Spoilers ahead for the finale of “What We Do In the Shadows.”
“What We Do In the Shadows” is one of the best TV comedies of the past few years and an all-time great TV show based on a movie. For six seasons, it gave us delightful, weird, horny stories that looked at the dull immobility of immortality and mined comedy from the fact that the series’ centuries-old vampires are so carefree due to their existence that they basically waste their lives away, oblivious of anything happening beyond their house and uninterested in anyone but themselves. In a sense, it’s the anti-“Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End,” because rather than look at the fleeting nature of time and find melancholy in it the way that anime does, “What We Do In the Shadows” simply has its cast of lovable buffoons ignore all that willingly.
This is not to say that the characters are completely and utterly static. Sure, the show brilliantly combines the lack of change inherent to the sitcom with the immortal nature of its main characters, but even if they try to deny it, the vampires of Staten Island have changed — if only a bit. Laszlo (Matt Berry) does come to care about his neighbor Sean (Anthony Atamanuik) over the course of the show, and he does grow warmer and more patient with Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch) after he raises him as a baby for a season. Likewise, Nandor the Relentless (Kayvan Novak) comes to see his ex-familiar Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) as a friend rather than an employee (and even if he does fail often, he is learning to be better).
Nowhere is this clearer than in the seres finale, which, amidst several hilarious endings, has Nandor finding a new purpose in the afterlife. After performing a good deed for once and realizing he likes the feeling in the penultimate episode, Nandor spends the finale thinking of a career change into becoming a crime-fighting vigilante. He even offers Guillermo the role of his sidekick. That’s right, Nandor wants to become Batman — and when Guillermo immediately points out the resemblance, Nandor is oblivious to the existence of another bat-themed caped crusader with a secret lair under his mansion.
The Phantom Menace and Kid Cowboy rise on What We Do in the Shadows
Somehow, despite having never heard of Batman or having any idea of what a superhero is, Nandor nails every part of the aesthetic of the Caped Crusader. He comes up with a blueprint of his secret lair in a cave beneath the house, accessible only by an elevator connected to his coffin. He also wants a super-computer and a costume complete with a cape and a mask.
Sure, it’s a funny gag, especially as Nandor spends the entire finale just trying to convince Guillermo that their crime-fighting partnership would be as equals, right before asking him to design the entire Batcave and elevator on his own. Still, what makes the storyline work is that it is Nandor, the former Supreme Viceroy of Al Qolnidar and fierce general in the Ottoman army, who wants to start doing good deeds.
Of course, only a guy whose specialities are violence and extravagant clothes would come up with the life of a superhero like Batman as his avenue for delivering justice. As Nandor puts it, he’s already going to be killing people due to his vampiric nature, so why not make sure he’s killing the right people? Granted, he’s not going to go with a name as obvious as Batman, but rather the much more available and not at all copyrighted “The Phantom Menace” as his moniker.
The icing on the cake of this hilariously delusional story comes at the very end of the final episode, where Nandor invites Guillermo to his coffin for a heart-to-heart, only to pull a lever and reveal he’s actually built the secret elevator down to his new lair for crime-fighting. Turns out, Nandor had been working on the mechanism for a while without relying on Guillermo to do it for him. We don’t know what the future holds for the vampires of Staten Island (and Guillermo), but hopefully there’s some adventures fighting bad guys for The Phantom Menace and Kid Cowboy.
“What We Do in the Shadows” is now streaming in its entirety on Hulu.
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