The series received critical acclaim, with praise for its visuals, animation, voice acting, action sequences, characterization, themes, and writing, although the pacing, particularly of the third and fourth seasons, garnered a polarized response.

The series focuses on Richter Belmont, a descendant of Trevor and Sypha, and Maria Renard during the French Revolution, with James Callis reprising his role as Alucard.

[2] When his human wife is burned at the stake after being falsely accused of witchcraft, the vampire Vlad Dracula Țepeș declares all the people of Wallachia will pay with their lives.

In March 2007, Frederator Studios acquired the rights to produce an animated film adaptation of Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, intended as a direct-to-video production.

In an interview with Paste, Warren Ellis said that when he was contacted about Castlevania he had no previous knowledge of the series and discovered it was a "Japanese transposition of the Hammer Horror films I grew up with and loved".

[9] Following this, Shankar stepped back from Hollywood to pursue more self-published works, stating that "the major studios were blatantly disrespecting fandom" as a reason he turned down the offer.

[9] The show was revitalized when Powerhouse Animation Studios's Sam Deats was able to negotiate a deal with Netflix for the production, using the existing scripts that had been written nearly a decade prior.

[5] Shankar was approached with the opportunity to produce the work, which he took as neither Powerhouse or Frederator sought to restrict his creative vision from Ellis' scripts.

[8] They also took ideas from director Satoshi Kon's works for character expressions and series such as Cowboy Bebop, Demon Slayer, and Berserk for inserting humor among the more serious elements.

[5] Ellis said that the second season, completing the trilogy, is where he had been able to deviate somewhat from the game, and has been better anticipate the show's release on Netflix in terms of scenes and episode lengths.

[30] According to Parrot Analytics, Castlevania was the most popular digital original series in the United States during July 6–19, 2017, with the show generating 23,175,616 "demand expressions" on average.

It was also one of the year's top 20 most in-demand digital original series in the United Kingdom (20th), Japan (4th), Brazil (10th), Mexico (11th), France (13th), Canada (14th), Germany (19th) and Australia (20th).

[35] Dave Trumbore of Collider gave the series four stars out of five, praising the chemistry between the cast and comparing the violence with anime such as Ninja Scroll.

[41] The Verge gave a mixed review, noting that the gore did little to create a sense of danger and felt "intentionally flashy".

"[42] Dan Seitz at Uproxx left a negative review, writing that it tried too hard to find profundity in the story of the Castlevania series.

The critics consensus reads, "Castlevania sinks its fangs into vampiric lore during a devilishly fun second season that benefits from an expanded sense of scale and episode tally that allows the series to fully spread its leathery wings.

"[36] IGN gave the second season a score of 10/10, praising Ellis's approach to Castlevania as "witty and self-aware enough to poke fun at itself when necessary".

Writing for GameSpot, Michael Rougeau was disappointed that Trevor's group spent the majority of their time in a library, and also said Dracula "does literally nothing in all the episodes we've seen so far.

Rougeau concluded that the action was creatively executed, but he felt that the new cast was given more development and that the previous characters were left to "tread water".

The critics consensus reads, "Castlevania's stunningly animated third season continues to build on the game's lore by diving deeper into its characters with humor, heart, and a lot of bloody action.

"[37] Collider's Dave Trumbore gave the third season a glowing review, praising the action and declaring the show "one of the best video game adaptations ever made".

[38] The site's consensus reads: "A rewarding experience and bittersweet farewell, Castlevania's fourth season is a triumphant conclusion to an expertly crafted series".