This article features spoilers for Seraphim in Blood of Zeus Season 2. For our full interview with the voice of Seraphim, Elias Toufexis, click here.
If he’s evil, why hot? The answer for Seraphim (Elias Toufexis) is, well, it’s complicated. A standout from Blood of Zeus Season 1, Seraphim is the half-brother of the series’ protagonist, Heron (Derek Phillips). A near-complete villain in the first season of the series, now almost four years later, Seraphim has risen to a co-lead of sorts in Blood of Zeus Season 2. That said, what we see in Season 2 isn’t a redemption arc so much as a realization of the character’s larger desires. Where the last season grounded Seraphim in his anger, this season grounds him in love.
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At the end of Season 1, Heron killed Seraphim. His half-brother who has been working with Hera to overthrow Zeus, Heron had to make the choice to kill his brother to save the world. Seraphim just wanted revenge on the gods who ruined his life from the moment he was born and abandoned. But when Hades approaches Seraphim on the River Styx, he has a choice. Work for another god and kneel before him. His immediate answer? No.
Over the course of the first couple of episodes, Seraphim in Blood of Zeus Season 2 is unyielding. His sins are quantified as he stands in front of the Underworld judges. The scales of justice tilt toward evil as the people he’s killed are stacked up. But there is some form of kindness in him, one moment of love in his life. Her name is Gorgo.
A priestess of Artemis, Gorgo tethered Seraphim to the world. She showed him love, and he learned to love in return. But upon her death, every bad deed he did in anger at her untimely end to the Tree Bender didn’t wind up on just his scale. It pushed her farther into the depths of the Underworld, too, landing her in Tartarus.
In Greek mythology and in Blood of Zeus, a life is not captured by its biggest moments of goodness or evil. Instead, every action is tallied, and every action done in your name is, too. It’s a concept that pushes Blood of Zeus Season 2 to new heights as each main character deals with the weight of their choices. And for Seraphim, it gives him something slightly bigger than himself to fight for.
Agreeing to work with Hades, Seraphim makes choices with the intent of saving Gorgo from Tartarus. But is this redemption? The answer is not really. When Seraphim stands on trial, he is offered the choice to repent for his past transgressions. He refuses and accepts Tartarus and its torture. The past is something he can affect, so forward is the only way he can move.
In an interview with us for Blood of Zeus Season 2, Elias Toufexis explained what this meant for him as the actor bringing him to life. “At the beginning of the second season, [Seraphim] is just like, ‘Just get off my back. You’ve got nothing for me.’ He is so adamant about it that he’ll endure literal torture [in Tartarus]. He’d rather endure the torture than kneel [to a god] again. But when the opportunity is presented to change his past, he knows that he can’t change it. But maybe he can fix what he’s done with these women, particularly to Gorgo.
He continued, “[Seraphim] does kind of what he did with Hera, which is ‘I’ll use these gods if they’re using me.’ But in this season, his motivation is much more than just revenge. It’s more of a legitimate moral reason reasoning for doing what he’s doing. And yeah, [Seraphim] becomes a different man, but he’s still going after what he wants at the expense of whomever [is in his way], even his brother.”
Seraphim in Blood of Zeus Season 2 isn’t apologetic for his actions because he regrets them. He won’t repent. But this doesn’t mean that the past doesn’t shackle him. It lives in him in every choice he makes. Only in Season 2 does he choose to remember Gorgo and do what he can to lessen her pain. His motives to work with Hades are selfish, but when his goal is to save the woman he loves and to wash her of his sins, that’s the most empathetic we’ve seen him—even if he will still kill Heron if the mission calls for it.
By not sanding down Seraphim’s rough spots, he keeps his faults. His villainy turns to antagonism, and his pain centers him as a co-lead with Heron. Seraphim’s redemption isn’t clear-cut, and it also stands above others we see in media. It isn’t a “one action absolves all sins” approach, and, for what it’s worth, it’s not intentional. Seraphim doesn’t want to save himself, but he does want to save the one he loves most. What’s more noble than that?
On redemption, Toufexis explained the importance of balancing redeeming qualities with the core of who Seraphim is: “I would want Seraphim to go through a kind of redemption arc… but I didn’t want to lose him.” He continued, “[Seraphim] does say one of my favorite things about this season… I just want these people I’ve harmed to be okay in the afterlife. I want them to forget about me and forget about what I did to them. And that’s what I’m going after [as an actor]. It’s a redemption [arc], but not really. It’s a redemption of his soul but he’s not trying to buy his freedom and buy his afterlife. He is trying to fix his wrongs.”
As Seraphim aims to right his wrongs, he also accepts that you can’t undo your actions. You can just try to make good. In that way, he is a character that isn’t seeking redemption. Instead, he is atoning for them, not for himself but for others. With this depth of writing, Blood of Zeus Season 3 can’t come soon enough, and Seraphim’s growth is bound to be grounded in emotion as much as action.
Blood of Zeus Season 2 is streaming now, exclusively on Netflix.
