Miranda Cates’ death in Hemlock Grove proved to be a disappointment. Director Eli Roth made a name for himself with his memorably gory directorial debut Cabin Fever, and he followed up with the first two Hostel movies and The Green Inferno. He’s switched up his style somewhat in recent years, however, by directing action thriller remake Death Wish with Bruce Willis and The House With A Clock In Its Walls with Jack Black and Cate Blanchett. The latter is a dark fantasy based on the novel of the same name, though it features Roth’s trademark flair for horror too.
Eli Roth is also an actor, having notably appeared as The Bear Jew in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds and 2012’s Aftershock. He’s also done some work in television, directing the pilots for South Of Hell and Netflix’s Hemlock Grove, based on the book by Brian McGreevy. Hemlock Grove is set in the titular town and deals with the assorted werewolves and monsters that inhabit it. The show was full-tilt horror and wasn’t of a little bloodshed, but it suffered from mostly mediocre reviews throughout its three-season run.
Hemlock Grove featured a great cast as least, including Famke Janssen and Bill Skarsgård (IT Chapter 2). Season 2 introduced the character of Miranda Cates (Madeline Brewer), who comes to Hemlock Grove after her car breaks down. Miranda became something of an audience surrogate on the show, entering into a romance with Skarsgård’s Roman - and occasionally Peter - while weathering some of the town’s craziness.
Fan response to the character was mixed, which may have affected her fate during Hemlock Grove season 3. In the season 2 finale, she and baby Nadia are kidnapped by Dr. Arnold Spivak, who also happens to be a giant winged lizard creature thing. Season 3 opens with them being held in his isolated cabin, where Miranda naturally attempts to escape. She’s last seen in the second episode “Souls On Ice,” where Spivak leads her to the basement and he pushes her in horror towards some unseen pool. It’s only in the ninth episode that Roman and Peter find Spivak’s cabin, and discover the pools are used to create more of the mantra ray-style monsters dubbed jörmungandr. They also discover Miranda’s decayed body and after mourning her briefly, a baby jörmungandr hatches from her stomach.
Its a fairly bleak fate, which is made all the colder by the fact it took about seven episodes to reveal what happened. Miranda was far from the most popular character on Hemlock Grove, but her death ended up being pretty anticlimactic after being such a big part of the second season.
Next: Why Hemlock Grove Season 4 Never Happened
