[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for What We Do in the Shadows Season 6, Episode 11, “The Finale.”]
When you can live forever, what does a mortal goodbye look like? What We Do in the Shadows aims to answer such a question as it bids viewers adieu after six seasons at FX.
The mockumentary about a ragtag bunch of vampire roommates living in Staten Island, New York, certainly wormed its way into the hearts of viewers, and, instead of closing the door on their faces, the series finale serves as a bittersweet reminder that even if we can’t be a fly on their cobweb-clad walls, they’ll always be up to the same shenanigans. Former familiar and human friend Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) serves to take on the perspective of fans in the genre-bending episode which sees the documentary crew conclude their production out of the blue.
Unaware of the documentary crew’s plans to wrap their production, Guillermo feels emotionally unprepared to end life as he’s known it for the past six years, but the vampires are quick to provide a wider perspective, revealing to Guillermo that this isn’t the first time they’ve been the centerpiece of a documentary.
Russ Martin / FX
It turns out that they were the subject of a 1950s Maysles Brothers project, which is seen in old black-and-white reels that reveal much of what’s happened on the current production has happened before, like needing to go on the run, Lazslo (Matt Berry) assuming his Jackie Daytona alias, and the cursed status of his favorite witches skin hat.
In their own ways, Lazslo, Nandor (Kayvan Novak), Nadja (Natasia Demetriou), Colin Robinson (Mark Proskch), and the Guide (Kristen Schaal) try to comfort Guillerm who wants to make sure that audiences understand how incredible the vampire lifestyle is. No one ever saw the original footage from the Maysles because it was deemed too boring as the vampires never change or grow. With the clock ticking for this new crew’s final moments of filming, Guillermo aims to change that by offering a dramatic conclusion, informing his former boss Nandor that he plans to leave for good by sunrise.
Upset over this revelation, the duo parts ways sadly with Guillermo calling Nandor, Master, which is an ode to his former familiar-master dynamic. But once the final candles are snuffed out, and the crew calls it a wrap Guillermo returns to open Nandor’s coffin, informing him that he isn’t really leaving, but that he just wanted the show to have a good ending. But sticking around doesn’t mean teaming up like Nandor wished as Guillermo sets a much-needed boundary between the duo.
Russ Martin / FX
Instead, the pair will be friends, and only that, choosing to spend time together of their own accord and not through obligation. Nandor gets the fun started right away, inviting Guillermo to take a set in his coffin before revealing he’s built an underground lair. Revealing a portal to the spot below, the pair descends in the coffin which doubles as a dumbwaiter. Where they’ll go next is only for Guillermo and Nandor to know, but is this the last time we’ll be seeing them? After all, Lazslo so pointedly performs Vera Lynn’s “We’ll Meet Again,“ for the camera crews and audiences at home.
“I look forward to being Nandor again in some guise,” Novak tells TV Insider. “I can slip into him so easily that it is kind of easier to be Nandor than it is to be me, I’d say,” he adds, beginning to slip into Nandor’s accent.
Guillén echoes Novak’s sentiments, saying, “I absolutely would revisit these characters and these cast members because it’s hard to find such great chemistry in an ensemble. We’re a very small ensemble. We’re not that big, but it’s hard to find, I call it playing hot potato. We just pass it around and no one ever drops it. And that’s hard to find,” Guillén continues.
Whether that return is in a spinoff or a movie would remain to be seen, but it’s something that onscreen energy vampire portrayer Proksch can picture. “I think there’s already been a blueprint that this can work as a movie since we were born from a movie. I would do it simply because I have fun working with these guys… a movie would be a fun, exciting thing to do with my friends,” he muses.
Russ Martin / FX
In the interim, bidding the team behind this show farewell wasn’t an easy task for the performers, but Guillén had the advantage of playing into those feelings onscreen while going through the emotions himself. “It just started hitting me all at once and I wanted to be as authentic to Guillermo as possible, and it just came over [me on] every take. I was trying so hard not to [get emotional], and the more I was keeping it in, the more it made me teary-eyed,” he admits.
Filming for the finale was sequential for Guillén who wrapped Guillermo’s story alongside Nandor late on the evening of May 2, 2024, which happened to be Berry’s birthday with Guillén’s proceeding immediately into the morning hours of May 3, 2024, making the occasion, “An even more emotional thing. .. It was so perfectly timed that I couldn’t have asked for a better way to wrap, a better scene to wrap and a better cast to have had this experience with because it was seriously some of the best times of my life,” Guillén muses.
“Matt Barry said a really nice speech at the end where he said [something] along the lines of, ‘This show is Toronto,’” Schaal recalls. “Because the majority of the crew is from Toronto working so hard every day. That show is not easy to make, and they’re part of the show as much as we are,” she notes, commending the team behind this mighty production.
As mentioned, above, fans were treated to some nostalgic callbacks in the Maysles black-and-white documentary sequence which Novak enjoyed filming. “It was really cool,” the actor shares, acknowledging the extra work that went into filming something on older cameras. “It made it slow and it made it seem like you’re in a different show and you realize that the pace at which we work is a big part of the whole vibe and suddenly it became more about the camera than about the performers and the ensemble and the writing.”
Russ Martin / FX
Proksch also enjoyed the little genre-bending moments like Nadja’s hypnotized ending reminiscent of The Usual Suspects. “Anytime your character gets to play a take on something else is always really fun and it breathes new life into the character, like when Colin became a baby, that’s then a new thing for you to have to figure out as an actor,” Proksch notes.
Even with the mini side quest of sorts, Colin was there to provide support for Guillermo, sharing words of wisdom seemingly stolen from motivational posters. “The Guillermo knocking scene is probably one of my favorite scenes in the show just because it’s perfectly Colin Robinson,” Proksch remarks. In the scene, Colin drops one-liners and exits the scene before reentering and knocking on a door frame to drop some more sentiments meant to uplift Guillermo. “It’s just this perfect crystallization of who he was.”
While Guillermo was impacted by Colin’s words, that wouldn’t make them the words he most needs to hear. “Guillermo wants [the vampires] to really show him that they appreciate him, but they show him by being a-holes [most of the time],” Guillén notes. Even still, the actor notes that when it comes to Guillermo, by the end of the series, “He’s happy that he doesn’t need to be this vampire to be the best version of himself. He’s good enough and just be his Guillermo self.”
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Guillermo’s final form is on equal footing with his former master as Guillén continues, “Stepping into that coffin with Nandor, it solidified that we’re equals. He’s no longer my master. I’m no longer his servant. At of the day they ended up being partners and that’s [maybe a different version of] what the audience wanted them to be, but they are partners,” Guillén adds, noting the fans who were rooting for Nandor and Guillermo to take their relationship in a romantic direction.
“Sometimes you have to normalize having love for a same-sex person and not having it to be a romantic thing,” Guillén says. “Especially with men. And I think these characters have deep mad love for each other. Maybe not romantic love, but they have tons of love for each other,” he concludes.
And the love was certainly felt over here at TV Insider when Colin Robinson spoke about “sticking the landing” with a show’s ending, noting that he targets discussion threads on various outlets, including our very own. Speaking to Proksch about the sweet shoutout, he reveals the improv moment, “It was top-of-mind stuff. It was what came to my mind. There are these outlets that have been championing us since the beginning and those stick in your mind. [TV Insider] sticks in my mind as an ally, so to speak. So I wanted to shout out some of those allies.”
When it comes to living forever, we’ll certainly accept the mockumentary about immortals’ blessing.
FX’s What We Do in the Shadows, Streaming now, Hulu
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