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What We Do in the Shadows

 

FX’s hit vampire mockumentary bites the dust with a sixth and final season packed with loads of unhinged hilarity and not too much gooey sentimentality

Break out the creepy paper, because everyone’s favourite immortally insufferable roommates ignore one last spin of the chore wheel as the Emmy-winning mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows nears its end.

Self-aggrandizing vampires Nandor the Relentless (Kayvan Novak), Laszlo Cravensworth (Matt Berry), Nadja of Antipaxos (Natasia Demetriou), “energy vampire” Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch) and their human familiar-turned-vampire-turned-human friend Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) are back for a sixth and, alas, final season. It debuts with three  back-to-back episodes on Monday.

What We Do in the Shadows on FX Canada. Pictured: Natasia Demetriou as Nadja, who enters Working Girl mode this season.
FX

For five years now, these ghouls have shared a decrepit home just across the bay from New York City. Together they have braved countless perils and rivals, whether they be supernatural — like the coven of witches who run a Brooklyn shop — or a more human evil, such as the bone-chillingly bureaucratic city council.

This season finds all of the housemates grappling with their immortality, as the vamps reflect on half a century spent not accomplishing much — an existential crisis that’s spurred after their former roommate reappears following a 50-year-long nap. Meanwhile, human Guillermo considers who he is if he isn’t a vampire or a familiar devoted to serving vampires.

What We Do in the Shadows on FX Canada. Pictured: Harvey Guillén as Guillermo, who has abandoned his calling as a vampire familiar.
FX

So, just what is waiting out there for the members of Staten Island’s eeriest household as they look to reinvent themselves? In the upcoming episodes, they join the workforce, attend a human dinner party, throw a shindig of their own for the Baron (fan-fave guest star Doug Jones), conjure a demon and more.

What We Do in the Shadows on FX Canada. Pictured: Mark Proksch as Colin Robinson, an “energy vampire” in search of a friend.
FX

The Shadows gang hit San Diego Comic-Con in July, and exec producer Paul Simms revealed that the season includes some cameos from “the people that we just loved and thought were super-funny.” One of those is Michael Patrick O’Brien, who joins the cast as Jerry, the aforementioned sleepy roommate. While Nador et al. remember loving Jerry, they somehow forgot to wake him in 1976 when he laid down for what was meant to be a quick rest. Elsewhere, following the tumultuous events of last season, Guillermo has spent some time living away from the vampires’ accursed abode; last year, after over a decade of dutifully serving Nandor under the assumption that he would turn him one day, Guillermo reached a breaking point and upset the natural order by bribing another vampire to transform him into an immortal. Things did not go to plan in any respect, and in the finale, Guillermo had a change of heart after realizing he did not have what it takes to kill innocent victims, and chose to return to human form. Now, without his stalwart familiar around, Nandor may have to finally admit that he actually needs Guillermo by his side to help him conquer new territories, get involved in the neighbourhood or even just stay alive day to day. “[The vampires] follow him out into the real world so he can never quite get away from them,” Simms recently teased to Entertainment Weekly. “There’s some very fun stuff about Guillermo working in a normal office the way normal people do, but Nadja and Nandor also show up to help him out.”

What We Do in the Shadows on FX Canada. Pictured: Matt Berry as Laszlo, who rediscovers his ambition, and a nifty little trick for controlling his housemates.
FX

On that front, there could well be trouble in paradise for Nadja and her eternal paramour Laszlo. As Laszlo jumps back into a long-abandoned project and stumbles across a neat little loophole in the whole “vampires can’t hypnotize other vampires” rule, Nadja’s new passion for humans and their mundane customs leads her in a different direction from her husband.

“Nadja’s always had a wish of being out among the humans more and getting to know their human ways,” Simms continued in his chat with EW. “And in ‘helping’ Guillermo out at his new job in a regular workplace, she sort of is living her Working Girl fantasies of working in an office and dressing how she imagines a human in an office does, and making the kind of small talk she imagines that humans do.”

While Nadja explores office culture for the very first time, another roommate who has long thrived off the soul-crushing dynamics of corporate environments is hunting for something a bit different. Colin Robinson has, since the start, stood out as the show’s most original creation — a vampire who, rather than draining your blood, drains your will to live via mundane watercooler chit-chat. This year, however, Colin realizes he has lived lifetimes without ever making a true friend. Though he is close with Laszlo, who recently raised him like a father as he underwent an unexpected rebirth, Colin is looking to befriend at least one person outside the house — working against his nature to avoid boring that friend into a coma.

Finally, similar to the final season of fellow mockumentary The Office, we’ll get to know the ever-imperiled documentary film crew that’s been following the gang these past five years in a whole new way, via a late-season plot development that’s been described by producer Kyle Newacheck as “very meta.”

All told, as Simms summed up at the aforementioned Comic-Con panel, you can expect these undead buffoons to meet a fitting, satisfying end — but one that doesn’t exactly have a bow on it. “We wanted to make a really funny season that was not too sentimental,” he explained, “or trying to tie up too many loose threads.”

The season premiere of What We Do in the Shadows airs Monday,October 21, on FX Canada

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