What We Do In The Shadows S5: Why Guillermo's Transformation Isn't Going To Plan
Contains spoilers for "What We Do in the Shadows" Season 5 Episodes 1 & 2 — "The Mall" & "A Night Out With the Guys"
The fifth season of "What We Do in the Shadows" has finally arrived, and fans finally have a resolution to this major cliffhanger from last season. In true "What We Do in the Shadows" fashion, though, it's not what anyone would have expected; it's better and dumber.
As we all know, Guillermo (Harvey Guillén), the long-suffering human familiar to Nandor the Relentless (Kayvan Novak), broke from vampire tradition and went to a different vampire, his buddy named Derek (Chris Sandiford), to finally get "turned" and become a vampire himself. See, Nandor has been promising to make Guillermo a vampire for years, and it certainly doesn't seem like he's going to make good on his promise... so Guillermo takes matters into his own hands at the end of Season 4. This is "What We Do in the Shadows," though, so Guillermo's gambit doesn't go according to plan.
Weeks after Derek bites him, Guillermo doesn't feel... anything, really. He can still walk around, he's not turning into a bat just by saying "bat," and he doesn't really look or feel like a vampire in any way, shape, or form. This could all be related to Guillermo's heritage, but as the show reveals at the end of the premiere, it's a good thing he's not a very obvious vampire just yet.
Guillermo is a descendent of Van Helsing, which could interfere with his transformation
A minor issue with Guillermo's transformation could have to do with his secret heritage — namely, that he's a distant descendant of the legendary vampire hunter Van Helsing. In "Ancestry," the tenth episode of the show's first season, the vampires all try to figure out their specific heritages, and Guillermo realizes he needs to keep quiet when it's revealed that he shares blood with Van Helsing. This happens at a pretty auspicious time, too, considering that Guillermo has already killed a few vampires at this point, so he keeps the entire thing a secret from Nandor and the rest of the Staten Island vampires.
So is it possible that Guillermo's secret ancestry is interfering with his transformation into the vampire he's always wanted to be? It's certainly possible, but the logic behind whatever's happening at any given moment on "What We Do in the Shadows" doesn't always follow a logical throughline. A different explanation for his lack of vampire qualities could also be tied to the fact that, without knowing it, he betrayed his long-time master Nandor.
Guillermo needs to keep his status as a vampire secret
At the end of "The Mall," Guillermo joins the gang for his "birthday dinner" — even though he's proud to no longer really have a birthday, considering he's undead — only to be met with some seriously surprising news. During dinner, Laszlo (Matt Berry) reveals that if a familiar is turned into a vampire by someone other than his familiar, it's considered the worst betrayal that any familiar could possibly commit, and both of them would probably have to die as a result.
In "A Night Out With the Guys," Guillermo reunites with Derek, and they go and visit Baron Afanas (Doug Jones), hoping to see if they can either reverse the vampirization process or, better yet, if Nandor can "turn" Guillermo without knowing it's his second time. Baron Afanas tests out the latter on one of the people he's turned — a neighbor who was too noisy during the day while he was a human — and it doesn't go well. (The guy explodes.) Guillermo immediately realizes that he has to keep yet another secret from Nandor and the gang, though this one is much more dangerous.
"What We Do in the Shadows" airs on Thursday nights at 10 PM on FX and is to stream on Hulu after that.