All Rise...

Judge David Johnson's demons are named Ned and Oscar.

The Charge

Da Vinci's da bomb.

The Case

Season 3 of David Goyer's Da Vinci's Demons opens up on the heels of a cliffhanger from last season: the Ottomans are at the gate, poised to march all over Italy and make the country their new stomping grounds.

At the battle front is Leonardo Da Vinci (Tom Riley), who's manning the ramparts with his deadly new proto-rocket launcher. A brief feeling of victory spreads over everyone when the first few Ottoman ships are blown to bits—but the elation is short-lived. Turns out the invaders have gotten a hole of Leo's plans have cooked up their own WMDs.

When the smoke clears, the Ottomans have blasted the city and are on their way through the rest of Italy, hacking, whacking and sacking. Leo and his entourage are forced to regroup, but no before he bears witness to the ever-increasing slaughter, including the death of his own loved ones.

Season 3 of this bonkers alt-history series from Starz is essentially a prolonged "marshal-the-forces" road show, as Leo and his cronies attempt to draft armies, raise papal funding and build more crazy contraptions to repel the Ottomans.

Meanwhile, the religious intrigue that characterizes the series is front and center. The mysterious Labyrinth sect corrupts Vatican heavyweight Girolamo Riario (Blake Ritson) and tenuous Leo ally, a murderer wipes out major players in Rome, and the Pope himself seeks to accumulate more power in the face of the regional and religious instability.

At its heart, Da Vinci's Demons is a wacky fantasy adventure. The tone is a few degrees south of dead serious (through Riley plays Leo a bit too straight I think) and the characters and plotting are borderline nuts. You get divine revelations, pseudo-demonic possessions, mystical weaponry and Vlad the Impaler himself, who appears to every much the undead specimen we've come to expect.

And though I came into al of his not having seen the previous seasons, I was able to catch on pretty easily and couldn't stop watching. Despite its narrative stumbles (the Vlad stuff really was quite dumb) and an anti-climactic finale (the grand battle with the Ottomans is a far cry from what the build-up promised; essentially an extended LARPing session), I was into the show and kept coming back from more.

Anchor Bay offers up a lightweight Da Vinci's Demons: The Complete Third Season (Blu-ray), sporting a gorgeous 1080p/1.78:1 transfer and a TrueHD 7.1 audio mix for a fantastic A/V presentation, but sadly zero bonus content.

Da Vinci's Demons is uneven and goofy, but still hugely watchable.

The Verdict

Not Guilty.

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