(This story contains major spoilers from the What we do in the shadows Series finale, “The Finale.”)

Nothing ever really changes at the Vampire Residence in Staten Island, New York.

The Victorian home’s creaky, dusty floorboards and musty tapestries will never be redesigned. Guillermo de la Cruz (Harvey Guillén), a vampire familiar turned bodyguard and private equity bro, never fully realizes what it means to live as a blood-sucking creature of the night. There have been many farewells and heartbreaking deaths throughout FX’s six seasons What we do in the shadows always ends with the roommates of this shabby old house meeting again and again for pranks, petty arguments and absurd, life-threatening problems.

The Emmy-winning show’s sixth season ended Monday with a struggle with that idea, the cyclical nature of life — especially when it’s been practiced for hundreds of years — capping a popular 61-episode series.

“I think that’s exactly the case with vampires,” says Mark Proksch, who plays the energy vampire Colin Robinson The Hollywood Reporter of the series finale. “A hundred years from now, these idiots will still be in their house doing exactly the same moves they’ve been doing for 200 or 300 years. And I find that kind of refreshing.”

Proksch adds: “It’s just a tough, silly, stupid comedy. It’s not about teaching you anything, it’s not about pushing any agenda, and it doesn’t make you think too much about your own life and the problems you may be having.”

What we do in the shadowsbased on what creator Taika Waititi recently described as a five-minute idea that has given fans six seasons and a film of the same name, follows four vampire roommates, played by Proksch, Kayvan Novak, Natasia Demetriou and Matt Berry, along with their human one Confidants, Guillén, as they tackle the drudgery of human norms with the strangeness and absurdity that comes with being eternally ill-equipped for the modern world. Kristen Schaal also plays a vampire simply referred to as “The Guide” who is always slightly outside of the roommates’ found family.

The show has gained cameos and guest appearances across its six seasons from artists such as Nick Kroll, Paul Reubens, Tilda Swinton, Wesley Snipes, Mark Hamill, Jeremy O. Harris and Sofia Coppola, to name a few.

Gullién’s character, Guillermo, is the only human mainstay of the group – aside from the show’s camera crew, who film the series in a mockumentary style – and dutifully serves as an avatar for the audience, often giving sideways glances and knowingly looking into the camera, when something goes wrong. In the series finale, Guillermo, due to his mortality, is the only housemate struggling with the idea that the show’s documentary conceit must come to an end, and with it, the show.

Much like the critically acclaimed comedy’s audience, the film crew packing up and heading home means Guillermo’s time with these four quirky, terrifying and lovable vampires is also coming to an end. While the vampire coven of Nandor the Relentless (Novak), Nadja of Antipaxos (Demetriou), Laszlo Cravensworth (Berry) and Colin Robinson just seamlessly falls back into the cycle of what regular roommate business vampires deal with, Guillermo is worried about that The best time of his life is over; that he drifts into darkness and re-engages with the mundanity of whatever life was before he knew vampires existed.

Gullién may not be existentially unable to move on, but he agrees that it will be difficult to say goodbye to a show and the people who helped create it, a show that has become a kind of escape for him and so many others is.

“We’re doing a goofy show with heart, and people have told us in person at Comic Cons and stuff, ‘This is the show that got us through the pandemic.’ But aside from the pandemic, it’s something that resonates with people,” says Guillén.

What we do in the shadows According to Guillén, for some fans, it was the reason they talked to their father again or the reason that helped an uncle get through chemotherapy. Even if the protagonists are ancient, often violent vampires who kill people and mostly only care about themselves, What we do in the shadows has delved into a Waititi brand of wholesome, pure comedy.

“The show made people feel good, and that’s our job. We created an escape and we did that for six seasons,” Guillén continues. “It was a tough decade. We need to escape for a little while every now and then and just be in this silly world of a documentary with vampires and their human familiars. These 30 minutes a week are enough to keep you wanting to keep going.

“We were lucky to be able to do this for people,” he says.

Part of the reason the series gained such a cult following, in addition to the 2014 film written and directed by Waititi and Jemaine Clement, was that its second season premiered in April 2020, just as the pandemic was affecting almost everyone in their lives locked up in houses. No matter what someone and their roommate were arguing about more than a month into lockdown, one could be sure that the vampires and Gizmo, née Guillermo, had bigger, funnier issues to deal with.

Still, despite critical and audience acclaim during its six-year run, the series won only one Emmy for Outstanding Costume Design in a Fantasy or Science Fiction Series in 2022 and received 29 nominations.

Then last December, FX announced that the show would end after completing the second half of its two-season renewal. While the show’s ending may have caused some consternation among some fans, showrunner Paul Simms told an audience at New York Comic Con in October that he felt that “it’s better to come out victorious, and better.” early than too late.”

“Knowing it was the final season meant they took nothing for granted and could give season six everything they had,” says Schaal.

“The good gift of knowing that it was over is that it wasn’t a given for everyone to be on set, to be with these people and to get into these incredible costumes,” says Schaal THR. “(Working on this show) has always been a dream, but the ending is hard and it’s really hard to say goodbye.”

It’s especially hard to say goodbye to the actors now, rather than back on set at the Victorian mansion that serves as their characters’ vampire residence, answering questions and talking about what it means to begin the conclusion of their six-year journey to see the world.

“Around that time we were in Canada filming another season,” Novak says. “There is definitely a strong kind of sensory memory that you experience in this show, with the accents, the hair, the makeup, the clothes and the sets. It’s an incredibly immersive experience, not just for the viewers, but most of the time we’re actually experiencing it as they capture it.”

Perhaps not quite ready to hang up Nandor’s cape, Novak joked that this would likely be “the last episode of the last season of the last show of the last job of my career.” But he and the cast feel like they’re lucky to spend as much time as possible with these characters, making a “silly, stupid” show.

“Six seasons, man. I’m from the UK, the British do eight episodes and they feel like, ‘That’s it, it’s over,'” says Novak. “We did 61 episodes. I’m amazing.”

Guillén says that after filming the pilot, he doubted the show would ever continue since so many shows in Hollywood end before they could even begin. But then they filmed the entire first season and now, six seasons later, this What we do in the shadows The cast and crew say goodbye on their own terms, with the little message that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

“It’s easy to get tired after working on shows for a long time,” says Guillén. “It’s about finding the perfect balance where you have to know when it’s a beautiful opportunity to leave a beautiful gift that everyone can always look back on and that just has a perfect linear story rather than an afterthought say, ‘Well, that’s it.’ Season they (dropped), you know? We didn’t do that, we had the perfect package.”

Of course, seeing Guillén, and perhaps the rest of the housemates, properly wrap up six seasons of a show that started as a five-minute idea without it getting old — a feat, no doubt — doesn’t mean they wouldn’t do it . I’m not ready to go back to the old house and revisit those characters they grew to love.

So maybe just, goodbye, for now.

“Will these characters come back to visit again and say hello one more time? Maybe, you know, anything is possible,” says Guillén. “We are open to a quick visit with these characters and these people because we love the time we spent together and look forward to any opportunity to spend more time together in the future.”

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What we do in the shadows is now streaming all episodes on Hulu.