The Bastard Son & the Devil Himself may be your classic supernatural YA show, except for one factor: the sheer amount of blood.
The Bastard Son & the Devil Himself has just dropped on Netflix. Unlike popular teen media of today, which veers more into regular high-schoolers dealing with mental health and relationships, this series draws back to the supernatural YA craze of the early 2010s.
Based on the book Half Bad by Sally Green, the story focuses on Nathan, who lives in a world of warring witches. His father is considered the most evil and dangerous witch out there, and 16-year-old Nathan, who hasn’t even gained his powers yet, has been tasked with killing him.
Now, this premise also leads to a factor that sets the show apart from others of its genre: the sheer amount of blood and gore. There’s so many gruesome kills in this show, so here are the 5 goriest scenes we could dare to watch. But first, warning: spoilers for The Bastard Son & the Devil Himself ahead….
5. The bodies in the loft
Now, this doesn’t show how anyone dies, but what remains of the bodies is enough to make this scene blood curdling. Hunters, including Nathan’s sister Jessica, have been searching for Marcus, Nathan’s dad and the deadliest blood witch out there. As Marcus is able to transform into a wolf, he is an intensely scary foe.
And the hunters learn this when they enter a house they believe he’s been in, only to find it empty, until they see blood dripping from the loft. They open the lift to watch the slimy thud of a bunch of massacred bodies falling from the celling. It’s certainly a gruesome sight.
4. Pet explosion
From the moment that Annalise gets her powers, you can tell what’s going to happen to her poor pet rat. Annalise has the power of decimation, meaning that she can rip things apart without even touching them. And when trying to practise her powers in her room, unfortunately the rat gets caught in the crossfire.
The scene actually ends up being less traumatising than you would imagine, as Annalise attempts to clean it up – to no avail – and claims that she’s spilled some tea. It’s a great show of how nonchalantly this series approaches some of its gore.
“I think I was covered in blood for about 90 percent of the show,” Nadia Parkes, who plays Annalise, explained to Dexerto. “My blood wasn’t CGI, I was splattered with it every morning, and it smells like maple syrup, so if I got hungry at least I could like, eat it off my face. It’s just sugar syrup, and it’s really sticky and it gets everywhere. I had to have a lot of showers.”
Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates on Esports, Gaming and more.
3. Heart eaters
One thing that blood witches do is eat the hearts of their victims. This may seem gruesome, but it’s actually a way to maintain the powers and the soul of the dead within them. For blood witches, this is an incredible part of their culture, as it allows their family members to remain alive even after death.
While the fairborn witches don’t do this, main villain Soul ends up resorting to this, as he wants to have the same level of power as Marcus. Therefore, when one of his subordinates begins questioning his leadership, Soul ends up eating the mans heart, which the camera makes sure to focus on.
2. Cage crushing
This scene feels like something you’d see in Midsommar, if Midsommar involved magic. When Nathan, Annalise, and Gabriel stay with a group of blood witches, we watch what happens to any fairborn witch they hunt down. One prisoner of war is placed into a wooden cage, which at first you think will be set alight, but what happens is much more gruesome.
The head witch of the group blesses the man, then makes the bars of the wooden cage turn into themselves, which ends up simultaneously crushing the prisoner, as well as twisting him apart. Flowers immediately grow from the splattered blood, and the head witch then walks to the cage, reaches in, removes the dead body’s heart, and eats it. Yikes.
1. Security Guard gets ripped apart
This was the scene that opens a lot of the show’s trailers, and they’re certainly giving their big card away. This is probably the most graphic portrayal of Annalise’s powers, as she prevents a security guard from shooting Nathan. Unfortunately, this means ripping the security guard apart in the air.
The scene certainly takes you aback by how sudden and how graphic it is, as you see the man convulse in pain, and all of his organs and nervous system are shown plain as day. It’s also quite sad, as a prior scene showed that Annalise and the security guard were friends with each other, him even letting her sneak into the building.
But in a show like this, blood must always be spilt, be they for good and bad reasons. And there’s even more bloody scenes than the ones we’ve talked about.
The Bastard Son & the Devil Himself is currently available to stream on Netflix.
