What You Need to Know to Watch "Hemlock Grove" Season Two

Image via Complex Original

It's a tale as old as time itself: a werewolf-vampire homoerotic bromance. Roman Godfrey (Bill Skarsgård) and Peter Rumancek (Landon Liboiron) initially looked like they were going to be adversaries. They were trying to hook up with the same waifish blonde women; they were brooding and smoking cigarettes in the same corridors; they were ostracized by the same blue-collar, small-minded townspeople.

Eventually, they realized that even though they had kind of the same schtick, they were better friends than enemies. Emerging monsters have to stick together after all. With their powers combined, they could solve murders, fulfill their monstrous destinies, and brood like they've never brooded before.

Roman and Peter decide to come together to solve the murder of a lovely young lady who made that classic horror mistake of having sex while being attractive and a woman. (The horror genre has been slut-shaming since before slut-shaming was defined.) More and more young ladies start dying and the townsfolk start priming their pitchforks for Roman and Peter; the two find themselves on the wrong end of an angry mob.

It turns out that Christina (Freya Tingley), a bookish teen, drank out of Peter's paw print; this makes her a bloodthirsty werewolf. Christina decides that she would kill two birds with one stone and start murdering her sexier classmates so that she could get more writing material and punish her friends and acquaintances for getting more action than she did. Shelley Godfrey (Nicole Boivin), Roman's disfigured Sister then kills Christina, saving Peter. Afterwards, she runs away, and all of the murders are pinned on her.

The other major plot of the season revolves around Roman knocking up Letha (Penelope Mitchell), who gives birth to a creepy vampire spawn. Letha dies in childbirth, which seems to be a part of the plan set into motion by Roman's mom Olivia (Famke Janssen). There's also some stuff going on with the Godfrey Institute for Biomedical Technologies, the Godfrey family business. We don't really know what the deal is there yet, but whatever is going on there is very creepy, so keep any eye out for experiments gone awry.

There are more than a dozen other subplots that unfold in season one, but those don't matter because everybody is dead. Speaking of which...

Olivia Godfrey (Famke Janssen): Roman's mom. We saw her put into a body bag last season, but since she's the star of the show and listed in all the episodes on IMDB, we're going to assume this is temporary.

Christina Wendall (Freya Tingley): Nerd; aspiring writer; bloodthirsty werewolf. There was a bonus scene that indicated she might be coming back from the dead as well. Damn, horror characters never stay dead.

Dr. Clementine Chasseur (Kandyse McClure): She was a werewolf hunter. More importantly, she was played by D from Battlestar Galactica. Her death matters because she has a brother who's also into monster hunting. So say we all.

Letha Godfrey (Penelope Mitchell): She was Peter's bae and Roman's baby momma.

Francis Pullman (Ted Dykstra): He was either a babbling crazy guy or a prophetic babbling crazy guy, depending on who you ask.

Alexa and Alyssa Sworn (Eliana Jones and Emilia McCarthy): The Sheriff's catty tween daughters had the gall to dress up and dance to pop music when there was a monster on the loose.

Jenny Fredericks (Holly Deveaux): She was the cashier at shitty local store. She was also way to nice to live through the entire season.

Lisa Willoughby (Jacqueline Graham): Here lies a character most notable for being torn in half, infested with maggots, and kissed by Christina, in that order.

Brooke Bluebell (Lorenza Izzo): She died in first five minutes of season and may have been boning a teacher at the school.

Pregnant Lady Werewolf Prisoner: Cried a lot. Decapitated.

1. The rape of a relatively anonymous female character

2. Incest: cousin-on-cousin and mom-on-son

3. A dismembered torso kissed by a misunderstood tween

4. A speech delivered by a dying woman with a flayed upper-body

5. A ridiculously gross werewolf transformation

1. Which characters who died will stay dead?

2. What's going on inside the Godfrey Institute?

3. What cool vampire powers does Roman have now?

4. When will Shelley come back? 

5. Who'll get their revenge first, the Sheriff or Clementine's brother? 

6. Over/under on Roman's sexual conquests who turn up dead? 

7. How many literary references can they cram into next season?

8. Will they find something more grotesque to show us than a dismembered maggot-ridden corpse?

9. Does such a thing exist?