FX’sWhat We Do in the Shadows, which returns for its fourth season this week, isn’t the first TV series to derive its inspiration from a preceding movie — but it may be one of the few shows that’s proven more than capable of taking an already-brilliant idea and running with it to even greater returns. Like the film written byTaika WaititiandJemaine Clement, the series roots itself in the concept of a documentary-style project about a group of supernatural subjects (a “previously on” voiceover fromMatt Berryahead of the Season 4 premiere even reiterates this, to amusing effect). However, instead of the Wellington suburb in which the movie takes place, the series jumps across the pond to Staten Island, New Jersey in order to follow a different cluster of disastrously incompetent vampires — and one very tired familiar who is not-so-secretly descended from Van Helsing.
The ending of Season 3, which saw these vamps scattered across the globe from one another, raised several questions: what will happen when these mostly immortal roommates converge on their crumbling Staten Island home again, especially now that energy vampire Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch) has been reborn as a little baby in the care of an unwitting Laszlo Cravensworth (Berry)? How furious will Laszlo’s wife Nadja of Antipaxos (Natasia Demetriou) be to discover her husband has sent her off to England without him? Will Nandor (Kayvan Novak) realize that his familiar Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) was waylaid from their planned travels not of his own volition, but from Laszlo’s machinations? And how, exactly, is Guillermo going to survive being shipped in a coffin all the way across the Atlantic Ocean?
Fortunately, Season 4 doesn’t waste any time at all in providing answers — and fans who may have been wondering how long we would have to wait for a reunion between our favorite Staten Island vampires will discover that the show isn’t interested in prolonging the drama that could have resulted from these characters being split up for any significant duration. Where the show continues to thrive this season, and has always thrived, is in the interplay between its main cast, and it’s to the writers' advantage that the plot doesn’t lean into too much dividing angst and drama in favor of what amounts to a hilarious return to form.
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By the time everyone is back under the same roof again, Laszlo and Nadja are more focused on making up for the months they’ve spent apart, andquitevigorously — sometimes while the cameras are on and Nandor is trying to catch us up on where he’s been, much to the vampire’s chagrin. Meanwhile, the infant that once crawled out of the chest cavity of a dead Colin Robinson (whom Laszlo soundly refuses to refer to as “Colin Robinson”) has sprouted up into a blond, curly-haired boy with a penchant for mischief and a fondness for musical theater… and also just so happens to wear Proksch’s exact face. The only character who is reasonably aggravated by how the passage of time between seasons treated him is Guillermo, and Guillén continues to be a welcome injection of reality to counteract the high-energy antics of his co-stars, with his long-suffering dead-pans looks served directly to camera operating as the perfect punctuation to nearly every scene he’s in.
Season 4 also manages to incorporate both new and familiar storylines — the vampires are still experiencing what could be called the immortal’s version of a midlife crisis, each in their own unique ways, but the routes they take lead to some very unexpected outcomes. Nandor, who has been consistently unlucky in love since the beginning of the series, finds himself in pursuit of a very specific goal this time around: a wife. Unfortunately, it’s been several hundred years since he was on the dating scene, and his methods of trying to attract a potential bride — like sidling up to some poor, unsuspecting woman at the local dog park — are hardly met with success. Over the course of the four episodes that were sent out for advance viewing, however, Nandor finds a particularly surprising avenue through which to continue his journey in romance, one that results in him looking to his past but also might have the consequence of trapping him from any kind of forward growth. However, given the natural chemistry that Novak and Guillén have as scene partners, as well as tantalizing, occasionally jokey tidbits of dialogue that are dropped in to tease out more complexities in the relationship between Nandor and Guillermo, it’s difficult not to wonder if the person who might be best suited for the vampire as a partner is the one who’s been right under his nose, loyal by his side, from the start.
What We Do in the Shadows' fourth season also succeeds at reinvigorating old story concepts right when they were at the risk of becoming stale. The Vampiric Council element, led by the envoy known only as The Guide (Kristen Schaal) had started to wear thin heading toward the end of Season 3, but Nadja returning from her time in England and deciding that she isn’t interested in boring Council business any longer allows the show to give the entire subplot a facelift. Instead, Nadja declares, she wants to open a nightclub exclusively for vampires and other otherworldly creatures — complete with blood sprinklers installed in the ceiling, exactly like inBlade. The Council library set subsequently gets a makeover, and the vampires themselves are also given another regular haunt to inhabit, which lends itself to potential storylines that will presumably at least carry through Season 4. One episode in particular, which deals with a vampire rap phenom having his career derailed by his self-professed “doctor” of a familiar, feels especially timely in the wake of how often we’ve seen stories of real-life recording artists manipulated by those within their inner circle. Of course,What We Do in the Shadowsmanages to take this theme and wield it to its best potential given the show’s clear sensibilities. There are also plenty more creatures who are introduced to the world of the series for the first time — and without spoiling those reveals, at least one of them serves as an in-universe explanation for where all that IKEA furniture comes from.
Season 4 could have chosen any number of avenues for bringing the band back together, but ultimately decided on the past of least resistance — however, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t just as many hijinks for this crew to encounter now that they’re all back living their best un-lives in the same hemisphere. Instead of dragging out the distance that could have separated the group for episodes at a time, the show swerves focus to exploring the intricacies of the relationships between characters we’ve already gotten to know and love. With the recent news thatboth a fifth and sixth seasonis on the way,What We Do in the Shadowshasn’t only hit its best and most comedic stride yet; like the vampires it’s centered around, this series is damn near immortal, and television is all the better for it.
What We Do in the ShadowsSeason 4 premieres with its first two episodes on July 12 on FX, with subsequent episodes airing Tuesdays weekly until September 6.
