[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for What We Do in the Shadows, Season 5, Episodes 9 & 10, “A Weekend at Morrigan Manor” & “Exit Interview.”]
What We Do in the Shadows uncovered some mysteries and raised new questions in the final Season 5 installments, setting an intriguing new stage for the forthcoming (but delayed) sixth season, primarily for Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) and Nandor (Kayvan Novak).
In Episode 9, “A Weekend at Morrigan Manor,” The Guide (Kristen Schaal) informs the vampires that they’ve received an exclusive invitation to visit Perdita Morrigan, a famous figure in their world. When they arrive at the mysterious vamp’s mansion miles from their Staten Island abode, no one is home, but an Agatha Christie-like scheme unravels as the visitors partake in “Perdita’s” itinerary.
Little by little, they fall into traps set carefully by The Guide who has otherwise been ignored by the posse all season long. She reveals herself to be the maker of Nadja’s (Natasia Demetriou) faux hex, among other shenanigans. But the most damning reveal comes when she spills Guillermo’s biggest secret in front of Nandor.
Facing his master, familiar Guillermo tells Nandor about Derek (Chris Sandiford) transforming him, and the unusual status of his change. Thankfully Nandor offers some wisdom surrounding the half-baked transformation, noting it’s Guillermo’s Van Helsing blood that’s staving off against the vamp venom. Still, the knowledge doesn’t fix Nandor’s long-predicted anger over the predicament as he vows to kill Guillermo.
(Credit: Russ Martin/FX)
In the finale installment, “Exit Interview,” Guillermo takes refuge in a motel as Nandor awaits his familiar from a rooftop overlooking Panera Bread. When Nandor believes he’s spotted Guillermo he jumps into action, but it turns out he’s mistaken actor Patton Oswalt (playing himself) for his familiar. After a heart-to-heart with Oswalt in Panera and on a rooftop, Nandor decides to lure Guillermo out of hiding by visiting his mother.
When they come face-to-face, Nandor reveals he won’t kill Guillermo, instead, he helps him fulfill the vampire transformation by having him drink human blood. Once complete, all of the vampires go out to celebrate, but Guillermo has reservations about killing and drinking blood leading Nandor to come up with a solution of turning Guillermo back into a human by killing Derek.
While this resolves the season’s biggest mystery, it calls into question Guillermo’s role moving forward as a human among the vampires. While Season 6 has been ordered, co-executive producer Yana Gorskaya says she’s “just eager to make Season 6” amid strike-related delays. She tells TV Insider the team behind the FX hit was in the “early stages” of getting the next chapter ready. “They were able to do a fair number of scripts, but until this is over,” she says of the strikes, “there’s not much we can do, and nor would we want to without them,” she adds in reference to the writers and actors.
In the meantime, Gorskaya is breaking down the biggest reveals from Season 5’s final episodes and hinting at the direction of Season 6 in a full Q&A, below.
(Credit: Russ Martin/FX)
The Guide is the one to spill Guillermo’s big secret to Nandor in Episode 9 after she also reveals she’s been behind several of the tricks pulled over on the other vampires this season. Is it safe to say she can never be trusted with information?
Yana Gorskaya: Oh, clearly The Guide is not a vault, but mostly through no fault of her own because nobody tells her what is and isn’t off limits, and who doesn’t need to know things. She’s sort of the queen of not keeping a secret. It’s a lovely writing thing. They managed to do this in some way every season where [there’s a thread] and you have a feeling that something is off about a character. In this case with Kristen, her being such a cameo character and being actively ignored… to have that payoff in this mastermind episode is so fun.
And then in Season 3, you had Matt Berry being uncharacteristically morose. There were episodes where people were like, “What is up with Matt? Is he just down? He doesn’t seem into the show anymore.” He was doing such a good job performing in that sense because he knew that Colin was dying and was really sad about it as a character. So in that payoff, I hope something similar happens with Kristen and The Guide.
Following The Guide spilling Guillermo’s secret, Nandor doesn’t take too kindly to the information, for obvious reasons. What made Panera Bread and Patton Oswalt the perfect combination for Nandor to realize he doesn’t want to kill Guillermo for transforming behind his back?
Well, Panera Bread has just been incredible, and it’s where they met, so there is sort of a sentimental quality to it. And the fact that Nandor assumes that that’s where Guillermo must be all the time when he is not a familiar makes the vampire logic at least. And Panera actually let us shoot in a real Panera Bread, which we were so thrilled about. We like to use real locations and real names of things so that the show feels like a documentary. So it was still super cool to be allowed to shoot in their space.
I immediately recognized it as a real Panera Bread!
If we had tried to make a fake Panera, that would’ve been bad. And then with Patton, we developed a list of actors with comedy chops that look a little bit like Harvey or close enough that Nandor might mistake him if he was wearing the same jacket and hat coming out of a Panera. And Patton was very near the top of that list and was game and delightful. It just really got into the improv part of it. And what is strangest, I think for our guest cast is clocking the cameras but he adjusted to that very quickly and milked it in a beautiful way.
(Credit: Russ Martin/FX)
The mystery behind Guillermo’s unusual transformation stems from his Van Helsing blood. Drinking human blood is what fully activates his transformation. What was the discussion like behind deciding this step?
I mean I think that’s a bit of writer cleverdom because I think as fans, your brain immediately goes to the Van Helsing Blade-like connection as to why he might be delayed. And so they came up with the drinking thing, which is like when Jenna (Beanie Feldstein) had to feed before she was fully transformed [in Season 1]. It is a step that we’ve established as part of the rules of our world. So the fact that Laslo was a scientist and missed that was… I think a bummer for him.
So, is Guillermo fully a human again after the ceremony in the finale episode?
He’s still Guillermo, he’s still part Van Helsing. He’s still got his kind of innate magic-ness, but he’s a human at the end here.
Considering this transformation back into being human, how would that impact his relationship with Nandor moving forward?
Well, you’ll find out when we get to Season 6, but I mean Paul Simms and the writers are so good at taking it where you maybe don’t expect it to go. And I think with these will-they-or-won’t-they type relationships, oftentimes you don’t actually want the thing you think you want and it may be more interesting to take it in other directions, but I’m not going to spoil any of that because that’s where we’re going.
We definitely don’t want to be spoiled. Will we learn more about Guillermo’s role in the house? It doesn’t seem like he’s filling a familiar role any longer, but is still part of the gang. And if that’s the case, could there be a new familiar?
I will say, a lot of the questions you just asked form the engine of our next season.
The finale also featured other guest stars besides Patton Oswalt like Benedict Wong and Haley Joel Osment. Were they all written into the script?
They were written in and thankfully were game and wanted to do it. Benny and Haley are wonderful, as is our Djinn (Anoop Desai). So it was great. And everybody lights up when they come back. They’re part of our little Shadows family now and cannot be sweeter humans and lovelier people. So just a delight. And Tig Fong who directed our finale had so much fun just sitting back and letting them do their thing because Matt is actually quite good friends with Benny, so they just have a blast working together and are just two British teddy bears having a good time.
That’s awesome. And it feels safe to say Derek has found his place in the supernatural world among Topher (Osment) and the zombies.
He has, and now he’s got Topher and a whole group of zombie pals, which is wonderful. I think the writers had to find a solution to Guillermo’s growing sense of having made a mistake and potentially losing his family and having the price of turning into a vampire be much higher than he had reckoned for, and maybe not something he wants. But Derek is such a beloved character that just killing him [felt wrong]. Nobody ever really dies on Shadows. That’s the beauty of it. We can have horrific things happen to characters, but then they can come back in completely new incarnations and the zombies are great.
What We Do in the Shadows, Seasons 1-5, Streaming now, Hulu
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