Netflix’s ‘Dracula’ has been receiving rave reviews since it debuted and one of the best parts was the big twist concerning Sister Agatha. Now, co-showrunner Steven Moffat is opening up as to how that came to be. The character, played by Dolly Wells, is initially introduced faithfully to her 1897 novel counterpart.
However, things soon change, and while it isn’t immediately apparent how much they’ve changed, you can tell that we’re in for a real treat with this character.
Warning, there are spoilers below!
While it already appeared that Sister Agatha was more than she seemed, her over the shoulder reveal of being Agatha Van Helsing put a smile on my face. Yes, people like to get up in arms over characters being gender-swapped, but this one felt like such a natural reveal inclusion in the way the story was told that it felt hard to argue.
According to Moffat:
“So we came up with the idea of an atheist nun, we just called her ‘Atheist Nun,’ the nun who didn’t really believe in anything and made lots of jokes, and that character immediately leapt to the top of the script. You just thought, ‘my god, that’s great.’ And very, very quickly, we thought, ‘that’s Van Helsing, isn’t it, we don’t need anyone else, we just need the nun.’ Then you just think, ‘nuns are more or less dressed in the superhero outfit for fighting vampires, aren’t they? Why didn’t Bram think of that one?!'”
Why indeed? It probably had something to do with the gender stereotypes of the time combined with already being busy creating one of the greatest monsters humanity has ever seen.
Did you see the Sister Agatha twist coming on ‘Dracula’ before it was revealed? Were you happy with how they pulled it off or were you hoping the story would be wholly authentic to the novel? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
