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Based on Hideki Kamiya’s games, Devil May Cry Season 1 is an entertaining action-fantasy ride with decent animation, a great soundtrack, and a lamentably inadequate focus on primary protagonist Dante.
Well, if you enjoyed the series and are looking to watch season 2, here’s a quick recap of what happens in Devil May Cry Season 1:
Episode one of Devil May Cry Season 1 opens with an evil anthropomorphic bunny killing hired assassins inside a high-security facility before stealing a legendary sword with immense powers. The creepy masked villain is referred to as the White Rabbit, and his goal is to open the gates of Hell, which would basically mean demons overrunning Earth.
After the White Rabbit blows up a building, the U.S. government is forced to intervene, and they rope in Dr. Fisher, a scientist working for a security firm called DARKCOM, whose agents specialize in tackling demonic threats. Their investigation soon reveals the Rabbit’s plan to combine the stolen sword with Sparda’s amulet to break the barrier between worlds. Dante, unfortunately for everyone involved, happens to be carrying one half of that amulet, a family heirloom given to him by his dead mother, who asked him to protect it with his life.
Dante is a cocky, handsome demon hunter who hates supernatural creatures because demons murdered his mother and supposedly his brother years ago. Problem is, Dante clearly isn’t as human as he thinks he is. The man heals like Wolverine, survives things no normal person should survive, and eventually learns he’s actually half-demon himself.
Who is Sparda? According to legend, Sparda was an insanely powerful demon knight who betrayed Hell’s emperor, rebelled against demonkind, and sealed off the underworld from Earth. To break the barrier between realms, the White Rabbit needs the blood of Sparda’s sons. One of them is Dante. The other is Dante’s supposedly dead brother Vergil, who turns out to be very much alive and casually thriving somewhere in the underworld.
The DARKCOM operations against the White Rabbit are led by Mary, whom Dante nicknames “Lady.” Mary is basically a walking demon blender who absolutely despises anything non-human, so the moment she realizes Dante is half-demon, she is more than willing to put a bullet in his skull too. Over time though, the two slowly become reluctant allies instead of trying to murder each other every ten minutes.
Dark flashbacks reveal Mary’s father once encountered a demon and desperately tried convincing the world monsters existed, only to be mocked and dismissed as insane. His obsession with proving the existence of demons eventually destroys their family and leaves Mary deeply traumatized.
Meanwhile, Devil May Cry Season 1 also reveals that the White Rabbit is actually human too. As a child, he accidentally crossed over into Hell and ended up befriending several friendly creatures there. Hell itself turns out to be far more complicated than Dante and Mary imagined, it is less endless fire pits and more dystopian nightmare society. The realm is ruled by a tyrant, polluted beyond belief, divided by brutal class systems, and filled with ordinary beings (albeit they don’t look like humans) who simply want peaceful lives away from all the suffering.
Mary, who once viewed every demon as a monster, slowly realizes things are not nearly as black-and-white as she believed. Unfortunately, DARKCOM and Vice President Baines are far less interested in nuance, and many of the demon refugees who escape to Earth are mercilessly slaughtered anyway.
The White Rabbit eventually tries recruiting Dante to his side, arguing that humans will never truly accept him because he’s half-demon. He tells Dante that demonkind is being persecuted and that the two of them should stand together instead of protecting humanity. Dante refuses, but the Rabbit still succeeds in tearing down the barrier between Earth and Hell for a short while, unleashing demons across the planet and triggering absolute chaos.
Things get even worse when the Rabbit mutates into a horrifying monster after fusing himself with demonic power and the legendary sword. During the final battle, Dante and Mary finally fight side-by-side properly, while poor Enzo, one of Dante’s friends, gets caught in the middle of the madness and dies in Dante’s arms. Mary eventually weakens the Rabbit by shooting his artificial demon-powered heart, allowing Dante to kill him using the completed Sword of Sparda and restore the barrier between worlds.
But despite everything they go through together, the ending on Devil May Cry Season 1 obviously doesn’t give Dante a happy conclusion. After the battle, he asks Mary to help him search for Vergil, only for her to immediately betray him, knock him out, and have him imprisoned inside a facility designed to contain demons.
Meanwhile, the U.S Vice President decides the best solution to all this is apparently launching a holy war directly into Hell itself using the Rabbit’s portal technology. And in the final twist of Devil May Cry Season 1, the mysterious horned demon helping the villains is revealed to be Vergil, who is now working under the ruler of Hell and freeing imprisoned demons for something much bigger still to come.
Devil May Cry Season 1 ends by promising bigger things to come in the next chapters.
Watch Devil May Cry Season 1 & 2 on Netflix.
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