One of the best comedy shows on television has finally returned from its slumber. FX's What We Do In The Shadows aired its season 4 premiere in early July, giving viewers more of their favorite dysfunctional vampire family and their weekly forays into the human world. While certain things have changed about the dynamic of the old house in New Jersey, the humor, action, and mystery remain just as potent as ever.
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While these blood-suckers may be haphazard in their attempts to assimilate into (or conquer) the human world of Staten Island, when given the chance to flex their vampiric abilities they've shown time and again that they are all very powerful beings. They just lack the social skills to come across as such. The question is, which vampire (or human) is the most powerful of them all?
The following article contains spoilers for What We Do In The Shadows Seasons 1-3.
9 The Guide (Kristen Schaal)
Once an unruly vampire who engaged in an affair with a vampire hunter, The Guide is bound for eternity to serve as a messenger for the Vampiric Council, guiding vampires accused of a crime to stand trial. While she often appears to know more than she lets on, The Guide's only apparent powers are that she is capable of teleporting from place to place, as well as hovering above the ground.
While these abilities are nothing to scoff at, they pale in comparison to some of the other vampires in the show. She also seems to have a thing for Guillermo, which shows that she never really got over her attraction to vampire hunters.
8 Jenna (Beanie Feldstein)
Initially intended to be a virgin sacrifice to Baron Afanas, Nadja took pity on Jenna when she witnessed her being bullied by her classmates and decided to make her a vampire so that she could gain some confidence (and immortality of course). Unfortunately, Jenna's transformation is an ugly one that viewers get to watch in excruciating detail.
After she turns, Jenna discovers that she has the ability to turn invisible, which she uses to drag her first kill out of a frat party and drain his blood in some bushes. Later, she and Nadja attempt to watch the sunrise, but need to flee indoors when their meager protection doesn't shield them from the sun. Since that moment, Jenna has not been heard from again.
7 Simon The Devious (Nick Kroll)
Simon is the leader of the Manhattan vampires and an occasional rival of the Staten Island roommates. He owns the Sassy Cat nightclub, as well as a cursed witch's hat that he and Lazlo fight over repeatedly. Simon's only notable abilities are his connections to the larger vampiric community in New York, and his scheming (hence his nickname).
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Simon eventually loses his nightclub and is later found hiding in the sewers and living off of rats, but, even in this state, he still manages to execute a few crafty plots before Lazlo and Nadja leave him trapped in a sewer gate and sinking below the waters. As of the time of writing, his fate remains unknown.
6 Baron Afanas (Doug Jones)
A member of vampire royalty and a figure of great renown among vampires, Baron Afanas believes that vampires should conquer the human world and pushes all his subjects to act on this vision. While his name strikes fear in most vampires, the Baron is ancient and doesn't seem to possess as much strength as he once did.
He's a lightweight when it comes to drinking intoxicated blood, vomits so hard he lifts off the ground at the slightest taste of garlic, and is nearly killed by sunlight just from standing in the wrong spot when Guillermo opens the front door. He does, however, manage to survive underground by feeding off of blood-soaked soil, allowing him to eventually return to life, although he's even more decrepit and helpless than before.
5 Lazlo Cravensworth (Matt Berry)
Seduced and turned vampire by his beloved wife Nadja, Lazlo is a sexually-adventurous and aloof undead who enjoys his passions far more than he concerns himself with the advancement of vampire-kind. Although he is more than capable of assimilating completely into a human community, he instead chooses to return home to his wife and roommates simply because he enjoys their company.
Lazlo's most potent ability is his adeptness at hypnotism. He can control the mind of any human he comes across, pushing them to perform actions as he sees fit or to forget that they ever saw him in the first place. He is also able to control and communicate with animals, although they don't always do what he asks.
4 Nadja Of Atipaxos (Natasia Demetriou)
Born in Greece, it is unclear who initially turned Nadja into a vampire. She claims that a vampire in the form of a snake bit her while she was singing. Lazlo seems to believe that it was Baron Afanas who turned her. Regardless, Nadja's powers are about on par with her husband's, but her intense and ambitious personality places her ahead of him when it comes to power.
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Nadja has worked her way up through the Vampiric Council through the series and has now earned herself a senior role in the UK. She is able to scale walls very quickly with her bare hands and transform into a swarm of rats, and it is suggested that she may have some powers of seduction as well. She also has a ghost of herself which she keeps around in a possessed doll.
3 Nandor The Relentless (Kayvan Novak)
Nandor is the oldest vampire in the house at nearly 750 years old. He is a former soldier for the Ottoman Empire and at one time was married to 37 men and women at once. It was during these marriages that he became a vampire. Nandor's powers include being able to appear out of and disappear into a puff of smoke, as well as pyrokinesis, which allows him to summon and control fire.
However, there is no more convincing proof of Nandor's strength than when he and Guillermo finally go toe-to-toe. While it's fair to say that neither one was truly intending to kill the other, Nandor is the only vampire that has ever held their own in a fight against Guillermo and his vampire-slaying prowess, and in the end, Nandor nearly defeats him. This, if nothing else, makes him one of the strongest vampires around.
2 Guillermo de la Cruz (Harvey Guillen)
The only human that belongs anywhere near a list of the most powerful characters in What We Do in the Shadows, Guillermo is Nandor's familiar and longs to one day become a vampire himself. However, he is also a descendant of the Van Helsing bloodline, making him a natural-born vampire hunter. "Natural-born" doesn't even begin to cover it though.
Guillermo is so good at killing vampires that he can do so purely by accident. He managed to kill Baron Afanas just by opening the front door. However, he also regularly kills vampires with vicious precision, using household items as stakes to pierce their hearts, and finding creative ways to lure his victims into the sunlight. Guillermo may come across as mild-mannered, but, when he's fighting vampires, he's a total badass.
1 Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch)
There is no other vampire in the series on par with Colin Robinson. For one, he's not just an average vampire: he's an energy vampire. Rather than feeding off of the blood of his victims, Colin drains their "energy." Essentiality, he bores them with bad jokes and long-winded rants and then feeds off of the energy his victims lose while listening to him. When Colin was promoted to a management position at his job, he began to feed more frequently and voraciously, as his staff had no choice but to listen to him.
Very soon afterward, his powers began to grow. He was like Superman getting a potent dose of sunlight. Colin's hair grew back, he gained psychic abilities that allowed him to drain other vampires as well as humans, and he was able to fly and duplicate himself. It would also appear that, based on the season 3 finale, Colin cannot die. He simply resurrects himself as a baby in a pseudo-phoenix fashion which requires his old body to melt into goo beforehand.
What We Do In The Shadows season 4 premiered on FX on July 12th, 2022, with new episodes airing each week.
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