Vampires have long been a cultural touchstone, but they’ve never been as downright hysterical as they are in FX’s What We Do In the Shadows. A spin-off of the Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi movie of the same name, What We Do In the Shadows is one of the best-written shows airing on television right now, and one of the best aspects of this strange comedy is a character who’s equal parts riotous and terrifying – Nadja Doll.
Nadja Doll’s Evolution
If you’ve recently begun watching the show, you’ve likely gathered that the doll looks like and is named after the only female vampire in the core group, Nadja (Natasia Demetriou). But those who’ve been watching since the beginning will remember that Nadja Doll is actually the ghost of human Nadja who inhabited the doll.
Nadja Doll started as a silent sidekick to her vampiric self as vampiric Nadja didn’t want her roommates to know her ghost had taken a new form, but she slowly became a veritable part of the house the vampires inhabit on Staten Island (or the Island of Staten as Nandor calls it). The doll cements her status as a true denizen of the house in Season 3 when she runs away from vampiric Nadja after feeling ignored while vampiric Nadja is preoccupied with her new position on the Vampiric Council. Vampiric Nadja’s human ghost ends up in a department store, taking on different forms until she and vampiric Nadja make up and returns to the doll’s body.
Nadja Doll popped in and out of Season 4, notably joining vampiric Nadja and others for a girls’ night. She had a clear presence in the house, but she still stayed on the periphery with characters like the Baron, the Sire, and the Djinn. In the Season 5 premiere, we learned that while running the vampire nightclub, vampiric Nadja drunkenly sat on Nadja Doll and ruined her legs, and in turn, her spirit. Vampiric Nadja guiltily toted Nadja Doll around the rest of the episode, even to the vampire’s newly-discovered haven, the Mall.
Hope for Nadja Doll’s Future
What’s to become of Nadja Doll’s tiny body is yet to be seen. Colin Robinson and vampiric Nadja both attempted to fix Nadja Doll’s appendages, but neither solution pleased the doll. Though we trust the writers of What We Do In the Shadows implicitly, we want nothing more than for Nadja Doll to get more screen time in Season 5. She’s established herself as a snarky, clever character with just as much to offer as her vampiric self.
We need vampiric Nadja to solve the problem of Nadja Doll’s legs as soon as possible so Nadja Doll can return to her sassy personality. In the meantime, we need the aforementioned secondary characters to continue making appearances, and perhaps be introduced to even more, because those bizarre extensions of the main vampires make for entertainment as endless as a vampire’s life. And we need What We Do In the Shadows to exist in perpetuity, just like its main characters.
What We Do In the Shadows is streaming now on Hulu.
