How did villainous vampire Jacob Van Helsing die in the Van Helsing TV series? Syfy fantasy horror show Van Helsing is set three years after a catastrophic volcanic eruption blocked out the sun, allowing vampires to rise to power. The series follows Vanessa Van Helsing (Kelly Overton) – the great-great-great granddaughter of legendary vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing – as she awakens from a coma to find the world is a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Thanks to her unique blood having the ability to turn vampires back into humans, Vanessa learns she may be humanity’s last hope.

In the Van Helsing season 3 premiere Vanessa learns there are four vampires known as Elders, each of whom possess a totem. When these totems are brought together they will release the Dark One – the ruler of all vampires – who will bring about an event known as the “final darkness” that will spell the end of humanity. Together with her twin sister Scarlett (Missy Peregrym), Vanessa resolves to find the Elders and take their totems so she can release the Dark One herself and kill it once and for all.

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Vanessa and Scarlett’s hunt for the Elders formed much of the action in Van Helsing season 3. By the eighth episode (“Crooked Steps”) of the season, the sisters had killed two Elders and set about finding the third who they track down to a remote island off the West Coast. They soon discover the third Elder is none other than former vampire hunter Jacob Van Helsing (Michael Eklund) – the twin brother of Abraham and therefore their great-great-great granduncle. They also learn that Jacob’s totem – a vial of the Dark One’s blood that Scarlett wears around her neck – has been in their possession all along.

Michael Eklund and Kelly Overton in Van Helsing

Family connection or not, Vanessa and Scarlett didn’t back down from the task at hand despite Jacob Van Helsing’s pleas that they let him live. After Jacob tried to turn the sisters against each other by telling them only one of them would make it out of their mission alive, Vanessa gruesomely dispatched the Elder by tearing out his throat with her teeth and disemboweling him with her bare hands.

Despite Jacob Van Helsing’s brutal death in season 3 of the Syfy TV show, “Crooked Steps” wasn’t the character’s last appearance in the series. In the Van Helsing season 4 episode “The Prism”, a flashback to the Victorian era revealed that Jacob was turned into a vampire by his apprentice Hansen (Neal McDonough) who went on to establish Blak Tek – a shady organization that sought to use the more desirable aspects of vampire genetics to develop a life-lengthening drug for humans.

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