What We Do In The Shadows cast says to expect surprises for the final season

It’s happening: What We Do In The Shadows is coming to an end this year, with season six set to premiere in October. We may be months away from the FX comedy’s release, but the cast and crew have started their farewell tour. Kayvan Novak, Matt Berry, Mark Proksch, and Kristen Schaal, along with executive producers Paul Simms and Kyle Newachek, arrived at the San Diego Comic-Con panel for one last chance to yell, “Bat!”

The series, based on Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi’s 2014 film, features a group of vampires on a stealthy mission to take over the world from their Staten Island mansion. Nandor, Laszlo, Nadja, and Colin Robinson come to rely on a human familiar, Guillermo, to do their daily tasks. Together, they make for an eccentric, unforgettable team—so what if they don’t accomplish world domination?

However, in the show’s upcoming final 11 episodes, the vampires are reminded of their mission when a former roommate, Jerry the Vampire (played by Mike O’Brien), wakes up after 50 years. He helps the others feel terrible about not fulfilling any of their dreams, pushing each of them to go after their ambitions. For Nadja, it means entering the workforce and going to an office job. As for her husband, Laszlo builds a laboratory at home to work on a long-abandoned dream of making a person from scratch, even going as far as using various discarded body parts. He’s channeling Victor Frankenstein, people. And he gets help from Colin Robinson, who hopes this newly-created monster might turn into a true friend. Guillermo, meanwhile, leaves the mansion after his short stint as a vampire. His master can’t stay away from him for too long, so Nandor also joins the same workplace as his former familiar. That’s surely going to go down well, huh? Schaal’s guide also continues searching for her place in this community.

After conventiongoers watched the first episode of the new season, showrunner Paul Simms, producer-director Kyle Newacheck, and actors Matt Berry, Mark Proksch, Kristen Schall, and Kayvan Novak (via Zoom) took the stage. Anyone invested in the Shadows lore will be happy to hear that Simms promised that “all threads will be tied up.”

But that didn’t stop the cast from mourning the show. Berry expressed sorrow that he learned of the final season two days before Christmas, while Schaal believes the show could have continued for years if the team hadn’t decided to bring it to a close. Still, it was the first project she had worked on where she knew the ending was coming. Nandor, however, “won’t be going anywhere,” according to Novak, who did the whole panel in character and showed off his pearly white fangs as he gave the crowd what they wanted (more of the Nandor voice, obviously).

As for what to expect this season, the vamps said Jerry would be the fifth Beatle, causing them all kinds of trouble as they return to their plan of taking over America. Meanwhile, Guillermo, just trying to get through his shifts at Panera, will continuously get pulled into vampire bullshit.

At the end of the season, the show will get pretty meta, the panelists said. Like The Office before it, Shadows will dive into the lives of the documentary crew toward the end of the season. But what of Jackie Daytona? Should we expect an appearance from Clairton, Pennsylvania’s best bartender? We’ll have to wait and find out.

“You’ll see a lot of surprises this season,” Simms said, answering audience questions on whether movie characters will make their return. We take that to mean a return of The Beast is imminent.

The sixth and final season of What We Do In The Shadows kicks off with three episodes on October 23.