Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch) gets a work promotion in What We Do in the Shadows season 2 and it allows him to become more powerful than ever before. Though based on the film of the same name by Jermaine Clement and Taika Waititi, FX's What We Do in the Shadows is different from the movie. It stars Kayvan Novak, Natasia Demetriou, and Matt Berry as vampire roommates, Nandor, Nadja, and Laszlo, who are the subject of a documentary, but the TV show also includes a less traditional form of vampire - an energy vampire, Colin.
An energy vampire is a vampire who drains energy instead of blood, and usually through either boring or irritating their victims. Energy vampires are also daywalkers, meaning they can walk about in the sunlight and not be harmed. They can even use their powers against other vampires, making them a pretty terrible choice for three regular, blood-sucking vampires to pick as a roommate. Still, Colin's salary from his day job pays the vampires' rent, so they keep him around. But in What We Do in the Shadows season 2, Colin receives a promotion at work and it leads to him becoming even more powerful and more annoying.
While visiting the set of FX's What We Do in the Shadows last fall, Screen Rant had the opportunity to hear from executive producer, Paul Simms as well as Proksch about Colin's season 2 transformation. Simms explained how the promotion will affect Colin and lead to unrest among his roommates:
Colin gets a promotion at work and is able to not just drain people one at a time, but since he's the boss now, he can have meetings and just feed on everyone and it's sort of like... The metaphor we used when we were writing was sort of like steroids or cocaine. And like the more he feeds, the more he wants, and it starts transforming his body and his personality, and he gets so powerful that he becomes the most powerful vampire at the house. And they have to find a way to stop him before he drains them all completely.
However, Simms went to say that while it's true the promotion leads Colin to go mad with power, the ordeal will also reveal how badly Colin just wants to be friends with roommates:
That one also has a fun emotional twist where you see that Colin really, you know, even though every time that he walks in a room and they go like, 'Ugh, Colin, you know, please leave us alone.' That Colin actually thinks they're his friends, and is a little bit lonely and wants to be part of the gang, and people don't understand that he's not always feeding, he just is a boring person.
Proksch would later echo this sentiment, though he admitted that Colin's desire to become friends with Nandor, Nadja, and Laszlo does somewhat conflict with his being an energy vampire:
This season is how much he just wants to be friends with his roommates. Which is a little tricky because obviously he kills anyone he wants to befriend, just by talking and being around them. So I think it's a--what the writers did with it was very clever. And it goes beyond just the typical, you know, promotion sitcom idea. So I think it's pretty rewarding.
Colin receiving his promotion and using it to mass-drain his coworkers can be seen in the What We Do in the Shadows season 2 trailer, but his growing powers come with other side effects that Proksch was reluctant to expand on. He did, however, tease that "there's a handful of funny scenes with it, where I get to do physical comedy, which I love to do and I rarely get to do because I always play a schlub."
Tune in to see Colin get promoted and go out of his mind on energy when What We Do in the Shadows season 2 premieres Wednesday, April 15 on FX.