Adi Shankar, the outspoken creator of Netflix's Devil May Cry show, has promised the second season of the alternate universe video game adaptation will be "very different" and seemingly fall more in line with game fans' wishes for series protagonist Dante.
In response to a fan asking him whether Dante will lose fewer fights in the next season, Shankar replied, "Season 2 is a vvvvveryyyyy different show. Yes, Dante levels up. His skills improve and you’ll see him embrace more of the iconic badassery fans of the game expect."
Shankar, who also helped bring Castlevania to Netflix in acclaimed fashion, added, "That said, I'm still telling a story, and great characters don’t just win – they grow. What makes Dante compelling isn’t that he’s unstoppable – it’s that he learns and keeps getting stronger."
Many long-time fans took umbrage with Dante's power levels in the first season, not least of all a humiliating defeat to Lady and being sidelined or captured on multiple occasions.
While some of that can be explained away by the story taking place in an alternate universe at the start of Dante's demon hunting career prior to the events of Devil May Cry 3, audiences had clearly signed up for a more swaggering Dante than we got on our screens.
On another fan-led bugbear – being set in an alternate universe and being effectively 'non-canon' – Shankar wrote, "going non-canon and creating my own AU gave me room to honor the spirit without getting trapped in the timeline gymnastics."
After debuting with a 95% score on Rotten Tomatoes, Devil May Cry was swiftly renewed for a second season at Netflix.
Following the announcement, Netflix's Dante voice actor Johnny Yong Bosch (who also portrays Nero in the game series) echoed Shankar's sentiments in an interview with GamesRadar+.
"Eventually, if we get enough seasons, and the story continues, we're going to see him really kind of go through all of these things, and then change and become who we're more familiar with," Bosch said.
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