As much as we wish it would live forever, What We Do in the Shadows is indeed over, going out on an episode succinctly titled “The Finale” that wrapped up one major storyline and left others open-ended—but mostly just let us know that when it comes to vampires, nothing really ever changes.
After some goofballery about Cravensworth’s Monster being horny and needing a Bride of Cravensworth’s Monster, and Nandor excitedly pushing his “crimefighting duo” idea on Guillermo, who’s quite reluctant (something we understand even more once we see Guillermo’s skimpy Robin-esque costume), “The Finale” reveals what it’s really all about. You know that documentary crew that’s been following the roommates around since 2019? Well, they’ve decided they have enough footage. After today, they’re done filming.
The roommates and the Guide shrug it off, but Guillermo freaks out when he realizes the filmmakers are packing up for good. Nadja, who really did pick up some insight into humans while “working” at her Wall Street job, can tell he’s genuinely upset that the documentary (we actually get a glimpse of the crew when the camera swings around as she’s gesturing at them) is ending.
Colin Robinson tries to cheer Guillermo up with sentimental quotes (“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened”), but this is Nandor’s moment to try to be sensitive. This is what he goes with: “Why don’t you stop being a little bitch and come downstairs, and we can all be together during your hour of need?” Coming from him, it almost feels heartfelt.
It’s time for one last What We Do in the Shadows house meeting, a tradition going back to the first season (and even the feature film that inspired the show), in which Nandor asks everyone to be tidier and everyone ignores him. Then, he announces that Guillermo is sad because the documentary is ending.
Everyone chimes in. Laszlo thinks Guillermo will miss the attention (and spouts a couple of Shakespeare quotes he claims to have come up with on the spot); the Guide thinks Guillermo will miss pilfering all the crew’s free snacks. Colin Robinson suspects Guillermo will be sorry to end his secret affair with “Nate, the boom operator.”
But only Nadja gets close: “Guillermo is afraid that he has wasted 16 years of his life serving us, and it has prevented him from growing or changing in any way. The ending of this documentary is giving him a preview of the ending of his own frail human life.” Then she drops a bombshell: this is not the first time the group’s been filmed for a documentary!
With that, we’re treated to a screening of the black-and-white Vampires, an unreleased 1958 film by the Maysles Brothers (the legendary real-life team behind Gimme Shelter and Grey Gardens). It reveals, yes, a house meeting (attended by Jerry, RIP) led by Nandor’s same rant about cleanliness, and culminates with the discovery that Nandor has blown their cover in a newspaper article. As they’re frantically making their escape, Laszlo dons his disguise: toothpick in mouth, he’s Jackie Daytona from Tucson, Arizon-ee-ahhh. That’s a What We Do in the Shadows moment of pure fan service, and we are here for it. (He also grabs his witch-skin hat on the way out.)
“Wow,” is Guillermo’s reaction upon watching Vampires. “A lot of the stuff that happened while I was here happened… before.” The movie never came out, Colin explains, because the Maysles realized “it’s just a bunch of boring people doing the same old shit day after day. Nothing changes, no one ever grows, it’s pointless.”
Guillermo says this new movie is a chance to prove them wrong, but Nadja uses her scary loud voice to tell him to get over it—but also, if he needs their documentary to have a special ending, he’ll have to figure out how to pull it off in the next hour. “We need an ending. It has to be good, and it has to mean something,” he insists. (The Monster gruntingly agrees: “Give viewers emotional closure!”)
They have to shoot down the Guide’s idea—turn Guillermo into a vampire—because “we did that already,” Nandor groans. Guillermo thinks maybe they should share a lesson they’ve learned, something that has helped them grow and change. Naturally, nobody can come up with a single serious thing, though Nadja does have an idea: hypnotize all the viewers and give them the best ending they can imagine.
Cut to: a note-perfect What We Do in the Shadows riff on the ending of The Usual Suspects, with Colin Robinson as Keyser Söze, and the Guide and Sean as the cops who don’t put the puzzle pieces together (giving the editors a chance to flash back on highlights from the show over the years) in time to catch him before he zooms away in Laszlo’s jalopy.
That would be a perfect ending, but the show doesn’t finish there; we get Colin Robinson riffing on found families (not the roommates… the family he found before them that died in a steamboat accident), and Nandor once again hyping his plans to be a superhero, complete with “underground crime-fighting lair” accessible by a lever hidden in his coffin. Nobody takes him seriously, and he angrily suggests Thank You for Shitting All Over My Dream as a title for the documentary.
As the other vampires tease Guillermo—they’re obsessed with getting him to sing and dance—Nandor encourages him to express himself. Guillermo turns and shares his sincere feelings to the camera, and you can clearly see and hear the vampires reacting in the background as the Monster starts humping the taxidermied bear in their living room.
With that, they break into a rendition of “We’ll Meet Again” as the camera follows Guillermo into the hall, where he sniffs back tears and takes a sad, lonely seat.
But again, that’s not the last scene! There’s an elephant in the room, and its name is “Nandermo.” The former master and familiar duo share a quiet moment as Nandor’s getting ready to rest. But just when Guillermo thinks Nandor is going to maybe declare he has feelings for him—What We Do in the Shadows, you tease!—he doesn’t, and the scene ends with Guillermo telling Nandor he’ll be leaving the house along with the documentary crew.
“It’s time for me to move on,” he admits, and looks genuinely anguished to be closing the coffin lid and blowing out all the candles one last time.
But wait! That’s still not the end! We return one more time to Nandor’s room as the credits are rolling, as the crew starts moving their equipment out. Guillermo bursts in, apologizing: he just needs one more minute. A camera is still there to capture Guillermo telling Nandor that while he does need to move on with his life, he was being overly dramatic with that speech to help give the documentary an ending. They can still totally hang out and be friends, he says.
With that, Nandor extends a first-time opportunity: to sit in the coffin with him. We see why when he reveals a control panel hidden in its lid and, yes, a lever that… reveals a tunnel dropping down, presumably to that underground lair he’s been hyping up! It was real all along!
As they zoom out of frame to adventures unknown, “Say Goodbye to Hollywood” by Ronnie Spector plays over the final credits, and we get one more scene of the vampires watching a rough cut of “the documentary,” which is a clip from What We Do in the Shadows‘ pilot episode. Of course, it’s yet another version of that same house meeting, with Nandor nagging everyone to clean up after themselves. What, stop leaving blood-drained corpses lying around? They never have… and they never will.
Watch What We Do in the Shadows‘ six seasons on FX and Hulu.
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