It’s honestly surprising to me that no one really talks about the incestuous subtext in the fight with Nevan, the succubus, in DMC3. But since no one does, I’ll take the liberty of sharing my own interpretation—because that scene genuinely made me do a double take.
Nevan is a succubus, a being whose entire nature revolves around seduction and feeding off desire. Her usual method is simple: she seduces her victim sexually and drains their essence through that attraction. We even see this mechanically in the fight—when she kisses Dante, his health drops significantly. That’s her nature.
And yet, with Dante, she doesn’t rely on that method.
Instead, she tells him she’s going to “excite” him—and then the fight begins.
That alone is revealing. A creature whose survival depends on provoking desire chooses not to engage Dante through conventional seduction—no physical teasing, no erotic performance, nothing that would normally define attraction. Instead, she engages him through combat. And more than that, the entire fight is framed in a way that strongly resembles a sexual metaphor.
Especially the ending: Dante shoots her while staring directly into her eyes, she collapses against him, moaning, and then “gives birth” to a guitar. The imagery is… very difficult to read as neutral. It feels like a climax—like both of them reach that peak at the same time, and from that moment, something is created.
It suggests that Dante does not respond to desire in a conventional way. If even a succubus—someone whose literal existence depends on seducing and consuming desire—adapts her method when facing him, then that tells us something fundamental about how Dante works.
Which brings me to something else: Lady’s line about Dante and Vergil taking a “sick pleasure” in fighting each other.
If Dante’s primary source of stimulation, intensity, and engagement is combat… and the person who gives him the most intense, meaningful fights is Vergil… then that line starts to carry a very different weight.
Because at that point, it’s not just about rivalry.
It’s about where Dante finds his highest form of emotional and experiential intensity.
In other words, what if Dante relates to combat the way others relate to intimacy?
And if that’s the case, then it becomes very… interesting, to put it lightly, that after Vergil’s death, Dante throws himself into demon hunting obsessively. He drags out fights, even when it harms him financially, even when it pushes him deeper into debt. It’s as if he’s chasing something—an intensity, a satisfaction—that he can’t quite reach anymore.
Because the only person who could truly match him in that way… was Vergil.
In a strange way, it almost resembles those tragic romantic tropes where someone loses the one person who fulfilled them completely, and then tries to fill that void with substitutes—but nothing ever really compares.
