Devil May Cry Showrunner Says Season 2 Is Like the Difference Between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight

Devil May Cry Showrunner Says Season 2 Is Like the Difference Between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight Southeast Asia Home Amazon Deals Pro-tips by Codashop PC PS4 Xbox One Nintendo Mobile Entertainment EsportsMoreSearch Home More About IGN SEAContactAdvertisePressUser AgreementPrivacy PolicyCookie PolicyRSSIGN Southeast Asia is operated under license by Media Prima Digital Sdn Bhd (199901014126) Change Region United States United Kingdom Australia Africa Adria Serbian/Croatian Adria Slovenian Benelux / Dutch Brazil China / 中国 Czechia / Slovakia France Germany Greece / Ελλάδα Hungary India Israel Italy / Italia Japan / 日本 Korea / 한국 Latin America Middle East – English Middle East – الأوسطالشرق Nordic Poland Portugal Southeast Asia Spain / España Turkey / Türkiye world.ign.com Register / Login Register / Login Login Register Devil May Cry: The Animated Series Devil May Cry Showrunner Says Season 2 Is Like the Difference Between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight Our latest digital cover story provides an exclusive look at Season 2 of the Adi Shankar and Netflix anime. This post might contain affiliation links. If you buy something through this post, the publisher may get a share of the sale. By Jesse Schedeen  Updated: March 24, 2026, 11:30 p.m. Related reads:MapleStorySEA Celebrates 20th Anniversary With Massive Summer Updates If there’s one thing Adi Shankar wants to impress upon fans about the upcoming second season of Netflix’s Devil May Cry, it’s that the animated series is getting bigger. Much bigger. So much so that Shankar is comparing it to the gulf between 2005’s Batman Begins and its 2008 sequel, The Dark Knight.More like thisOpen Back Headphones: A Sound Experience Like No Other“Season 2 is just way, way, way bigger in terms of scope and scale,” Shankar tells IGN. “So it’s the difference between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. That’s the comp. Or Halo 1 and Halo 2, where in terms of just scale and scope – orders of magnitude bigger and larger. And the tone is just completely different on top of that. The tone is very, very different, so it cuts deeper.”That was the main takeaway from our recent conversation with Shankar, the creator and showrunner of Devil May Cry and the godfather of the so-called “Bootleg Multiverse” that ties the series together with fellow Netflix projects Castlevania and Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix. Having come to terms with his demonic heritage in Devil May Cry Season 1 and overcome the White Rabbit (Hoon Lee), Johnny Young Bosch’s Dante is ready to step fully into a larger and more colorful world. And just in time, too, because he’s discovered that his long-lost brother Vergil (Robbie Daymond) is still alive. The return of Vergil changes everything for Season 2.Watch this exclusive new teaser trailer for Devil May Cry Season 2:Dante’s Evolution in Devil May Cry Season 2Season 1 ended on a surprisingly dark note for the upbeat demon hunter Dante. Though he managed to defeat the White Rabbit, Dante found himself imprisoned and locked away by the demon-hunting agency DARKCOM, while countless innocent Makaians suffered under their new imperial overlords. It’s fortunate that Netflix renewed the series for a second season last year, or else fans might have been left with quite a bummer of a cliffhanger ending. Though, as Shankar explains, he was never that concerned about whether he’d be able to continue his story.“I just have way too much self-confidence. It’s almost to the point of delusion. So I was like, ‘Oh, that’s never going to happen. We’re good,’” Shankar says. “I also acknowledge that this is a delusional self-confidence… So these things don’t enter my mind, because my philosophy now is to just control the controllable. And anything that’s out of my control, I just don’t even let it into the thought process.””He’s not a character that is fueled by revenge. He’s not Batman.As dark as Season 1’s ending is, Shankar says that fans shouldn’t necessarily expect Dante to dwell on his betrayal or embark on a quest for revenge. He’s a man with a pretty singular goal, and that goal is finding his brother.“He’s not a character that is fueled by revenge. He’s not Batman,” Shankar says. “I’m not saying that he’s not going to attempt to get revenge or that he isn’t, but I think… that if there’s an inciting incident that made you the person you are, it involves your long-lost brother. … We’re just approaching this with psychological realism or emotional realism, which has been kind of the thesis of my show.”Shankar continues, “I look at these things as films broken up into chapters. But when you look at this film, it’s been approached with psychological realism. Really, what he’s doing, if you kind of look at it, is the real battle that he’s trying to confront right now is his own loneliness. If you look at the core pain the character of Dante feels, it’s loneliness and he lacks the tools to articulate it. So what he wants is what he lost as a child, which is a feeling of family.”Shankar’s thesis about Dante is that gamers respond so strongly to the character because he embodies a sort of juvenile mentality and energy they can identify with. Dante is a character who refuses to grow up. And at the end of the day, isn’t gaming all about escaping the pressures and realities of being an adult for an hour or two at a time?“I think what makes that powerful is it’s not that he’s refusing to grow up because he’s Peter Pan. It’s refusing to grow up because he’s gone through things that would’ve destroyed anyone else,” Shankar says. “So he’s combated the darkness in his life with light, and that light presents itself as making light of situations.”None of this is to say that Dante doesn’t grow as a character in Season 2. Season 1 was all about forcing the character to come to terms with the fact that he’s the half-demon son of the legendary Sparda. Having accepted that revelation, Dante is better able to move forward in Season 2. He’s no longer so conflicted about his heritage.“I can safely say it’s less of a struggle in Season 2,” Shankar says. “I think in Season 1, he was a character who hadn’t really been tested because… we were meeting the youngest version of Dante that had ever been presented in an audiovisual format. There’s a greater level of comfort in terms of stepping into who he actually is, both emotionally and also in terms of just the skillset and whatnot. I mean, you guys saw the reloading clip. This is a dude who knows what’s up now.”Dante and Vergil: Brothers ReunitedAgain, the biggest change with Devil May Cry Season 2 is that Dante now knows his brother Vergil is still alive. The addition of this one character to the mix changes everything about the series.“This is why it’s a completely, completely different show,” Shankar teases. “Vergil’s not a character you can just kind of dro