Nightmare Fuel / First Kill

Um, Jules, your makeup is running.

"I think some people... prefer to die young."

— Elinor, First Kiss

Romantic comedy or not, teen drama or not, First Kill is still a supernatural thriller. And you know what that means...

WARNING: Unmarked spoilers ahead!

---

• First Kiss
  • Among the flashes of Juliette's dream are a knife dripping blood and a girl covered in blood rising from the ground like a zombie with a chilling leer. And given that some of the things that happen in her dream actually do take place later on in the episode, it's safe to assume the rest of those images will come to fruition as well.
    • Notice the direction the girl is facing...
    • While it's hard to tell, the girl looks somewhat similar to Juliette. Given that some of the events in this dream come to fruition over time, it's likely that this is Jules falling to savagery.
  • When Juliette heads into the bathroom, we see the effect of less than a second of her holding Calliope's silver bracelet: there are literal third-degree burn holes in her palm!
  • While helping Jules get ready for a party, Elinor reminisces on her first kill. We get a flash of her, jaw wide open and fangs bared, about to bite down on a man's vulnerable neck. Made worse by the musical sting.
  • When Juliette loses control of her bloodlust at the party, she rears her head back and the whole scene turns red. Her fangs extend and then... CHOMP!!
    • Given the noise Calliope makes when this happens, it's safe to assume that it hurt quite a bit.
    • What happens next isn't much better. Thankfully, Juliettte doesn't get to drink any blood... because Cal drives a stake into her heart!
  • The ghoul that Calliope faces looks less like a ghoul and more like a messenger of death itself.

• First Blood
  • Knowing Juliette is fine doesn't make the sight of her lying on the ground with a wooden stake in her chest seem any less painful.
  • The sight of Ashley's body. The lights go out for a moment, then Ben sees her lying on the floor. Ben turns her over and- GOOD GOD!!! We learn later that she suffered blunt force trauma to her head and her liver is gone. It's horrifying enough to make Sebastian worry if Juliette is becoming a savage (though he doesn't know she didn't have anything to do with Ashley's murder).
  • The shambler that appears in the Burns house looks like something straight out of a Metroid game. While the CGI is hardly praiseworthy, it's still not the type of thing you'd show to a little child to put them to sleep at night.
  • We see Elinor's feeding strategy: luring her prey into the bathroom and making out with them until they're putty in her hands... and then draining their blood. If they survive, she wipes their memory of her. If not, well... see First Severing below.

• First Fight
  • The serpent, implied to be the Emerald Malkia herself, slithering around Juliette and targeting Calliope in their dream.
  • There's a moment when Juliette is in her room and her body starts acting up, treating us to a lovely view of... well, see the picture above.
  • The legacy consecration ceremony is a horrifying concept. They celebrate a legacy's first kill by having them get bitten by the Emerald Malkia, the serpent from the Garden of Eden. But what really takes the cake is that they manipulate a hapless human girl into joining them at the ceremony and then release her just to have fun chasing her around until they kill her!
  • While his intentions are merely to earn a promotion from the Guild by reporting a traitor, Cook attempting to kidnap Calliope is hauntingly similar to... something worse.
    Calliope: You're invading my personal space!

• First Date
  • After the failed massacre attempt, Mike and Sarah are intercepted by Juliette, Oliver, and Elinor. Juliette is sent away, so we don't see the ensuing fight, but we do see the aftermath: Mike and Sarah kebabbed to a tree by their own spear! Poor Tess...
  • While Oliver is captured at the Burns house, Apollo suggests using a chainsaw to hack him to pieces. That's bad enough, but when Oliver that points out that legacies can regenerate like lizards, Apollo smiles and tries to go through with it anyway just because it'll hurt him. I'll give you a three tries to spell Dehumanization.
    • Notice that his clothes are in tatters. What all did they do to him that we didn't see?
    • When Talia comes in, she shoves a screwdriver up his chin! The worst part? She does it again a moment later with Margot on the phone and describing what she's doing to him with no remorse! She's obviously worried for Calliope, but a part of her is definitely doing this for fun! It's horrendous enough to make you wonder if Cal is right that the supernatural creatures aren't the real monsters.
  • Juliette finally gets her first kill. Watching her beat Cook down is awesome... right up until she starts feeding on him. We get to see him struggling and groaning and gasping for breath, and his struggles slowly turn quiet as the color drains from his skin. She may be as cute as a button, but clearly even the most kind-hearted and loving vampire can be the stuff of nightmares if you get on their bad side. Ben likely didn't get any sleep that night.
    • Cal later says that seeing Juliette murder someone and drink their life essence like juice was "weird". The average teenager (hell, the average person in general) would be scarred for life after seeing somebody do what Juliette did, even if it was for understandable reasons, yet Cal simply says it's "really weird" with no indication that she considers that the understatement it is. How Conditioned to Accept Horror is this girl?
  • When Davina finally agrees to save a dying Sebastian, she does it by sending the Emerald Malkia to him. What happens next? The serpent slithers into his chest wound!
  • After Sebastian picks up Juliette and Calliope, he takes them down the road that leads to her house, but passes the proper turn. He never bothers to tell them that her parents are holding a hostage negotiation for her and Oliver, so as far as they know, this is a kidnapping! No wonder Cal jumped out of the car the first chance she got.
    • Just in general, there's something off about Sebastian after becoming a legacy. He's twitchier and snippier, as if he's ready to fly into a feral rampage at any moment. He even has to apologize to Juliette about this the following day.

• First Love
  • Zombie!Ashley's murder of Noah is hard to watch. If you've ever wanted to see a horror chase scene take place during school hours, you get to watch her chase him down the hallway, taking a few potshots at him while he screams for help and desperately tries to duck into a classroom, before finally knocking him down and ripping his spinal cord out of his back!! Even Jules and Cal are unsettled by the sight of his mangled corpse.
  • Is Sebastian unhinging his jaw and swallowing Davina whole terrifying or hilarious? You decide.
  • Juliette begins having moments of Bloodlust after Zombie!Ashley slashes Cal across the chest. It's bone-chilling to watch her become overtaken by that sinister red hue as she slowly loses control of herself and inches closer and closer towards her own girlfriend with her fangs out.
    Juliette: Just... go. Now!!
    • Don't worry, though, she snaps out of it... when Oliver grabs Cal out of nowhere.
    Oliver (to Cal): Death follows you everywhere.

• First Severing
  • Phillipa tells a reporter that she heard Noah trying to get inside the classrooms but was forbidden to open the door. It's almost certain that she had to listen to what was happening to him.
  • During Calliope's severing, Theo is hit by a memory from when he was little. We get to see an unidentified vampire biting his birth mother on the neck and murdering her. Right in front of him!
  • A random patron at a bar, nicknamed "Mark", is lured out back by Elinor. He's drunk off his ass and tripping on ecstasy, making him even more vulnerable to what's about to happen. She and Juliette take turns feeding upon his arms until he finally drops. Just before Juliette can go for his neck, she realizes what they've just done to an innocent man.
    • Their disposal of his body isn't much better. After they toss him into the Savannah River, something approaches the spot and we're treated to rustling and splashing. We don't see what's going on, given that it's too dark, but we learned two episodes prior what dwells in the water, so it's pretty obvious what's happening down there.
    Elinor: And just like that, "Mark" becomes "Watermark".
    • Worse yet? Vampires have incredible senses, meaning it's likely that Juliette can see perfectly fine and is getting an eyeful of everything that's happening to him in all its gory detail. No wonder she's so horrified.
    • Elinor takes "Mark's" driver's license and tosses his wallet into the river because she likes keepsakes. A few seconds later, we see that she has dozens upon dozens of ID cards hidden in a black box in a storage locker! Not only that, but there are a bunch of cardboard boxes inside the locker, and we never see what's inside them, but it's possible that there are even more ID cards in them! How many people has she done this to?
    • The cherry on top? Elinor knows full well that the amount of a person's blood they need to fill themselves isn't enough to cause death. Elinor murders innocent people just because she can.
  • Phillipa's dog, Tiffany, digging up Cook's body. We don't see the whole thing, but we do see his hand. You'd be forgiven for thinking he was wearing a glove, given how blue and disheveled it is.

• First Goodbye
  • Before Apollo heads into the Wooden Stake Bar to talk to Elinor, Theo says that if she doesn't give up the information they want, he'll stake her just to enjoy her pain. Y'know, just in case you needed a reminder of how quickly a Burns can dehumanize someone they don't even know.
  • Apollo accidentally staking Theo. Not only is that horrifying all on its own, but it makes it clear to the audience that everything is about to change.
    • As if that's not bad enough, Elinor wipes their memory of her and their encounter that night, so they're stuck there wondering why Theo is dying, only aware that Apollo had something to do with it.
    • A bit of Fridge Horror, but why didn't Apollo call an ambulance? Well, keep in mind that he's a Black man with a dead body. Not only that, he has no idea how he wound up in that situation. How would that look to the police? Even if that wasn't the reason why he didn't dial 911, it's a legitimate concern to have.
  • While Calliope getting Margot off her ass is a cool moment, there's something disquieting about how casually she mentions that she and her family drew up murder plans against the legacy vampires at Juliette's consecration ceremony. Planning a mass murder is horrendous enough, but she talks about it like it's nothing. Mind you, she's 16. It reeks of Child Soldiers.
    • Juliette is understandably put off by this, as she realizes that the hunters will eventually learn how to kill legacies. This means her life will always be in danger on some level, even more so if she and Cal are together.

• First Betrayal
  • Elinor pinning Juliette against her bed and snarling accusations at her is already hard to watch, but anyone who's had to deal with abusive older siblings themselves might find this particularly skippable.
  • The way Juliette rises from her bed and looms over her sleeping sister with her fangs out and a Death Glare. She doesn't have any lethal intentions, but it's pretty jarring to see her behave the way you'd expect a vampire to behave because she rarely ever does it.
  • The Psychotic Smirk she wears when Elinor is being taken into custody by the S.W.A.T. team, as if to show us that she does have a malicious side to her.
  • While Elinor is in the interrogation room, we get another good glimpse into the depths of her depravity. We learn that she manipulated Oliver into committing a number of homicides that put their family and the legacy society at risk of exposure. She was the one who tricked their parents into thinking he was the one at fault, which got him kicked out of the society and shipped off to Prague five years prior. And her reason for stabbing her brother in the back like this? She just felt like it. He didn't do anything to provoke her, she wasn't under some sort of mind control, nobody bribed her... she just did it For the Evulz. She's so fucked up that she'll gleefully stab her own brother in the back just for fun.
    • Not only is it heinous on its own, but it throws the concern she's shown for the other members of her family into question. When she was scared for her dying father, was she only afraid that losing a parent would make it more difficult to become the Emerald Malkia's keeper? Was she truly trying to help raise Juliette into a "proper legacy" or was she simply grooming Juliette to be more like her? Given how easily she betrayed her brother, it makes you wonder how much of a prime candidate for betrayal everyone in her life is. The only bright spot at this point is that their parents aren't getting involved with her new legal troubles, so she's likely not going anywhere anytime soon.
  • Jack is scarily quick to disown Vampire!Theo and disturbingly eager to try to kill him. This was the same guy who remarked that he would've killed Cook for putting his hands on Cal had Juliette not already killed him... and yet here he is putting his hatred for supernatural beings over his family.

---