u/Altruistic_Yak_1514

There are a LOT of unanswered questions about the Inhumans series, mostly due to it’s cancellation. I’ve gone through the show and came up with a few theories as to where these characters went, some world building implications, and in this theory, a few closer connections to the greater Inhumans Saga as seen in Agents of SHIELD.

Maximus is probably the most interesting character from the show. He secures a very early Loki-esq position as this trickster sort of character, trying to overthrow the royal family and rise to power in Attilan, under the pretense of an Inhuman Revolution that’s really just a front for his power grab.

In the opening of Inhumans, we see an Inhuman, Triton, being hunted down by… someone. They never elaborate who is hunting down Inhumans, just that people are. However, looking at these people hunting down Triton, they seem to have an absurd amount of military grade firepower for just some people who hate Inhumans. I think it makes the most sense for them to probably be members of The Watchdogs, given how they strategize and group up against Inhumans.

We learn later in the show that Maximus sent these people to kill Triton, as part of his plan to radicalize the people Attalin and take over as king.

While I think one kill, a life that everyone knew, would certainly be affective, I think there has to be much more to it than that. Overtime, humans have become more efficient at killing Inhumans, even before The Watchdogs were brought in by that politician in Agents of SHIELD Season 3.

Maximus is more than okay with killing Inhumans if it meant he could control the remainder, so I think it makes sense that, after The Terrigen Crisis, Maximus would stoke the flames of conflict by having a group that specifically could hunt down Inhumans by knowing where they were and what they could do, all while being backed by an unlimited resource.

This is something Maximus has done before, with the Inhuman research facility experimenting on powerful Inhumans to figure out if any of them could kill Black Bolt. He donated millions of dollars anonymously for the sake of his manipulation plan, and The Watchdogs were a much more violent and threatening aspect of that that would stand Inhumans to want to go to war with humanity, which was Maximus’s endgame of claiming the Earth for the Inhumans.

Thematically, this also ties many of the non-HYDRA threads of The Inhuman Saga together, bringing it all back to Maximus as a main villain pulling strings behind everyone’s back.

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In Helstrom we are introduced to The Blood, an organization of demonologist and monster hunters who have been secretly active for centuries, containing demons and hiding the supernatural forces away from the public eye. They operate with the knowledge of the Vatican, and work in buildings hidden in plain sight, such as false front hotels and hospitals. That’s pretty much everything we know about them, this show was cancelled like the second season one aired on Hulu. However, I think with a bit of educating guessing, we can do some theory crafting and tie this organization into the larger MCU.

The Blood has been operating for centuries, so it would make sense that we would hear of them SOMEWHERE else. However, it could be that they exist in the way HYDRA does, where HYDRA was a cult dedicated to The Hive for centuries before becoming the official science and research Nazi organization and shifting to follow The Red Skull’s vision of what HYDRA should be. We’ve seen this occur in multiple organizations in the MCU, the organization will start under a different name and missions before being redefined by new minds joining the faction, this happened with the SSR becoming SHIELD. I’m going to purpose that this also happened with The Blood.

Let’s take a look at Werewolf By Night. For this theory, we need to kinda build a separate theory case for the presentation. I am of the belief that Werewolf By Night takes place in 1939. My evidence is because of the main liscence song used in the film is “Somewhere Over The Rainbow,” specifically a Judy Garland recording that released as part of a compilation record in 1939. This song is not only played over a gramaphone in the Bloodstone Estate, but also by Ted and Jack at their camp. If it was only at the Estate you could chalk that up to eccentrism, but it being played this way by both parties to me settled the film in 1939. This also matches the era of universal monster films the film tributes, and the choice of song mixed with the choice of aesthetics are much more a directing choice that lead me to believe this was an intentional setting. However, whether this is in 1939 or 1989 doesn’t matter ultimately as long as it a few decades before Helstrom occurs in 2020 and we see The Blood for the first time as an audience.

So, in Werewolf By Night, we are introduced to the lore of monster hunters. While Kamar-Taj deals with mystical and interdimensional reality-defying threats, Hunters, an entire secret culture of adventures and fighters, have been hunting and fighting against the much more physical, much more horrific threats that lurk within the world, operating under the radar of the Magicians. It’s highlighted that in Hunter culture, the violence of their actions is held in high regard as a reward in of itself. Ulysses Bloodstone, and the Bloodstone family, seem to be the leaders, or at least a wealthy faction and good friend to have, of this monster hunter culture. That is, until we see Elsa Bloodstone become the new leader of the Bloodstone Estate. The film ends with this regime change as Elsa Bloodstone becomes the premier monster hunter, having helped Man-Thing and Werewolf By Night himself escape the night.

Now Elsa is established to somewhat hate the culture of monster hunting, but not because of the monster fighting part. She’s very adapt and more than willing to get into a fight, but she isn’t a fan of the cruelty of her family. She sees the nuance of not all monsters being pure evil; often times, the monsters are victims themselves.

This rings extremely true in Helstrom. The show’s mythology establishes that demons work essentially as independent souls, possessing host bodies and drowning them of energy, turning that energy into power for themselves upon the death of their host. The pathos of this is that the people being possessed are victims being tormented by demons, much like how Jack Russel is tortured by his lycanthropy. This approach is the same ethical missions statement The Blood operates under, using medicine to humanly contain demons within host bodies that are already failing, imprisoning the demons in their hosts.

When thinking about Elsa Bloodstone’s perspective, it makes sense that she would take this same approach to demons; recognizing the victims in the situation and that if she were to simply kill the body or cast out the demon, the demon would just regroup and make more victims, Elsa would try to find a way to contain the unkillable demon in a singular victim.

I theorize that after taking over The Bloodstone Estate, Elsa Bloodstone became the De Facto leader of Hunter culture, and redefines what the fight against monsters means and the ethics of monster hunting. She organizing the Hunters into an organization, to keep monsters secret and to protect the people of the world from the threats they can’t explain.

This also helps to make sense of The Blood’s name. Without this context, it’s kinda just a random edgy name. But if a Bloodstone starts the Blood? That’s just branding, folks.