I've seen through episode 1238 as of last night. It's the end of the series, and we're killing off characters wholesale! Gabriel stabbed Melanie in the shoulder (she's fine) and ran off into a secret passage. Morgan chased him, they fought, and Gabriel wound up falling back onto the sword of a suit of armor! We see him impaled on the bloody sword in what might be Dark Shadows's goriest killing. Then the next day, Daphne comes out of her coma, is all lovey-dovey with Bramwell for an afternoon, he makes her tea, and soon she's dropping dead, telling him she hopes he one day finds comfort with her sister Catherine!
Plus, Kendrick learns that Carrie DID see Melanie's mother in her vision, and after a confrontation with Julia, we learn it's...Josette! She's Bramwell's half-sister, as Justin was her dad -- she's the result of an affair they had on their trips into Boston. Julia wants to make Josette promise never to come to Collinwood again, to spare Flora's feelings. It's not clear if she's agreed to this, but I'm guessing she probably has. Kendrick and Melanie will probably be marrying soon.
Just seven episodes left to go! Back in more innocent times, with just seven episodes behind us, Carolyn told Joe she loved him, but declined his proposal to marry!
I apologize for my lack of faith in you finishing up by the end of the year. As things stand now, even with the holidays coming up, you're going to finish the series long before we will. :(
In other news, I just finished reading S.E. Hinton's Hawkes Harbor, which I burned through in a couple of sittings. Originally intended to be part of HarpCollins' short-lived line of Dark Shadows paperbacks, it was rejected by the publisher. But the author reworked all of the character and place names and released it as a novel in its own right. (Read more about it HERE.) The substitutions are all fairly obvious (Hawkes Harbor, DE instead of Collinsport, ME), but there several more drastic changes to Dark Shadows lore. For example, "Barnabas" was cursed by a native American rather than a witch. Other details of his "origin story" were changed as well. Also, the "Old House" is on Hawkes Island (actually a peninsula), and his coffin was hidden for centuries in one of the caves on the far side. I have read many original Dark Shadows novels, by Dan "Marilyn" Ross, Lara Parker and others, but this is by far my favorite and certainly the best-written.
In Dark Shadows, towards the end of "The Kidnapping of Maggie" storyline, Willie Loomis was written out of the show for seven months while actor John Karlen did a play or something. Willie Loomis was trying to help Maggie, but ended up getting shot in the back three times by the police for his trouble (not that he was entirely innocent in the affair) and sent off to Windcliff Sanitarium. When his play had run its course, he was written back into the show. By this time, Barnabas and Julia were in the midst of creating Adam, DS's riff on Frankenstein.
Hawkes Harbor begins with "Willie" (Jamie) still in "Windcliff Sanitarium" (Terrace View), under the care of "Dr. Woodard" (Dr. McDevitt). Willie's backstory is told via a series of flashbacks and therapy sessions and, just as Ted Knight's backstory is revealed in The Golden Age (even though it is an "Elseworlds"), so too is Willie Loomis's seen through the lense of Jamie Sommers. Both stories progress until Jamie's backstory catches up with the present day narrative (1968), then, just as in the TV show, "Barnabas Collins" (Grenville Hawkes) and "Julia Hoffman" (Louisa Kahne) have Jamie released from Terrace View. But S.E. Hinton doesn't drop him in the midst of that "Adam & Eve" nonsense (at about the halfway point of the book); she proceeds to tell her own story (fanfic by a professional writer). Hawkes Harbor also provides a much more coherent endgame for the "Josette"(Sophia Marie)/"'Maggie Evans"(Katie Roddendem) plotline.
I saw Danny mention this at some point, and it sounds like a blast! S.E. Hinton definitely indulges in her fandoms. I followed her on Twitter back when it was a fun place to be, and her feed alternated between political snark and hardcore Supernatural fangirling. I'd never even watched the show, but it was easy to get swept up in her enthusiasm.
I've only had a chance to see one more episode in the past week, episode 1239. (In fairness, our dining room is being torn apart because of water damage and everything in the house it topsy turvy.) Melanie and Kendrick return to Collinwood as man and wife (with Melanie dressed in so much brown and orange that she looked like a Thanksgiving turkey). They plan to live at Collinwood for a while, but then Melanie changes her mind... and then she sees the ghost of Brutus, who changes it completely! She thinks she's Amanda now*, and tries to kill Kendrick. They lock her up. And there's gotta be a new lottery!
*I've gotten the names of characters wrong so often on this thread, but lets face it, some of these actors change their names more often than they change their costumes! How many times has Nancy Barret played characters who suddenly were posessed or otherwise became other characters, anyway? She's a psychic! Now she's a showgirl! Now she's a psychic showgirl!
Meanwhile, Bramwell is lashing out in his mourning, and vows to destroy his cousins. And Julia thinks Morgan will kill him if he doesn't leave town right after Daphne's funeral.
IT IS ACCOMPLISHED! I wrapped up the final three episodes this morning. I really enjoyed the way this storyline wrapped up, with Morgan trapping Bramwell and then Catherine in the locked room, which Kendrick, seemingly the one good person at Collinwood, was kept out of it. But Bramwell andCatherine manage to stave off Brutus's ghost together, and Morgan tries to kill Bramwell and doesn't, and then rushes to the roof with Catherine, and then scuffles with Kendrick and falls to his death!
And then the final scene, where Melanie has been walking in the woods and gets what's obviously a vampire bite, and so much of the show's remaining cast rushes in, including a guy playing a servant ("Last show! Let's get a paycheck to whoever we can!")... but then Stokes's voiceover tells us the comforting lie that it wasn't actually a vampire, but a wild animal, and she recovered, and everyone lived happily ever after -- Bramwell and Catherine at Collinwood, and Kendrick and Melanie a bit further away. "And while they lived, the dark shadows of Collinwood were but a memory." And then the music concludes with the final musical sting that happens on every episode, urging us to tune in tomorrow for a new chapter that will never come.
This was a lot of fun, and I'm glad I did it. I'll be writing more about the whole experience soon. And I still have Night of Dark Shadows to watch, as well as the 1990s revival series. But I managed to conclude the series itself by the end of the year, and that feels pretty good.
The Baron > Rob Staeger (Grodd Mod)December 27, 2025 at 8:03pm
I always thought that it was a shame that the series ended in the past and alternative time. I would have liked to have seen a proper farewell to the "main" versions of the characters. Of course, shows in those days didn't often get "grand finales".
Replies
I've seen through episode 1238 as of last night. It's the end of the series, and we're killing off characters wholesale! Gabriel stabbed Melanie in the shoulder (she's fine) and ran off into a secret passage. Morgan chased him, they fought, and Gabriel wound up falling back onto the sword of a suit of armor! We see him impaled on the bloody sword in what might be Dark Shadows's goriest killing. Then the next day, Daphne comes out of her coma, is all lovey-dovey with Bramwell for an afternoon, he makes her tea, and soon she's dropping dead, telling him she hopes he one day finds comfort with her sister Catherine!
Plus, Kendrick learns that Carrie DID see Melanie's mother in her vision, and after a confrontation with Julia, we learn it's...Josette! She's Bramwell's half-sister, as Justin was her dad -- she's the result of an affair they had on their trips into Boston. Julia wants to make Josette promise never to come to Collinwood again, to spare Flora's feelings. It's not clear if she's agreed to this, but I'm guessing she probably has. Kendrick and Melanie will probably be marrying soon.
Just seven episodes left to go! Back in more innocent times, with just seven episodes behind us, Carolyn told Joe she loved him, but declined his proposal to marry!
Just seven episodes left to go!
I apologize for my lack of faith in you finishing up by the end of the year. As things stand now, even with the holidays coming up, you're going to finish the series long before we will. :(
In other news, I just finished reading S.E. Hinton's Hawkes Harbor, which I burned through in a couple of sittings. Originally intended to be part of HarpCollins' short-lived line of Dark Shadows paperbacks, it was rejected by the publisher. But the author reworked all of the character and place names and released it as a novel in its own right. (Read more about it HERE.) The substitutions are all fairly obvious (Hawkes Harbor, DE instead of Collinsport, ME), but there several more drastic changes to Dark Shadows lore. For example, "Barnabas" was cursed by a native American rather than a witch. Other details of his "origin story" were changed as well. Also, the "Old House" is on Hawkes Island (actually a peninsula), and his coffin was hidden for centuries in one of the caves on the far side. I have read many original Dark Shadows novels, by Dan "Marilyn" Ross, Lara Parker and others, but this is by far my favorite and certainly the best-written.
In Dark Shadows, towards the end of "The Kidnapping of Maggie" storyline, Willie Loomis was written out of the show for seven months while actor John Karlen did a play or something. Willie Loomis was trying to help Maggie, but ended up getting shot in the back three times by the police for his trouble (not that he was entirely innocent in the affair) and sent off to Windcliff Sanitarium. When his play had run its course, he was written back into the show. By this time, Barnabas and Julia were in the midst of creating Adam, DS's riff on Frankenstein.
Hawkes Harbor begins with "Willie" (Jamie) still in "Windcliff Sanitarium" (Terrace View), under the care of "Dr. Woodard" (Dr. McDevitt). Willie's backstory is told via a series of flashbacks and therapy sessions and, just as Ted Knight's backstory is revealed in The Golden Age (even though it is an "Elseworlds"), so too is Willie Loomis's seen through the lense of Jamie Sommers. Both stories progress until Jamie's backstory catches up with the present day narrative (1968), then, just as in the TV show, "Barnabas Collins" (Grenville Hawkes) and "Julia Hoffman" (Louisa Kahne) have Jamie released from Terrace View. But S.E. Hinton doesn't drop him in the midst of that "Adam & Eve" nonsense (at about the halfway point of the book); she proceeds to tell her own story (fanfic by a professional writer). Hawkes Harbor also provides a much more coherent endgame for the "Josette"(Sophia Marie)/"'Maggie Evans"(Katie Roddendem) plotline.
I saw Danny mention this at some point, and it sounds like a blast! S.E. Hinton definitely indulges in her fandoms. I followed her on Twitter back when it was a fun place to be, and her feed alternated between political snark and hardcore Supernatural fangirling. I'd never even watched the show, but it was easy to get swept up in her enthusiasm.
I've only had a chance to see one more episode in the past week, episode 1239. (In fairness, our dining room is being torn apart because of water damage and everything in the house it topsy turvy.) Melanie and Kendrick return to Collinwood as man and wife (with Melanie dressed in so much brown and orange that she looked like a Thanksgiving turkey). They plan to live at Collinwood for a while, but then Melanie changes her mind... and then she sees the ghost of Brutus, who changes it completely! She thinks she's Amanda now*, and tries to kill Kendrick. They lock her up. And there's gotta be a new lottery!
*I've gotten the names of characters wrong so often on this thread, but lets face it, some of these actors change their names more often than they change their costumes! How many times has Nancy Barret played characters who suddenly were posessed or otherwise became other characters, anyway? She's a psychic! Now she's a showgirl! Now she's a psychic showgirl!
Meanwhile, Bramwell is lashing out in his mourning, and vows to destroy his cousins. And Julia thinks Morgan will kill him if he doesn't leave town right after Daphne's funeral.
(In fairness, our dining room is being torn apart because of water damage and everything in the house it topsy turvy.)
Ugh. What a pain in the arse.
"My name is Victoria Winters. God bless us, every one."
That's awesome, Baron! It's so good to see their faces again.
IT IS ACCOMPLISHED! I wrapped up the final three episodes this morning. I really enjoyed the way this storyline wrapped up, with Morgan trapping Bramwell and then Catherine in the locked room, which Kendrick, seemingly the one good person at Collinwood, was kept out of it. But Bramwell andCatherine manage to stave off Brutus's ghost together, and Morgan tries to kill Bramwell and doesn't, and then rushes to the roof with Catherine, and then scuffles with Kendrick and falls to his death!
And then the final scene, where Melanie has been walking in the woods and gets what's obviously a vampire bite, and so much of the show's remaining cast rushes in, including a guy playing a servant ("Last show! Let's get a paycheck to whoever we can!")... but then Stokes's voiceover tells us the comforting lie that it wasn't actually a vampire, but a wild animal, and she recovered, and everyone lived happily ever after -- Bramwell and Catherine at Collinwood, and Kendrick and Melanie a bit further away. "And while they lived, the dark shadows of Collinwood were but a memory." And then the music concludes with the final musical sting that happens on every episode, urging us to tune in tomorrow for a new chapter that will never come.
This was a lot of fun, and I'm glad I did it. I'll be writing more about the whole experience soon. And I still have Night of Dark Shadows to watch, as well as the 1990s revival series. But I managed to conclude the series itself by the end of the year, and that feels pretty good.
I always thought that it was a shame that the series ended in the past and alternative time. I would have liked to have seen a proper farewell to the "main" versions of the characters. Of course, shows in those days didn't often get "grand finales".
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