Having waited for a year for the next season, fans of the Netflix adaptation of the wildly popular Devil May Cry games are in for a chrome-plated treat and a little extra when it returns. The animated series (from the same studio as the successful My Adventures With Superman) has a pretty even share of fans and detractors, all boiling down to the fact that it’s a pretty radical reinvention of the game’s narrative, which features half-human/half-demon bounty hunter Dante protecting humanity from demonic hordes and also healing his Shakespearean dysfunctional relationship with his twin brother Vergil. The Netflix show remixed the game’s canon greatly, introducing the fictional paramilitary organization Dark Realm Command (aka DARKCOM) and reinterpreting the human-demon conflict as an allegory for post-9/11 paranoia.
Even with the varied reactions to the show’s many changes, Devil May Cry was more than enough of a success to receive a second season with a relatively quick turnaround. Now that the show’s return is a little more than 3 months out, Netflix has given us a glimpse of the familiar additions to Dante’s arsenal he’ll be using as humanity wages a holy crusade on the demon realm.
In the brief clip, Dante is given his iconic dual-wielded, two-toned M1911 handguns affectionately referred to as Ebony and Ivory, and wastes no time in showing off their devastating potential. Created by the talented gunsmith Nell Goldstein, the guns appear in every entry in the video game series, notable for their incredibly high rate-of-fire and juggle potential, necessary to sustain the slick combos the games are known for.
Naturally, the guns are given to Dante by Nell herself, who will make her appearance in the second season of the television show. While she never makes a direct appearance in any of the games, Nell is a key figure in Dante’s life, becoming a sort of motherly figure to him in the Devil May Cry prequel novel from 2002. Her granddaughter, Nico, was introduced in 2019’s Devil May Cry 5 as a support character providing equipment to Dante’s nephew, Nero, and although unlikely, it is possible that we may see a much younger or repurposed version of her in the series.
One of the many recurring Easter eggs in the game is an engraving on the side of Ivory that reads “For Tony Redgrave, By .45 Art Warks,” a reference to the fact that the entire franchise gained life as a potential direction for Resident Evil 4, wherein Dante was “Tony.”
Interestingly, the 2002 prequel novel gives an in-universe explanation for this, revealing that Dante spent time as a young mercenary under the alias; in the sneak peek of season 2, Dante’s recently allied Lady mentions that the engraving is a reference to his “old mercenary alias.”
Whether or not the upcoming continuation will give fans a glimpse at Dante’s murky past remains to be seen, but what’s certain is that now that DARKCOM has committed to a full-scale invasion of demonkind, he’s going to need all the firepower he can get his hands on.
