Supernatural narratives sustain popularity partly due to the way they speak to threats, such as the idea that the appearance of the monster heralds the inevitability of large–scale human destruction or transformation. The theme of apocalypse has become increasingly prevalent in popular culture, widely rehearsed in Anglo–American television horror since the 9/11 attack on New York City–with its concomitant sense of vulnerability amongst Western nations and growing ethos of social and political extremity. In the third season of John Logan’s Penny Dreadful (Showtime/Sky), Christian Camargo portrays the all–powerful vampire, Dracula, disguised as a charming museum curator, who entrances the female lead, Vanessa Ives, with his terrifying vision of an evolutionary ‘end of days’ (S3:E6). Vanessa’s struggle to resist the compulsion of Dracula’s fatalistic embrace speaks to issues of pressing immediacy in our own time, including the ambiguities of human agency in the face of a transfigured world. This paper will interrogate the theme of compulsive apocalypse and the sublime in John Logan’s Penny Dreadful.