Alois Trancy arrives on screen with a smile that doesn't reach his eyes, and the show knows exactly what you're going to assume about him, then systematically dismantles every assumption across twelve episodes. The Victorian Gothic aesthetic wraps around something genuinely cruel: a character so fractured by trauma that his own cruelty becomes indistinguishable from his suffering. You either recognize yourself in that contradiction and stay, or you recognize it as betrayal of what came before and leave, there is no middle ground.

Victorian England hides a dark secret behind the gates of the Trancy mansion, set a little over a year after the first season's finale. Young Alois Trancy, heir to the Trancy earldom, is cheerful, sadistic and quick to anger. Taken as a child and made to live as a slave, he eventually came home to lead the household, but some people doubt his account and his claim. At his side is Claude Faustus, a cold, black-clad butler with uncanny skills and supernatural power. As lies spread through the manor, the bond between master and servant is put to the test when hell itself comes knocking. The result mixes action, comedy and supernatural mystery.