'WWDITS' Season 2 Episode 7 sees energy vampire Colin discover trolling and meet an actual mythical troll
Spoilers for ‘What We Do in the Shadows’ Season 2 Episode 7, ‘The Return’
Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi’s vampire mockumentary seems to be raising the bar with every new episode. ‘The Return’, in that regard, was as good as an episode of the absurd comedy series can be. It begins with Nadja (Natasia Demetriou) and Laszlo (Matt Berry) running into an old mate of theirs in the sewers of Staten Island.
It was Simon the Devious (Nick Kroll), the leader of the Manhattan vampires, who had forcefully snatched Laszlo’s cursed hat from him in season 1. Of course, the hat’s curse latched on to him, destroyed his club, and left him to fend for himself in the sewers. The once-cocky vampire was now left looking poor and old and grey and weak.
Despite Laszlo’s attempts to avoid it, Nadja invites him and his friends over to their home (Simon and Nadja had had a brief fling several decades ago). And there, the story breaks into three equally hilarious lines.
One, Simon was obviously pretending to be poor and helpless in order to steal the cursed hat again -- who knows why either vampire wants that thing, but it is what it is. It ends with Laszlo and he fighting it out as bats in the sewers. Ultimately, Laszlo gives up the hat. But karmic justice awaits as the curse makes Simon trapped in the sewers, slowly sinking into the s***-filled mucky waters.
Two, Colin (Mark Proksch) has his own unrelated adventure (well not really) going on in the meanwhile. The energy vampire finds a new way to drain his victims: he starts trolling on the internet, baiting people to respond to him, thereby taking their energy away from them. This is honestly, the most hilarious bit of the show.
His trolling is masterful, as he tells astronauts to “read a book”, makes wilfully dumb statements, types sexist and racist remarks, and spouts asinine conspiracy theories. All seemed to be going well when he met his match with another troll. Annoyed, he tracks down this person to Massachusetts and goes to pay him a visit.
As it turns out, the online troll who was trolling him was an actual troll -- the mythical creature. And hilariously, this troll takes offense to the colloquial usage of the word “troll” and calls it derogatory. But Colin, a master at draining people, bored him with factoids about bridges till sunrise when the troll turned to stone.
The third storyline, however, is the most relevant one to the show’s running central plot. Carol, a monstrous vampire friend of Simon, begins to suspect Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) for being a vampire slayer. Guillermo, as we have already seen, is an expert vampire killer, who has killed scores of them in this season alone. And why not, he is after all the descendant of the legendary Van Helsing.
As Carol tries to kill him, Guillermo defends himself with a broomstick. Using it as a wooden stake, he manages to finish her. But here lies the problem. Nandor (Kayvan Novak), his master, saw him in action. And this is a huge plot point. Even though Nandor is as dim as one can be, human or vampire, does he suspect that there is more than what meets the eye with Guillermo?
Because if he does (and it looks that way by the end of the episode), this would mean a turning point in their relationship as master-servant. Guillermo’s future is undoubtedly dark right now.
P.S.: Elvis Presley is a vampire. Laszlo had turned him in the '70s.
New episodes of ‘What We Do in the Shadows’ Season 2 air on FX every Wednesday at 10 pm ET/PT.
