Revamp: The Undead Story 1×09 Review: Episode 9

As we arrive at the penultimate episode, things are starting to get wrapped up. In some cases, it’s a little too neat for my taste. But Revamp: The Undead Story has done a great job so far of keeping the narrative tightly-paced, so I’m going to trust it.

To be perfectly honest, I do think the Ciar stuff was a bit of a letdown. There is still one episode left, but it seems as though that will be winding down the main Hunter-Vampire conflict, as well as dealing with Feratu/Dracul once and for all. So I believe everything going on with Ciar has indeed finished. While I enjoy where we ended up, it was all a bit anticlimactic.

Considering Ciar’s righteous fury for much of the series – the way he adamantly refused to trust Punn (who was proven to be lying, so it’s not like Ciar was wrong), the way he was insisting that they needed to protect themselves against the Hunters – his turnaround does seem very abrupt. He has made good points and been rebuffed, and I don’t blame him for being angry. I think he saw the way he was being brushed off and internalized it as not being accepted by his own family, so I can see how he might give up his arguments as soon as he realized that his brothers loved him.

It just happened so quickly. One minute he’s threatening to kill Mekhin if he heals any of the Hunters, the next minute he’s arguing with Pokpong over how long to heat soup. Don’t get me wrong; that entire scene was hilarious, and I love how Punn showed Ciar kindness once and Ciar imprinted on him like a baby bird. But I would have loved to have seen Ciar needing to be convinced.

I understand that a scene with the others explaining everything that happened with Punn would have been unnecessary; the audience doesn’t need to know any of that information, as we’ve already seen it. But a lot of Ciar’s anger was because he was right and no one was listening to him, and no one was explaining why. We didn’t even get a scene between him and Mekhin about Mekhin healing Pokpong, which I was really hoping for.

And while I think the resolution of Ciar’s rift with his family was too swift, I did enjoy the outcome. I am a sucker for a good found family dynamic, and it may have taken nine episodes, but Revamp got there in the end. I feel like this is especially important for Punn and Pokpong, who only had each other growing up but also were separated for much of their youth. We also know very little about what life was like for Ramil before Methus and the others came into it.

That said, it still may be possible that we get a bit of conflict between the Jonoel family in next week’s finale. Feratu made it very clear to Ramil that the reason he was able to infiltrate the orphanage and kill all of the children was because Ramil let him live. It looks like Ramil’s “no killing humans” philosophy is more of a “no killing, period”, given that he simply banished Feratu. And even when he had the opportunity again – after it was proven that Feratu’s banishment wasn’t enough – Ramil still chose to put him in a coma rather than kill him. (Granted, that could have been for wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey reasons, but still.)

I expect that there will be a fight about how to handle Feratu now that he’s woken up. Ciar, Methus, and Punn will surely be on the side of killing him, while Ramil and potentially Mekhin will be against. As for who I think will win… While characters tend not to die in GMMTV productions, shows like Midnight Motel and My Golden Blood have shown that, occasionally, the villains need a more permanent solution.

My theory is that Punn will be the one who kills Feratu. His mission at the beginning of the series was to kill Ramil, so him killing Feratu sort of brings us back to that. He knows how to kill a pureblood vampire (since Ramil told him), and he has proven to be the most skilled and prolific of the Hunters, given the collection of pendants in his murder basement. I think that knife has to come back at some point. It is featured in the opening credits, after all.

I also think that Methus will end up as the leader. Ramil has stated more than once that he never wanted to be the leader; he only took up the mantle because he refused to let it go to someone like Feratu. Presumably Methus has essentially been acting as the leader since Ramil went into the painting. (At least, he’s been the one managing the family properties.) He was a prince before he became a vampire, so he knows how to lead; he would have been trained for it. And I suspect that, once everything is over and the bad guys are vanquished, Ramil will want to vanish with his boyfriend.

As for other theories, there is some debate in the fandom as to whether or not Punn will end up a vampire. It’s not outside the realm of possibilities; it’s how Twilight ended, it’s how My Golden Blood ended. But Ramil has only turned people when it’s been the only option, when they’re on the brink of death. He already had the opportunity with Punn when they were in Greenmore and took a chance on his healing abilities instead. I think it’s because Ramil knew that Punn would hate being a vampire and wanted to avoid that at all costs. So, no, I don’t think that will happen to Punn.

We can also go back to the theory I had about Ramil potentially turning human. Based on the wording of the curse, I thought that was where we were headed. I don’t know how we’d get there, but there is still time. And if Punn and Ramil are going to get a happy ending, we have to resolve the immortality thing somehow. Then again, maybe they’ll just go with it. It worked on Shadowhunters.

Anyway, can we talk about how the time manipulation theory turned out to be true? I honestly can’t believe that I had a random thought at 2am that didn’t even make sense to me, and I ended up being right. Those dreams Punn was having were a future thing. Ramil going back through Punn’s memories did, in fact, affect the past. And I love how this was peppered throughout the earlier episodes in ways that made you sit and think, but not really know the full story until now.

Once we learned about his mental abilities, I thought for sure that he was projecting himself into Punn’s mind from the painting somehow. But in true time travel fashion, things are a little more complicated than that. Punn was the only person who could break Ramil’s curse because he’d already broken the curse. Ramil chose Punn, yes, but he chose Punn after, not before. (Which begs the question of how Methus knew, but whatever.)

Not to invoke the franchise that shall not be named, but this is similar to how the time travel worked in Prisoner of Azkaban. Little moments happened that, at the time, were just weird. Harry knew he could cast a Patronus because he’d already done it. Things only make sense once you’ve gotten to the end of the story.

None of this explains how Ramil was able to affect the past from Punn’s memories. We know he wasn’t just altering Punn’s perception of what happened because he was able to successfully use his abilities on Feratu, which is how he ended up in a coma. The other incidents could be explained away somehow; when he stopped Methus from attacking Punn in episode 1, it could have been Methus stopping on his own. When he prevented the cabinet from falling on Punn at the orphanage, it could have not been going to fall in the first place.

But there’s no denying that Ramil, through Punn’s memories, put Feratu in a coma for ten years. I don’t know that there is a way to explain that, so we’re just going to accept that it’s a thing he can do. Because he did it.

Something else that was a little anticlimactic was Jett switching his stance. We saw in Punn’s memories that Jett was closest to Father Dracul when they were kids, as he wanted to go into the seminary. (We’re not even going to talk about how weird Jett spending so much time with the Father as a teen would be, even without factoring vampires into the mix. I am not currently equipped to dissect everything that’s wrong with the Catholic Church.) He’s been taking care of him for a decade. He kept it secret from Punn and Elise for some reason.

And yet Elise was able to very easily convince him that Dracul was actually Feratu. (Vampire McVampire, shouldn’t be that difficult.) Although, to be fair, I didn’t think he believed her until he walked into the hospital room and tried to kill Feratu. Then again, he did try to kill a vampire by suffocating him. Vampires don’t breathe, honey. That’s not going to do anything. He has got to be the worst vampire hunter in the world.

Now, in the show’s defense, I do think they tried to show why Jett believed Elise. We did see Jett flashing back to what happened. It was fast, but I can believe that Jett was recontextualizing his memories based on the new information. He might not have believed Punn, but he doesn’t really have any reason to not believe Elise. Besides, it doesn’t really change anything for him; it was still a vampire who attacked the orphanage. It just wasn’t the one he thought it was.

I’ve also seen the theory floated that he wasn’t trying to kill Feratu and was trying to wake him up instead. I’m not sure how he thought that would work, but I could buy that easier than a season vampire hunter thinking he can smother a vampire to death. It’s even possible that he was being manipulated into it somehow. We don’t know what, if any, powers Feratu may have, and if Ramil can affect the past through Punn’s memories, Feratu can surely brainwash someone while in a coma. (It worked on Teen Wolf.)

I’ve really been enjoying Revamp and am both excited for the final episode and sad that it’s ending. There are several ways things could go, and I honestly don’t know which way they’re leaning. I can’t wait to see what happens!

Author: Jamie Sugah

Jamie has a BA in English with a focus in creative writing from The Ohio State University. She self-published her first novel, The Perils of Long Hair on a Windy Day, which is available through Amazon. She is currently an archivist and lives in New York City with her demon ninja vampire cat. She covers television, books, movies, anime, and conventions in the NYC area.

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