General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

Devil May Cry (2025 TV series)

Devil May Cry is an American adult animated television series created by Adi Shankar for Netflix, based on Capcom's Devil May Cry video game franchise. Produced with Capcom and animated by the South Korean studio Studio Mir, it premiered on April 3, 2025 with eight episodes and follows the demon hunter Dante as sinister forces try to open a portal between the human and demon realms.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Premiere	April 3, 2025, all eight episodes of season 1 on Netflix²
Creator / showrunner	Adi Shankar, also known for Netflix's Castlevania; screenwriter Alex Larsen³
Animation	Studio Mir, the studio behind X-Men '97 and The Legend of Korra⁴
Main voice cast	Johnny Yong Bosch (Dante), Scout Taylor-Compton (Mary Ann "Lady" Arkham), Hoon Lee (the White Rabbit), Robbie Daymond (Vergil, from season 2)⁵^•⁶
Seasons	Season 1 (April 3, 2025, 8 episodes); season 2 (May 12, 2026, 8 episodes); a third and final season announced⁷^•⁸
Reception	Season 1 scored 96% on Rotten Tomatoes; the series holds a 98% average Tomatometer across 45 reviews³
Rating	TV-MA; episodes run about 30 minutes³^•⁸

Spoilers

Premise

The series is set in a world where sinister forces are working to open the portal between the human and demon realms. At the center is Dante, an orphaned demon-hunter-for-hire who does not know that the fate of both worlds hangs around his neck, in the form of a family heirloom.¹ Season 1 follows Dante as he attempts to foil a demonic invasion of Earth orchestrated by the White Rabbit (Hoon Lee), a demon-obsessed terrorist seeking revenge on the human race, while being hunted by the human soldier Mary Ann Arkham (Scout Taylor-Compton), who works for the government organization DARKCOM, short for Dark Realm Command.⁵

The first season's eight episodes open with a violent heist at a Vatican City museum that pulls Dante into the plot, and end with Dante and Mary facing impossible choices and an enemy more powerful than the world has ever seen, after which the DARKCOM vice president Baines puts a bold plan into motion.⁹ The season finale ends with the United States government invading Hell, set to the song "American Idiot."¹⁰

Season 2, which premiered on May 12, 2026, ignites a war between worlds as Dante battles his estranged twin brother Vergil (Robbie Daymond). As the son of Sparda, a demon who saved humanity, and a human woman, Dante must confront his own devils and the sense of family he lost as a child; Vergil, raised for most of his life by a demon lord, must decide whether Dante lays old demons to rest or falls victim to them.⁶

Development

Adi Shankar, the producer behind Netflix's Castlevania animated series, first announced that he was developing a Devil May Cry adaptation in November 2018, confirming the project to IGN.¹¹ According to Shankar, Capcom suggested the property in a meeting about which of its IPs he could adapt; he acquired the rights, developed all eight episodes of season one on his own, and then approached Netflix with a finished package of scripts and a curated licensed song list rather than a pitch.¹²^•¹³

Shankar has described his approach as a reinterpretation rather than a direct retelling, comparing it to Marvel's Ultimate Universe or X-Men: The Animated Series, works that preserve the emotional core while restructuring the mythology for a new medium.¹² He has also said that Capcom and Netflix gave him unusual freedom, telling him to "go and execute your vision."¹⁴ The series positions itself as a prequel to the video games, and Shankar has noted that the franchise's own lore, including the 2007 anime and the games' hidden text, establishes that not all demons are bad, a theme the show develops.¹⁵

Executive producers are Adi Shankar, Hideaki Itsuno, and Lee Seung Wook, with Alex Larsen as screenwriter.³ The English cast also includes Kevin Conroy as VP William Baines and Chris Coppola as Enzo Ferino, and the first season features posthumous cameos from Kevin Conroy and Tony Todd.⁸^•¹⁶ A Japanese voice cast of Toshiyuki Morikawa (Dante), Fumiko Orikasa (Lady), and Hiroaki Hirata (Vergil) was announced for the AnimeJapan 2025 slate.¹⁷

Release and reception

Netflix released a teaser in September 2024 during its Geeked Week event and the official trailer on March 11, 2025, ahead of the April 3, 2025 premiere.¹⁸^•¹⁹ The first season debuted at number 4 on Netflix's global top 10, hitting 5.3 million views in its first three days, and Netflix renewed the series for a second season one week after the premiere.²⁰^•¹⁶ According to Netflix figures reported in June 2026, season 1 drew 21.7 million views in 2025, and season 2 brought in 6.4 million views in its first two weeks.⁷

Critical reception was favorable. Rotten Tomatoes records season 1 at 96% and season 2 at 100%, for a series average Tomatometer of 98% across 45 reviews, with a 69% audience score.³ On Metacritic, the first season holds a Metascore of 75, with 12 of 14 critic reviews positive and none negative; Collider gave it 90 and called it one of the best new animated shows of 2025, while IGN's 80 review praised a "fun video-game adaptation" that doubles as an homage to and indictment of 2000s Americana.²¹ GamesRadar's review was more reserved, calling the adaptation "dated and clunky" while crediting it with capturing the anarchic spirit of the games.²² In June 2026, Netflix and Shankar announced a third season, which will be the series' final one; it does not yet have a release date.⁷

Relationship to the games

The show is an original story set before the events of the games rather than an episode-by-episode retelling, and it draws on material across the franchise. Shankar has said the series embraces Devil May Cry 2, the franchise's most divisive entry, and season 2 features the villain Arius from that game, voiced by Graham McTavish.²³^•⁸ The first season also uses real locations such as Vatican City and Washington, D.C., and Shankar and Alex Larsen wrote it to appeal both to fans of the games and to viewers of political action shows.²⁴

Commercial impact on the franchise

Capcom tied the series to its "Single Content Multiple Usage" strategy of leveraging game properties beyond videogames. On the day of the anime's release, Capcom announced that cumulative worldwide sales of Devil May Cry 5 had surpassed 10 million units, crediting the animated series, which ranked fourth globally in its first week in the "Shows | English" category and stayed in Japan's top 10 for seven consecutive days, as part of the effort that expanded the game's catalog sales.²⁵ In its Q3 FY2025 results, Capcom said Devil May Cry catalog sales exceeded initial expectations in the first half of the fiscal year, driven by coordinated pricing measures alongside the anime's release, and that it planned further promotions around season 2's May 2026 release.²⁶ Capcom's Integrated Report 2025 likewise notes that the anime began streaming as a Netflix original series in April 2025 as part of its brand-awareness efforts.²⁷

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026