What We Do in the Shadows is one of my favorite films of the 2010s, and the TV series spin-off of the same name has become one of my favorite shows of the 2020s.
Since 2019, What We Do in the Shadows has been one of the most consistently funny shows on TV, filling the void left by the endings of Parks & Rec, New Girl, and Brooklyn 99, all great sitcoms and hall of fame comfort shows. What We Do in the Shadows is also a great sitcom—it’s the best hangout show since New Girl—and a hall of fame comfort show. It has an A+ comedy ensemble, unhinged plot lines, and a will they/won’t they love story between centuries-old vampire Nandor and his ex-familiar, Guillermo. Though as we approach the sixth and final season of WWDITS, it seems like Nandor and Guillermo might be a case of “won’t they”, which will probably set a specific corner of the internet on fire.
The trailer for the sixth and final season of WWDITS dropped yesterday, teasing the final adventures of eternal lovers Laszlo and Nadja, Colin the energy vampire, Nandor, and Guillermo. They’re joined by an old friend, Jerry the Vampire (Mike O’Brien), and Guillermo is moving into his own abode after more than a decade living with Nandor and the others, while Nadja tackles corporate America (drain them dry, Nadja!). Season six will be eleven episodes, making sixty-one total episodes for the series. Six seasons and sixty-one episodes in THIS linear TV economy? Positively decadent!
My questions for season six are chiefly whether or not Jackie Daytona will make an appearance—“On the Run” is arguably the best episode of this series, and one of the best episodes of comedy TV in the last five years, Jackie Daytona is a phenomenal character—if the Vampiric Council will reconvene, complete with A-list cameos, and what happens with Nandor and Guillermo. Their story is the main emotional core of the series, but I wonder how people will react should they not, in the end, be together.
It will be a tough pill for fans to swallow, given that we’ve watched these two bumble their way towards one another for five years in a delightful slow-burn rom-com full of bloodthirst, attempted murder, outright murder, and tenderness. I do, however, want to point out that queerbaiting is the act of teasing queerness in characters and then not actually writing them to be queer (textbook example, John and Sherlock in Sherlock).
Nandor and Guillermo are both canonically queer characters, if they don’t end up in a romantic partnership, it’s not queerbaiting, it’s just two characters not ending up in a romantic partnership. I feel like it might be important for everyone to remember that before our last turn in the shadows.
