What we do in the finale of The Shadows series turns a major character into Batman

spoiler The finale of “What We Do In the Shadows” is upon us.

What We Do In the Shadows is one of the best TV comedies of recent years and an all-time great TV show based on a movie. For six seasons, it gave us delightful, strange, horny stories that dealt with the boring immobility of immortality and mined the comedy from the fact that the show’s centuries-old vampires are so carefree by virtue of their existence that they essentially lose their lives waste. They are oblivious to what is happening outside their home and are not interested in anyone but themselves. In a way, it’s the anti-“Freeze: Beyond Journey’s End,” Because instead of looking at the fleetingness of time and finding melancholy in it, as anime does, “What We Do in the Shadows” has its cast of lovable buffoons just willingly ignore it all.

That’s not to say that the characters are completely static. Sure, the series brilliantly combines the sitcom’s inherent immutability with the immortality of its main characters, but even if they try to deny it, the vampires of Staten Island have changed – if only a little. Laszlo (Matt Berry) begins to care for his neighbor Sean (Anthony Atamanuik) over the course of the series, and he becomes warmer and more patient towards Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch) after raising him as a baby for a season. Likewise, Nandor the Relentless (Kayvan Novak) sees his ex-confidant Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) more as a friend than an employee (and even though he often fails, he learns to be better).

Nowhere is this clearer than in the Seres finale, which, among several hilarious endingsallows Nandor to find new meaning in the afterlife. After doing a good deed in the penultimate episode and realizing he likes the feeling, Nandor spends the finale contemplating a career change and becoming a crime-fighting vigilante. He even offers Guillermo the role of his buddy. That’s right, Nandor wants to become Batman – and when Guillermo immediately points out the similarity, Nandor is unaware of the existence of another bat-caped crusader with a secret hideout beneath his mansion.

Despite never having heard of Batman or having any idea what a superhero is, Nandor somehow nails the Caped Crusader’s aesthetic perfectly. He devises a plan of his secret hideout in a cave beneath the house, only accessible via an elevator connected to his coffin. He also wants a supercomputer and a costume with a cape and mask.

Sure, it’s a funny gag, especially since Nandor spends the entire finale trying to convince Guillermo that their crime-fighting partnership would be equals before asking him to design the entire Batcave and elevator himself. What makes the plot work, however, is that it is Nandor, the former Supreme Viceroy of Al Qolnidar and fierce general of the Ottoman army, who wants to start doing good deeds.

Of course, only someone whose specialty is violence and flamboyant clothing would consider the life of a superhero like Batman as a means to justice. As Nandor puts it, he will already kill people due to his vampiric nature. So why not make sure he kills the right people? Admittedly, he won’t choose a name as obvious as Batman, but rather the much more available and not at all copyrightable name “The Phantom Menace”.

The icing on the cake of this incredibly hilarious delusional story comes at the very end of the final episode, when Nandor invites Guillermo to his coffin for a heart-to-heart, only to pull a lever and reveal that he is actually the secret one Elevator Down has built his new crime-fighting hideout. It turned out that Nandor had been working on the mechanism for a while, without relying on Guillermo to do it for him. We don’t know what the future holds for the vampires of Staten Island (and Guillermo), but hopefully there will be some villain-fighting adventures in The Phantom Menace and Kid Cowboy.

“What We Do in the Shadows” is now streaming in full on Hulu.