I was less engaged by season 2 of Carmilla than I was by season 1, and that issue continues here in the third and last part of the series, though there is a movie set five years later ... you can expect a review of that later this week. Like season 2, season 3 feels rather too busy, to me. There's a lot of activity that doesn't actually seem to result in any real change to the situation. And then there's the cast of characters. It's overly large for the format, to my mind, and several of the characters were profoundly altered by the end of season 2, so time has to be spent on re-establishing who they are and what they want. It's a lot of plates to juggle and at times the writing can't keep them all in the air.
Speaking of the format, the vlog structure is still in place, though there's a growing degree of hand-waving as to why the characters would choose to broadcast particular moments (or in some scenes, why there would even be a camera there to capture them), at least from an in-universe perspective. It's never as jarring as it gets in say Cloverfield, but it is an issue.
Then there's the story, which as I said sometimes has an awful lot of activity in it, without a whole lot of obvious progress being made, and a lot of "we thought all hope was lost but maybe there's an out after all!" revelations. It all feels a bit rickety to me, at times.
On the other hand, I've given this a Qualified Recommendation, and it's not solely on the basis of "well, if you've got this far you're probably going to want to keep going". Because however many wobbly bits I see in the specific events of the show - and I do see quite a few - the thematic arc is nailed pretty well. The juxtaposition of our leading ladies against their nemesis, and the way each side handles their relationships and how that shapes them and their roles, is pretty good.
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