Season 4 of What We Do in the Shadows drops tonight on Hulu! Season 3 was a wild ride, with lots of hijinks and mayhem, so it’s okay if you’re scratching your head over where exactly the vampire housemates Nadja, Laszlo, Nandor, Colin Robinson, and their familiar/vampire hunter, Guillermo, left off. Here’s a quick recap of the highlights of Season 3 to get you up to speed!
Nadja and Nandor Break The Vampiric Council
At the end of Season 2, Guillermo discovered that the Vampiric Council had led the gang into a trap, so he showed up to save them and ended up revealing he was a vampire hunter by killing everyone in attendance. Now, at the beginning of Season 3, they get a video message from Viago, head of the Supreme Vampiric Council, saying that Nadja, Nandor, Laszlo, and Colin are the new Vampiric Council for the American Eastern Seaboard. You know, since they killed the last one.
The Guide, a vampire played by Kristin Schaal, shows them their new headquarters, which comes with a sweet trove of artifacts, a huge library, and a cage containing the Sire. The Sire is the ancestor of all vampires, which has been reduced to a monstrous gargoyle-like being after thousands of years of immortality.
Laszlo and Colin aren’t interested in running the council, but Nadja and Nandor both want the ego trip of sitting in that big throne, so they promptly begin to fight over who gets to be in charge.
The Gang Goes Around Breaking Everything Else
Throughout the season, the undead housemates go around basically making a mess of everything they touch. That’s why we love them!
When the group goes to Atlantic City for a weekend of fun, they discover that the housekeeper in their hotel has vacuumed up all the ancestral soil they spread under their beds in order to retain their vampiric powers. Guillermo has to go on a trip to Europe to collect soil from England, Greece, and Iran while the vamps languish in their hotel room.
Then the group manages to lose the Sire after Nadja puts Nandor in charge of feeding it. Nandor forgets to do it, the Sire gets so hungry that it tunnels out of its cage, and everyone panics because if the Sire gets killed, every vampire it sired (so, every vampire in existence) will also die. Luckily, they still have the ancient vampire the Baron at their disposal, and the Baron speaks the same vampire language as the Sire. The Baron is able to lure the Sire into a comfortable suburban home in New Jersey.
There’s also a lot of relationship angst: Nandor tries to court an old flame, who turns him down even after he does her the service of turning her into a vampire/werewolf hybrid, and then he unsuccessfully tries to woo the receptionist at the gym by getting the others to disguise themselves as him with the Cloak of Duplication. The ghost of Nadja’s former self—currently inhabiting a doll who looks like her—also gets in on the action, getting mad at Nadja for ignoring her and haunting various inanimate objects.
Nandor’s Existential Crisis
Nandor is over 700 years old, and you don’t live that long without starting to wonder what your whole life is about. Despondent, Nandor discovers a supposed ex-vampire named Jan, who presides over a group called the Formerly Fanged. She tells Nandor that he can train himself not to be a vampire anymore by pulling his fangs out nightly and doing human stuff like aerobics, and after Nandor spends a month living in Jan’s cult, the rest of the gang have to rescue and deprogram him. (Jan, meanwhile, kills all her followers by sending them out into the sunlight so she can recruit a fresh batch.)
After the Formerly Fanged fiasco, Nandor decides to spend a century or two in a kind of vampiric hibernation called a Super Slumber. That plan goes awry, though, when the Supreme Vampiric Council announces that they’re going to come and inspect Nadja and Nandor’s work on the local Vampiric Council. Nadja tells them that she killed Nandor in a power struggle, and the council members inspect his willy to see if he’s really dead.
Nadja, Lazlo, Nandor, and Guillermo Set Off
At the end of the season, Nadja is invited to join the Supreme Vampiric Council in England, and Laszlo tells her he’ll join her. Meanwhile, Nandor decides to travel to his ancestral homeland, and he tells Guillermo that once there, he’ll finally transform him into a vampire.
Nandor and Guillermo agree to meet at the train station, but first Guillermo goes to help pack up Nadja and Laszlo for their voyage. After Guillermo gets Nadja into her coffin, Laszlo traps Guillermo in his coffin, sending Guillermo to England in Laszlo’s place. While Nandor waits for Guillermo and finally leaves without him, Laszlo writes a note to Nadja explaining that he has to stay behind on Staten Island. Why? Well…
Colin Robinson is a Freaky Resurrected Baby Now
Way back at the beginning of the season, after the group is named to the Vampiric Council, Colin uses the library to try to find answers about his energy vampire heritage, since he has no memories of his life before becoming a vampire. Throughout the season, Laszlo starts to spend a weirdly intense amount of time with Colin, accompanying him on adventures like visiting sirens on an island or rebuilding his old jalopy car.
At the very end, at Colin’s birthday party, Laszlo reveals the terrible truth: In the library, he learned that energy vampires have lifespans of exactly 100 years, which means that Colin will die tonight. Sure enough, Colin starts to weaken, and when Nando comes out of his Super Slumber, he tries to wake Colin up but ends up putting his hand right through Colin’s already desiccating corpse.
But wait! As everyone is making their arrangements to leave Staten Island, Laszlo finds a trail of blood coming out of Colin’s chest. He follows it to discover a reborn Colin hiding in the basement. Colin is now a baby with a full-grown man’s face, and Laszlo decides to stay behind and take care of the terrifying thing.
Will the vampires ever be reunited? Will Colin remember any of them when he grows up again? Will Guillermo ever become a vampire?? Head over to Hulu and find out!
(featured image: FX)
