What We Do in the Shadows Season 5 finale changes series’ stakes forever

❘ Published: 2023-09-04T16:57:00

Kayvan Novak and Harvey Guillén in What We Do in the Shadows

Hulu

The Season 5 finale of What We Do in the Shadows has completely changed the main stakes of the series forever.

Hulu‘s hit show What We Do in the Shadows has taken the world by storm over the past five seasons as it follows a group of vampires and their human familiar living in Staten Island.

The show is a spin-off of Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi’s 2014 mockumentary about a house full of New Zealand vampires trying to live normal lives.

Throughout the series’ five seasons, a lot of monumental events have occurred, but the recent season finale has completely changed the stakes of the show forever. Warning: slight spoilers for WWDITS Season 5 finale.

What We Do in the Shadow shakes things up in season finale

Since the very beginning, Guillermo, the vampire’s human familiar (aka servant), has wanted to become a vampire. Even when it was revealed that his family has descended from the lineage of Van Helsing, a famous vampire hunter, Guillermo still wanted to start his life as an immortal being.

And his dream ends up coming true as, in the Season 5 premiere, he was turned into a vampire by his friend Derek. But, like most things in the show, things don’t go as Guillermo plans as he become a half vampire — he couldn’t transform fully, fly, or demonstrate any powers.

As the season progressed, Guillermo worked with Lazlo to figure out what was going on with him and, though they did many experiments, they couldn’t figure it out. It all came to a head in the season’s two-part finale when Nandor, his vampire master, found out he was turned by someone else.

As vampire law stated, only a master could turn their familiar into a vampire and, if the rule was broken, the master would kill the familiar and then themself. So, Nandor spends the better part of the finale trying to track Guillermo down to kill him for his betrayal.

However, after he finds Guillermo, Nandor decides to spare his life and allows him to drink human blood so he could become a fully fledged vampire. In the last part of the finale, Nandor finally confronts Guillermo with the series’ ultimate question: “Would you rather be a human or a vampire?”

And, after five seasons of chasing the vampire dream, Guillermo decides that he wants to be a human as he couldn’t reckon with the idea of killing someone to feed. So, Nandor ends up killing Derek so that Guillermo could go back to being a human as Derek was his vampire source.

Though Lazlo and Guillermo manage to resurrect Derek thanks to the help of their local necromancer, Derek will live the rest of his life with a stake in his heart, which will allow Guillermo to continue being human.

So now that Guillermo has lived life as a vampire and realized he didn’t want that life, What We Do in the Shadows is in an incredibly interesting place going into Season 6.

Will Guillermo continue to live with the Staten Island vampires? Will Nandor ever fully forgive him for his betrayal? Will other vampires attack the mansion because of this incident? Only Season 6 can answer all of these questions, which thankfully will be happening as FX has green lit the next season back in 2022.

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