Getting Familiar with Our Favorite Familiar
RECAP
Spoilers For: Anyone who hasn't watched Season 1 of WWDITS
Will Gizmo draw blood or drink blood?
Season one of the FX’s hit What We Do in the Shadows left us with a big cliffhanger that revealed a shocking surprise about everyone’s favorite Familiar. After taking a DNA test, Guillermo discovers he is the direct descent of the vampire slayer Van Helsing. His “accidental” (or was it?) killing of the vampire Baron Afanas earlier in the season helps corroborate this claim. Season two picks up with Guillermo struggling with this new piece of his identity and how it will affect his job as the underling of his overlords. His character’s whole drive is becoming a vampire himself. But goddamn it, dancers gotta dance, painters gotta paint, and Guillermo just keeps slaying Vampires.
Season two has a big focus on Guillermo, a character not fully used to his potential in season one. When he and his wacky blood-sucking gang encounter peril, each time, without much effort at all (like it’s precoded into him), he slays, oh girl, he slaaaays. He justifies his actions as needed to save his friends. He even thwarts a gang of wannabe slayers he mistakenly joins up with, but ironically in the process kills a whole family of vampires.
On top of his growing kill count, Gizmo gets increasingly fed up with Nandor showing no sign of turning him into a vampire any time soon.
But hey, we’ve all been there. The boss promises a raise or promotion, repeatedly tells you that you’re his best employee, and months later you’re still just the intern. So Guillermo does what we all dream of doing. He tells the boss to stick it and joins the competition. Unfortunately his new boss is as much the real deal as an Instagram Influencer posting a “no-filter” morning selfie. That is to say she is a complete phony, preying on others to feed her own clout monster.
In one of the season’s more surprising moments, we get to finally peek at Guillermo’s origins in the form of his mom’s house in Queens. It only takes a few minutes for us to see how his life cleaning up blood on hallway five might have been more appealing, even if it was in Staten Island. Eventually, Nandor shows up and wins his boi back. Guillermo’s rehiring gives him some leverage and a clearer path to an eventual vampire initiation. But the real benefit of this reunion comes to Nandor, Nadja, and Laszlo, when Guillermo shows up just in the nick of time to save them from a trap set up by Vladmir, played by show creator Jermaine Clement.
The final scene ends with an action/fight sequence for Guillermo that would have Underworld’s Selene shaking in her leather trench coat. His secret is revealed and we leave the season wondering how his blood-sucking pals will deal with Gizmo’s new badass persona. They owe him their lives (if they had them) but will having him in the house pose a threat? Has Guillermo’s application to become one of them been fast tracked? Or will he lean further in on his vampire slaying ways?
We’ll have to wait until season three to sink our teeth into the answers.
Rating: 3 Tentacles
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