WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS S6E11 THE FINALE 🤩

The time has come to bid farewell to our favorite TV vampires, Nandor, Nadja, Laszlo, and Colin Robinson, and their trusty familiar/sidekick/friend Guillermo, and I, for one, am sad. Based on the 2014 film of the same name written and directed by Jermaine Clement (FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS) and Taika Waititi (THOR: RAGNORAK, JOJO RABBIT), WWDITS, for short, kicked off way back in 2019, about a goofy group of vampires living “the life” in Staten Island, New York. 2019 feels like a million years ago and last year at the same time. Covid and the related stay-at-home period have messed with my perception of time. Throughout it all, there’s been one constant: WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS.

THE FINALE won me over by playing perfectly on how I feel about the show. Its ending feels a bit out of left field. Can’t this hilarious, unique show go on forever? And then fits exactly into a story that knows it’s time to move on. What’s changed? Nothing and everything. How can you end a nearly perfect show with an ending that satisfies everyone? WWDITS knows you can’t appease everyone, but it still drops some incredibly meta-moments for a series that was all along about a show within a show – the vampires and those around them being documented by a team of filmmakers making their own series about everything we’re watching as the viewers at home. 

THE FINALE kicks off just like any other episode might. Laszlo and Colin Robinson set us up on what their goals are by the episode’s end. Nandor and Guillermo continue their conversation from last week on what the future holds for them as they’re no longer master/familiar. And Nadja is here to extrapolate all of that and make fun of all the things that needed to be laughed at. And then… the world upon which the show is based is sent for a surprisingly hard turn. But our vampires have lived hundreds of years. They’re used to things changing and yet staying the same… for centuries. Guillermo, on the other hand, is at a precipice. When we met him, he’d already been a familiar to Nando for 10 years. Now we’re 6 years later, and while he no longer wants or needs that life, what is left for him? Has he changed for the better or has life just passed him by while the zany spectacle of old-world vampires has danced around him. It’s in this surprise moment, and the rest of the episode that all the best scenes and lines of dialogue happen. All I wanted for the end of this show was to see two certain characters together and I got exactly what I wanted, sort of. The writers and creators behind WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS aren’t laughing along with us, they’re laughing at us and our unrealistic expectations of how a show should “stick the landing.” And it’s here in that humor, that can poke fun at everything without ever kicking down, is the magic of this show. 

It would be easy for me to cut off the review right now and tell you that the entire series is streaming on Hulu, but after these last six seasons, I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about my favorite WWDITS things and some of the misses the show suffered. 

First things first. This was a fantastic final season. Episodes 9 & 10 this year are some of my favorites of the entire run. I enjoyed every season, but seasons 3 & 4 are my least favorite, especially after Guillermo’s big reveal that ended S2. There are still some incredibly funny episodes in those seasons (S3’S THE ESCAPE, S4’S PRIVATE SCHOOL), but suddenly Guillermo got less interesting when the show didn’t seem to know what to do with his character. The biggest reveal about him was mostly scrapped for the remainder of the series but thankfully resurrected in S6’s E9. One could say the writers of THE FINALE even knew this by joking that Guillermo never really matured as a person.

Then there are the absolute best-of episodes, including S1’s BARON’S NIGHT OUT, BRAIN SCRAMBLES, and THE TRIAL, everything in S2 that had to do with Haley Joel Osment’s guest turn as Topher plus GHOSTS, COLIN’S PROMOTION, and ON THE RUN, the S3 & 4 episodes mentioned above, and S5’s PRIDE PARADE, to just name a few. Looking back at this, S2 was probably the best overall. The irony isn’t lost on me that Rotten Tomatoes had my least favorite seasons at 100% on their Tomatometer. Throughout the series, every character had their moment to be “my favorite,” depending on what was happening to them in the story. Now that all is said and done, I think Nandor (Kayvan Novak) is my overall favorite. I also spent weeks at a time loving Guillermo (Harvey Guillén), Laszlo (Matt Berry, Nadja (Natasia Demetriou), and Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch). Then there’s the rotating supporting cast, including the likes of Doug Jones as the Baron, Kristen Schaal as The Guide, Nick Kroll as Simon, and countless other comedians and surprise guests. Dare I say one of the greatest comedic ensembles of all time? 

My hope now that WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS has ended is that this entire cast goes on to do more greatness should they want to. Kristen Schaal pops up in a lot of other shows, and Matt Berry has 3 big movies out in 2025, but I’d love to see all of them, everywhere. One day, maybe one day very soon, I’ll kick back and binge the entire series again. But for now…

You can stream every episode of WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS on Hulu FX.