Present day: While playing the piano for the first time in a century, Grayson informs Renfield that he knows Lady Jayne is a hunter and that it’s obvious she has some sort of affiliation with the Order, though he doesn’t know how much. Renfield then has a piece of news of his own to share, producing confirmation of the transferal of Lord Laurent’s shares in British Imperial. Alexander Grayson is now the leading shareholder in the company. Meanwhile, Harker thinks about stopping by Mina’s, only to decide against it once he sees Lucy making her way to her friend’s door. She convinces Mina to go out that evening as a way to get over her own loneliness and Mina’s broken heart from the breakup with Jonathan.
Lady Jayne visits the hospital that Mina’s father works and asks him about treating someone she knows, though she won’t divulge details of who they are due to their desire for anonymity. Murray meets with Van Helsing and mentions how Lady Jayne is a client, causing the professor to go to Grayson with this information; Van Helsing thinks that Jayne is looking for a new drug for her seers, but Grayson thinks that the professor should be the one to mix it up, keeping the potency high enough to where they have control over the matter. Elsewhere, Renfield and Harker take a meeting with one of the shareholders of British Imperial, who doesn’t respect Renfield’s authority and finds himself thrown for a loop when it’s revealed that Grayson is now his boss. Once out of the meeting, Renfield comes down on Harker for not giving the meeting his undivided attention and for defending him when the shareholder insulted him.
Browning takes a meeting with Laurent and warns him that there is no more protection for him now that he gave up his shares of the company to Grayson. A severe punishment is coming. Grayson, meanwhile, wakes up in bed with Lady Jayne and quietly wanders around her house, as he heard some hushed whispering in the distance. He finds a secret passageway behind a painting and makes his way to her dungeon, where he finds the Order’s symbol painted on the floor and a vampire locked away, beginning to be killed. He doesn’t end her life, though, opting instead to quieten her and leave the dungeon crying. He gets back in bed just as Jayne wakes up and the two begin kissing.
After receiving a list from Renfield of the men he is to strike up friendships with, Harker starts his journey working under Grayson by sending over an 1890 Latour to Lord Davenport’s table at a nearby restaurant. Elsewhere, Mina and Lucy are planning their night out at the office’s club, where they’re looking forward to finding delicious men, and Daniel Davenport tries to persuade Lord Laurent to not go to the meeting of the Order, 
Laurent spends his last moments with his children and goes to the Order’s compound, where Daniel is already at. He walks down the aisle in front of him and faces Mr. Browning, who uses the organization’s blade to stab Laurent in the heart as punishment. At the same time, Mina and Lucy are out again, this time drinking absinth; Mina drinks a little too much and finds herself on a couch that she didn’t remember being on when she started drinking. A man comes into the room offering her another drink and suggesting that he could paint her portrait or write her a poem. He then tries to kiss her, making Mina laugh, and becomes frustrated when she doesn’t respond the way he wanted. When he won’t let her leave, he’s thrown back across the room by Grayson, causing him to leave promptly. Grayson then takes Mina out on the balcony where she laments her status with Jonathan. Just as Grayson is about to kiss her once he tells her that the things and people we’re meant for can sometimes be a surprise, Lucy interrupts, taking Mina to their waiting carriage.
Grayson meets with Harker and learns that he’s made quite the progress in the list of men he was supposed to befriend – Lord Davenport, Lord Rothcroft, General Shaw, Mr. Browning. Talk turns to Mina and Grayson calls Harker a fool for treating her the way he has. Lucy and Mina wake up in bed at 2:00 and the latter panics because she missed Van Helsing’s class. She does get to speak with him, though, as he provides her with a hangover cure and gives her a second chance to impress him. He tells her that she is to meet him at 5:00 a.m. the following morning as she is to be his assistant for the term, a proposition that succeeds in delighting her. Dr. Murray tasks a little boy at the hospital with delivering an envelope to a location, which turns out to be the seers’ lair. The stimulant they were given is working and they manage to conjure up the location of Grayson, who is currently in bed with Lady Jayne. However, he instantly knows when they’re watching him and bites Jayne’s arm accordingly; as the same time, the two seers begin choking due to the poison that was on the envelope. Van Helsing enters the room and finds them paralyzed. He recounts the deaths of his wife and children, which were because of his disobedience to the order, and tells the seers that he can’t let them find Grayson, not while he has some value. As the drug he gave them can be found in the brain post-mortem, he breaks out a hammer and starts bashing in the brains of the seers.
Harker and Mina patch things up and she proposes to him in the middle of the street, which he confirms by putting a necklace on her. Grayson was watching the entire time and feels less horrified by helping somebody than he thought he would. Renfield does point out, though, that the action of bringing the two together wasn’t completely altruistic, as by keeping Mina with Harker, she’s still in Grayson’s orbit. While Lady Jayne laments what happened to the seers, as it means that more vampires will be coming to London, Daniel cries over the loss of Laurent before loading a gun and shooting himself in the head.
Additional thoughts and observations:
-Once again, informative, well-directed flashback that served a purpose in terms of filling out Dracula’s back story. Plus, it added in a little crazy with the cult-y vibe of the Order and the (rather cool) visual of Dracula hanging from the ceiling.
-Lady Jayne’s cleavage needs a SAG card, because it’s at the point of becoming another character.
-Don’t mess with Renfield, apparently. Also, don’t befriend Renfield, either. I get that he’s likely had to become extremely self-reliant and that he’s had a fairly reclusive life with Dracula anyway, but strange how he doesn’t want Harker to have his back.
-I loved Grayson wandering through Lady Jayne’s house and finding the vampire in her dungeon, both because it looked cool and because it added to his character. We got to a see some type of humanity by his anguish at the trapped vampire, which furthered his motivation to bring down the Order and confirmed his suspicions of her involvement with the organization. Additionally, it made me think that the vampire has some connection to Grayson and isn’t just a red shirt nobody.
-I was surprised at how the show burned through some of the plots that seemed set to dominate the season, particularly Laurent/Davenport, control of British Imperial, and the seers. But if it means that the show is going to become faster paced and that it has other craziness up its sleeve, I’m okay with the decision.
-I would watch a spinoff where Dracula had a call-in radio show centered on him giving relationship advice.
-Van Helsing is going to get Mina to help him with the serum meant for Dracula, right? And the necklace from Harker will be brought up again?
-Favorite scene: everything with the seers, especially the billowy curtain effect of their vision of Grayson and the way he looked at them when he knew he was being watched. Probably the closest to horror that this show has gotten thus far, but it was done in a refined way that was still psychologically scary.
-Favorite shot: Laurent’s blood spreading on the floor of the compound. The only things in the shot were the black and white checkered floor, the deep red blood, and Browning’s black shoes. Very gothic.
-Jonathan Rhys Meyers is actually very good on this show, but I could do without his Batman-y growl whenever he speaks alone with Renfield. The gratuitous shirtlessness in this episode, though, could be extended to the entire series. I mean, come on.
-If you guys want me to keep recapping Dracula, which I would be totally down to do, please be sure to read and share this recap. A decision will be made in the coming days regarding if Dracula coverage will remain.
-Next week on Dracula: Grayson sets out to win Lady Jayne’s heart, while Lucy tries to conceal a broken heart and Van Helsing achieves a breakthrough in his efforts to enable Grayson to conquer sunlight.
