How What We Do in the Shadows' season 3 ending sets up season 4

What We Do in the Shadows season 3 finale spoilers follow.

Things will be pretty different for the vampires of Staten Island when What We Do in the Shadows returns for season four.

Left at the train station like unattended luggage, Nandor (Kayvan Novak) is now set to travel the world alone; Nadja (Natasia Demetriou), on her quest to join the Supreme Vampiric Council, has been boxed up and shipped off to sunny England – with Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) sent as her protector; and Laszlo (Matt Berry) now finds himself on secret babysitting duties.

The baby in question? That would be none other than Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch), the resident "energy vampire" and focus of season three’s biggest twist.

BBC

For the majority of the season, Colin Robinson (one must always use his full name) spends his time investigating the origins of his own kind – the FX mockumentary series has largely kept us in the dark about energy vampires, making the random inclusion of such a creature all the more amusing. And while we still have no definitive answer about where they come from, we do learn one surprising fact: they all snuff it on their 100th birthday.

In the penultimate episode of the season, it’s shockingly revealed that Colin Robinson has reached the end of his lifecycle, and will soon expire. Sure enough, his decaying, flatulent being eventually caves in like a manky pumpkin, leaving us in no doubt that the bespectacled drainer has indeed died.

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But thankfully, this isn’t the end for Colin Robinson. In fact, it’s a new beginning. The season finale delivered the biggest surprise of all when an infant version of the character slithered out of his putrid corpse, confirming that a new 100-year cycle has begun.

Now, as we head into the fourth season, Colin Robinson and his rebirth look set to be the main focus. And it’s a good job too because he’s the best thing about the show. Well, aside from Matt Berry’s sensational line deliveryyyyyyy.

As fans know, Colin Robinson is a very different being from his immortal housemates, in that he doesn’t have fangs and he doesn’t drink blood. Instead, he feeds on the energy of others by boring them with long, uninteresting rambles, terrible jokes and pointless trivia. He drones on and on until his prey is essentially asleep, and then he feasts, his eyes literally glowing with glee as he drains them of their will to live.

He’s inherently dull, but that’s exactly what makes him so funny and relatable. After all, we all know a Colin Robinson – that guy at the office who makes mundane small talk, or a friend who bangs on about TV motion smoothing for an inane amount of time. In a show full of supernatural monsters, he is our satirical link to reality.

BBC

His character was used sparingly (but cleverly) in the first two seasons of Shadows, interjecting a dash of drollness here and there to contrast with the outlandish behaviour of his housemates. But now, he’s very much at the forefront.

With the reveal of his death and subsequent rebirth, the show has been launched in an unexpected direction, creating interesting new dynamics between the characters (Nadja won’t be best pleased when she finds out her husband Laszlo abandoned her to babysit a little energy sucker).

More importantly, though, Colin Robinson’s transformation provides the writers with an opportunity to further the development of his character. As showrunner Paul Simms pointed out in a recent interview with Rolling Stone, keeping things fresh was a key factor when deciding on the energy vampire’s arc throughout the seasons.

"[Writer] Stefani Robinson was the one who, after season one, was like, 'We can’t just have Colin boring people. It’s fun, and when we find new twists to do, it’s fun. But it’s too easy to fall back on him telling a boring story and people falling asleep because he's so exhausting,'" said Simms.

"That's why in the next two seasons, he became more a part of the group and a fleshed-out character."

What remains to be seen is whether we'll get the same sort of amusement out of Colin Robinson in season four, given that he's now a demonic infant instead of an annoying, everyday man. Proksch himself has even confirmed that the majority of his work is now being done in front of a green screen, suggesting it'll be quite some time before he returns to adult form.

BBC

If that's the case, we could be deprived of the one thing that makes his character so effective. But at the same time, the scope for comedy has now broadened significantly.

Just imagine an effin' and jeffin' Laszlo trying to tame a projectile-vomiting newborn as it crawls up the walls and incessantly screams, sucking the life-force from him in a wholly different manner. In other words, we're about to learn how draining a baby can truly be.

What We Do in the Shadows airs on FX in the US and BBC Two and BBC iPlayer in the UK.