Recap / What We Do in the Shadows S 1 E 3 "Werewolf Feud"

Season 1, Episode 3

Werewolf Feud

The fragile truce between the vampires and Staten Island's werewolves is tested, and Colin Robinson finds romance with a new co-worker.

Tropes That Appear In This Episode:

• Been There, Shaped History: While confirmed the next season, Laszlo's garden dedicated to his favorite women contains the first implications that he was Jack the Ripper.
• Blatant Lies:
  • Upon finding Arjan on their lawn, clearly caught in a wolf trap:
    Nadja: Laszlo, did you lay a [werewolf] trap?
    Laszlo: What? No, no, nothing to do with me.
  • Arjan does have a Healing Factor, but it's not as fast-acting as he claims.
• Cranky Neighbor: Laszlo hates his neighbor Shaun, insulting him and then using his hypnosis to wipe his memory before he gets hostile.
• Destination Defenestration: Arjan jumps through the window when fleeing from the vampires house.
• Emotion Eater: Evie is an emotional vampire (a type of psychic vampire). While Colin Robinson feeds on energy by being obnoxiously invasive and boring, Evie feeds on pity by being emotionally clingy and making scenes in public about her personal life.
• Failed Attempt at Drama:
  • When the vampires make it to the Truce Zone, they try and make a badass entrance, but they are five minutes early, so no one is there to see it.
  • When Nandor tries to give a badass pre-battle one-liner, Guillermo thinks he might die and asks him not to phrase it the way he does.
• Five-Token Band: The Staten Island Werewolf Support Group is composed of an Indian, a Native American, an African-American, a Caribbean-Canadian (a Saskatoonian, specifically), and a Caucasian.
• Fun with Acronyms: Evie is an Emotional Vampire. Colin kicks himself for not catching on sooner.
• Fur Against Fang: While a truce has been made between the vampires and werewolves of Staten Island, neither side likes each other and any little thing could set off conflict.
• Guile Hero: When picking a weapon to fight a nine-foot-tall pissed-off werewolf on a roof, Nandor picks a squeaky dog toy, gets the wolf's attention, and then throws it off the roof, upon which the wolf jumps after it. The toy was already in Nandor's stash of weapons prepared for him by Guillermo, suggesting that he may have done this before.
• Magical Native American: Discussed. Nadja asks the werewolves if they're Indian, and they blame The Twilight Saga (where the wolf shapeshifters were Quileute) for this misconception. One of them is Native American, but that has nothing to do with being a werewolf. It's not an ethnic thing.
• Meaningful Name: See Fun with Acronyms above.
• New Meat: Colin Robinson likes going after new coworkers because the job (and Colin Robinson himself) has not sucked the life from them yet.
• Not a Morning Person: Inverted. Colin Robinson identifies as a morning person, annoying his roommates being his "cup of coffee". (Said roommates play it straight, obviously, and presumably so do many of Colin's other victims.)
• Our Werewolves Are Different: In wolf form, they look like huge, anthropomorphic wolves that can walk on their hind legs. They display typical animal behaviour, even in human form, like marking their territory with urine. They have the classic weakness to silver. While the full moon is usually required for them to transform, at least one of them can actively trigger his transformation even without the full moon by simply imagining the full moon being there (he has a vivid imagination). This catches the vampires by surprise, as they fully anticipated the werewolves being unable to transform on the night of the duel due to there being no full moon.
• Pet the Dog: The vampires leave the werewolves to "lick their wounds" (figuratively) after the fight, and genuinely sympathize with their loss.
• Shown Their Work: Just as the term "energy vampire" used for Colin is a Real Life (if somewhat overwrought) term that people use for interacting with someone somewhere on the antisocial personality disorder spectrum (someone who enjoys deliberately wasting your time or pissing you off), "emotional vampire" is a term for someone who (like Evie) intentionally generates emotional conflict to "feed" on other people's reactions of pity and distress, a trait associated with other cluster B personality disorders (usually histrionic or borderline personality disorder).
• Skin Walker: During their stalemate, Nadja throws jabs at them by asking if they are all Indians. They all take offense to that, though one comments that he is Indian because his father is from India, while another actually is Native American, who insists that him being a werewolf is a coincidence.
• Trial by Combat: In the Vampire/Werewolf compact, it is mentioned that if a werewolf pack and vampire house start fighting, each side picks one of their own and those two shall fight in a Truce Zone.
• Wizard Duel: After hours, Colin Robinson and Evie do a face-off, trying to out-drain each other. After a dramatic face-off that ends in a draw with both of them severely exhausted, they decide that they would be more effective if they worked together.
• The Woobie: Exploited In-Universe. Evie is a weaponized Woobie, able to drain energy from people's pity and sympathy no matter how obviously fake her sob stories are.