s catnip for someone as experienced as Johnny, because you’re playing an emotion, but you’re playing three layers of subtext.”
With so much newfound emphasis on Vergil this season, where does that leave Scout Taylor-Compton’s character, Mary? Shankar reveals that Mary takes a bit of a backseat in Season 2 in favor of the Dante/Vergil dynamic. However, she’s still an important part of the equation, and fans will learn more about her tragic background this season.
“It’ll be surprising,” Shankar says. “The season really focuses on Dante and Vergil. Those are the focal point characters. So I’d say Mary/Lady is less of an emphasis this time, so there is that. Not to say that she’s not in the show, because she obviously is, but I don’t think it’s obvious what her arc is going to be or how it’s going to play out. I feel like people who watch it, hopefully everyone watches it, they’ll walk away being like, ‘Oh, I did not see any of that coming.’ There are mysteries there that will be revealed on the Mary front.”
Season 2 will also continue to focus on Vice President William Baines, the religious zealot in charge of DARKCOM. That’s despite the fact that original voice actor Kevin Conroy passed away in 2022, necessitating a recast for Season 2. Shankar notes that while Conroy’s death did impact his plans “slightly,” he was able to pivot and continue his overarching storyline for Baines.
“Let me put it this way. I was concerned. I was very, very concerned,” Shankar admits. “I was like, ‘Uh-oh, is this even going to work?’ And thankfully, it does work because the new performer who came in made it work and Netflix was super gracious and we kind of went through multiple potential performers and I was like, ‘Uh-oh, what am I going to do?” But thankfully it works, so the alterations were minor when they could have had to have been massive.”
The Music and Action of Season 2
As much as character and family drama is a focus of Season 2, let’s not forget that Devil May Cry is also a series defined by stylish action scenes and gory battles between humans and demons. Fans won’t be disappointed on that front. And much like how Season 1 delighted action movie buffs with an extended riff on 2011’s The Raid: Redemption, Season 2 will include its own homages to action movie classics.
“It’s full of it,” Shankar says. “Because dude, before I was doing this, I was a producer of action movies and I really dove into that genre and I tried to understand it as well as I could and became a student of the genre. So for me, it’s all about having homages to what came before. And, yeah, so Season 2 is full of stuff like that. Now, again, it’s not The Raid, but if you are a fan of the action movie genre or you’re a fan of Hong Kong cinema, you’re going to be doing the DiCaprio meme where you’re pointing at the TV.”
For some Devil May Cry fans, a particular sticking point of Season 1 was the fact that Dante didn’t wield his trademark black and white guns, Ebony and Ivory. Shankar confirms that one of his goals with the new season was to introduce those iconic weapons. It’s all part of the push to go bigger and better.
Watch Dante get Ebony and Ivory in Devil May Cry Season 2:
“I knew going in, even when I was doing Season 1, that he would get Ebony & Ivory in Season 2, because of Nell Goldstein, who she’s even hinted at in Season 1. So this was part of the plan. I knew he was going to get it. Because part of the things is in the games, you just kind of meet him and he’s all powerful.”
Shankar continues, “One of the things I loved about Batman Begins, and a lot of movies of this ilk, you see these characters level up, you see them attain new powers, new abilities, new weapons. There’s a James Bond-esque thing going on when all of a sudden you’re like, ‘Oh, this is a cool gadget that’ll allow me to function better.’”
Season 1’s sixth episode enjoyed particularly strong critical acclaim, as it broke away from the standard formula and played around with both the series’ animation style and a lack of dialogue. Shankar confirms that fans can expect similar storytelling detours in Season 2, even if they aren’t exactly the same.
“Not in the same way, but yes, absolutely,” Shankar says. “Episode 1 and 6 were really built around the idea that silence was powerful in a world of so much noise, where all of a sudden noise no longer had a premium and silence was powerful. Similarly, I have other pattern interrupts. I guess that’s the word, right? Pattern interrupts, but they do not resemble the pattern interrupts from Season 1 because, again, I didn’t want to just do the formula thing where Season 2, Episode 6 is a flashback with no dialogue.”
Devil May Cry is also notable for being a bit of an early ‘00s period piece, a fact which is emphasized in the various needle drops of alt-rock and nu-metal hits like Limp Bizkit’s “Rollin’,” Rage Against the Machine’s “Guerrilla Radio,” and Crazy Town’s “Butterfly.” In keeping with the theme of “bigger and better” for Season 2, Shankar says fans can expect more of these needle drops in Season 2, as it’s one of the more tangible ways in which the show’s increased budget is playing out onscreen.
“We have way more needle drops, because I think with Season 1, I don’t want to say it was a fight. It was just like, ‘Hey, there’s limited resources.’ And I really wanted to do needle drops in an anime because I’m like, ‘Hey, that’s cool.’ Nu-metal needle drops, I haven’t seen that before.”
Shankar continues, “For Season 2, we have a lot more. A lot, lot, lot more, and they’re epic. Now, they’re epic because I really got that needle drop thing dialed in this time, so there’s a lot more. I feel like we have the best soundtrack, or Season 2 will have been the best soundtrack Netflix has ever had, like all of Netflix.”
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