By: Brandon Wolfe
All season long, ‘From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series’ has struggled to justify its existence. It never really made a ton of sense why this movie in particular had been chosen for expansion into a TV series, other than because it had vampires in it, and the series never gave us the impression that even it knew how to resolve that crucial issue. It mostly just played like a dragged-out, dumbed-down remake, and the handful of new ideas the series offered up never felt like enough to offset the feeling that we’ve seen this all before, the same way before, and much better. “The Take” concludes the first season of ‘From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series’, and while it’s one of the stronger episodes of the season, it still doesn’t feel like this show is on any path toward figuring itself out.
Seth and Richie manage to complete their impossible mission inside the vampire Matrix, or whatever it is, and Richie emerges fueled with more snake-generated mystical power. But upon their reemergence, they are confronted by Carlos, who has betrayed Santanico and decides to capture Richie and hold him ransom, in exchange for Seth agreeing to deliver the heist money he’s kept on his person all this time. This little scheme opens up a host of questions, not the least of which is what vampires could possibly need with millions of dollars, but after some convincing by Santanico, Seth agrees to save his brother.
But while Seth is rescuing his family, Kate is saying goodbye to hers. Scott encounters Jacob and, after whining like a petulant teenager for several minutes, he attacks and bites his father before scurrying off into the darkness. Jacob decides that he can’t bear the thought of becoming a demon and harming others, so he successfully implores Kate to preemptively end his life via wooden stake. And this is a pretty limp way for the character to go out. The Jacob in the film was allowed to spend his final moments of humanity battling vampires alongside his children and Seth. This one just dies quietly against a wall, affecting nothing. Of all the things the show never figured out, chief among them was how the Fuller family fit into any of this after a point. Half of the time in the most recent episodes, the family is essentially forgotten about, both by the show itself, but also by the other characters. Seth not only doesn’t get a final alliance with Jacob here, he doesn’t even get to know what happened to him or give any indication that remembers that he existed. It’s a waste of a good character and of Robert Patrick.
‘From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series’ ends fairly anticlimactically. Richie takes his place at Santanico’s side, Seth takes his money and runs, Ranger Gonzalez washes his hands of the vampires and returns to his family, Sex Machine is killed without incident, and Carlos is made to face the music for his indiscretions. And, in a direct reversal of the film (something the show was profoundly reluctant to do for much of its run), when Kate asks Seth if he wants some company now that they’re both alone in the world, this time he tells her to hop in, as they drive off to an uncertain future.
But where does the show go in Season 2? What are we given here to tempt us to come back? Honestly, this feels like a series finale more than a season finale. Actually, it feels like less than that. It feels like the end of a movie, because that’s what it once was. The show should have left us with some inkling about what comes next for these characters. Will Seth and Kate dedicate themselves to a war with the vampires? Will these mysterious Lords of the Night who rule the vampire society begin making inroads toward encroaching on the human world? A good finale is supposed to tantalize us, make us spend the hiatus asking ourselves questions about what will happen next, yet “The Take” feels like a closed book on this world. I suppose maybe the show genuinely doesn’t know where else it will go because that’s the one thing the original version of ‘From Dusk Till Dawn’ didn’t hand to them.
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