Title: 299 Fandom: Doctor Who Characters/Pairing(s): Donna Noble Rating: All ages Word count: 1,408 Spoilers: None Summary: The intersection of coding and design satisfied Donna's restless brain in ways it hadn’t been satisfied since before ... well, before whatever she’d lost had left her adrift again and her mother and Gramps tight-lipped but supportive.
I first met Captain Nemo as a child in Jules Verne’s novels and, like many, was instantly hooked by this enigmatic science-pirate – Prince Dakkar, insurgent commander of a leviathanic submarine. And when he died from exhaustion in The Mysterious Island (1874), entombed aboard his beloved Nautilus, it felt like a fitting end: an outlaw, a legend, a story, laid to rest, living on in my dreams. Or so I thought.
Picking up an issue of Alan Moore’s and Kevin O’Neill’s TheLeague of Extraordinary Gentlemen in 1999, I discovered that Nemo’s story extended far beyond his lonely death in the confines of his famed submarine. Resurrected alongside other literary figures like Mina Murray, Allan Quartermain, and the infamous Mr. Hyde, Nemo became part of a Gothicised superhero team: a rattle-bag of oddballs, with a thick vein of monstrosity. In league to save humanity, but also, perhaps, with the devil? And so, in some ways, was I. Reading Moore’s work often leaves me caught between pleasure and unease, but that’s another story.
In this new saga, Nemo picks up right where he left off, at the helm of the Nautilus, revered captain of his brigand crew. Despite its problematic characterisations and storylines, I was hooked again – drawn in by the enduring allure of Nemo. And so it went until the third volume of the series, where, to my dismay, I saw Nemo die once more: a frail, ageing man fading away in his cabin. A death so unlike the traditional valiant deaths afforded heroes, if they die at all. My chagrin wasn’t, however, merely tied to the manner of his death, but to its necessity, because, in this story at least, Nemo didn’t have to die.
The League saga spans epochs, populated by more than a few immortal or long-lived characters, including the aforementioned Ms. Murray, Orlando, or Dorian Grey among them. So why not Nemo? Could he have taken a dip in the Pool of Fire, granting him long life and allowing him to fight through time like the story’s other undying characters?
Certainly.
But he didn’t.
And he didn’t take that fateful plunge, because Moore and O’Neill had other plans for him, encoded into his very name: Nemo, which means no one or nobody – a clever nod to Odysseus’ life-saving deception when he tricked the drunken Cyclops Polyphemus. Yet in being nobody, in being no one, Nemo unlocks another power: the ability, as we’ll discover, to be anybody and everyone.
The name “Nemo” then begins to serve, as is often the case within superhero and adventure genres, as a codename: an identity and a legacy passed from one person to the next, as with Ra’s al-Ghul from the Batman mythos or the masked avenger, Zorro. The “legacy character” trope is popular within pirate mythology too, notably with the Dread Pirate Roberts of The Princess Bride (1987). “Nemo” is thus an orientation towards the world – anonymous and bodiless – a catch-all term for a constellation of ideas and values, or a particular way of being.
Yet names, like words, carry layers of meaning. In Latin, Nemo translates as “not a man”; in Oromo, “the man.” Interpretations that open up a field of possibility in the not-so-small matter of Captain Nemo’s rebirth as a woman, of which more later. Suffice to say, that “Nemo” has plenty of wiggle room for exploring and subverting notions of identity. And it’s the quality and handling of this identity play that interests me, and its effect.
Stories Matter. So Does How We Tell Them.
Story is the beating heart of social action, helping us to envision a just and equitable world. Yet it’s not enough to simply observe how mainstream stories shape or constrain our imagination of what is possible; we need to dig deeper into how they work. Method doesn’t always marry up with message. As Kristen Warner’s idea of “plastic representation” points out, mainstream media often privileges surface over meaningful substance.
Speculative stories, for example, may appear promising, brimming with possibilities. But before calling “Progress!”, we must be sure they aren’t sheep in wolf suits. That’s to say: we need to test the charm of diverse media representation. We need to ask: How are storytellers – still mostly straight white men – depicting women and underrepresented groups, and with what consequences?
Genderswap storytelling is one such way. And, unlike a lot of modern descriptors, its meaning is fairly clear: swapping a character’s sex – usually from male-bodied to female-bodied – and their gender identity. Yet, as Ann McClellan notes, it’s more nuanced than that. Of course, swapping goes beyond sex and gender identity, frequently involving race and sexuality, and it can be multidimensional.
Used by fans, artists, activists, and media producers alike, swap storytelling has become a popular tool for diversifying narratives and challenging norms. In fan spaces, genderswap queers canon, makes space for trans and nonbinary identities, and imagines storyworlds through more inclusive lenses. In mainstream media, it’s often – controversially – used to revamp franchises or signal progressive values. Think of gender-flipped reboots like Ghostbusters or Doctor Who. Activists and educators also harness genderswap storytelling in workshops and performances to confront stereotypes and provoke dialogue around systemic bias. For example, the UK-based collective G(end)er Swap uses fashion-based storytelling to help trans and gender-nonconforming individuals explore identity through genderbending aesthetics, challenging binary norms in public and educational spaces.
But it’s not a uniformly liberatory practice. Some iterations feel more authentic and effective than others, depending on who’s telling the story, how it’s framed, and what power dynamics are at play. As we’ll see, for every thoughtful reimagining, there’s one that reinscribes the very norms it claims to subvert. Swap storytelling is an ambivalent practice, capable of expanding representation but also of flattening complexity or sparking controversy. Beyond representation, genderswap storytelling invites deeper inquiry into power, identity, and visibility, challenging who is centred in our narratives and why.
What do genderswap stories reveal about women’s empowerment – about how we envision women stepping into central roles in stories and in society? About how it even happens: How do women come to occupy powerful positions, get inside power? What kind of “new” world do swap stories gesture toward? What’s different, the same? In other words, how are they radical? Invoking Angela Davis, how do they grasp things at the root?
Beyond the worn-out debates on “forced diversity,” it’s worth asking: What does swap storytelling actually contribute? What myths does it reinforce or create? What are these “bold reimaginings” truly achieving, or neglecting? While economic factors like branding, franchise continuity, and familiarity clearly play a role, the question remains: why do creative industries gravitate toward genderswapping existing characters, rather than, say, crafting original female-led narratives, written by women and diverse creative teams?
Yet, this critique shouldn’t dismiss the potential of swap storytelling altogether. When done well, it unlocks rich narrative possibilities, offering profound insights into representation and the fluidity of identity. And we’ve seen this potential realised, sometimes evocatively, in recent retellings and reinterpretations that use genderswapping not as a gimmick, but as a tool for rupture and reawakening.
Switched at Myth: Retellings that Rupture
Recent retellings like Gender Swapped Fairy Tales and Gender Swapped Greek Myths offer bold reversals of traditional narratives, revealing just how deeply gendered our cultural storytelling has always been. Television has taken up the mantle too: in Van Helsing (2016–2021), the iconic vampire hunter becomes Vanessa Van Helsing, a female descendant who battles the undead in a post-apocalyptic world, where horror intertwines with maternal strength and survival. Meanwhile, Dracula (2020) introduces Sister Agatha Van Helsing, a witty, atheist nun whose philosophical duels with the Count recast the mythos through irreverence, intellect, and feminist edge. Both versions rework the Van Helsing archetype to explore gender, power, and heroism in radically different ways.
Figure 2: Maxine Peake as Hamlet
Elsewhere, reimagined stagings of Julius Caesar, Hamlet, and The Tempest – with Sigourney Weaver as Prospero – disrupt familiar scripts of power and ambition, while fan versions of Hamilton centre women and nonbinary performers to recast the revolutionary myth. In comics, Jane Foster’s transformation into Thor redefines heroism through vulnerability and resilience, while Renee Montoya’s tenure as The Question brings queer identity and moral complexity to the heart of Gotham’s vigilante mythos.
Alongside these more visible reimaginings, grassroots practices like genderbending and genderfuck offer a rawer, often more subversive mode of storytelling – one that resists tidy binaries and embraces ambiguity. Genderbending typically reimagines a character as another gender, often flipping male to female or vice versa, and is frequently used in fanfiction and cosplay to explore alternative dynamics or expand representation. Think of fanart that redraws Harry Potter as a girl, or cosplay that recasts traditional male characters like Link from The Legend of Zelda, Geralt from The Witcher, or even Batman, softening hard-edged masculinity and crafting new visions of strength, identity, and agency.
Genderfuck, by contrast, scrambles gender altogether: mixing signals, parodying norms, and exposing the constructedness of identity itself. It surfaces in drag, transfic that plays with mutable bodies and pronouns, and zines like Mail Order Bride that deliberately blur gender presentation. As Fanlore notes, genderfuck stories resist the tidy “man = male = masculine / woman = female = feminine” equation, embracing contradiction and fluidity instead. Whether through transformative fanart, bodyswap fic, or queer-coded reinterpretations, these practices don’t just rewrite canon, they rupture it, making room for identities and desires that mainstream narratives often overlook.
Taken together, these examples show how swap storytelling can be both playful and political, reshaping who gets to lead, love, and survive. When thoughtfully executed, identity swaps move beyond surface-level diversity and resonate with meaningful, context-driven storytelling. The challenge lies in striking a balance: embracing reimaginings while also championing fresh, authentic stories that reflect a wider array of voices and experiences.
So, the concern isn’t that identity swapping is an option; rather, it’s that it is becoming the go-to way to quickly and conveniently diversify stories, overshadowing opportunities to create original, diverse narratives, and often sidestepping deeper considerations. And, as I get into later, maybe the clue is in the name.
Figure 3: Janni as Nemo
Un/Becoming Nemo
[Content warning: This section contains material about rape and sexual violence.]
We meet Princess Janni Dakkar, Captain Nemo’s wilful adolescent daughter, in the opening chapter of the third volume. After a moonlit dip off Lincoln Island, she is summoned to her father’s sickbed, where a bitter argument unfolds – one that has played out many times before. It is a dispute over legacy, over a father’s dying wish to continue, to persist, in this world. Simply put: Nemo needs an heir. Not just any heir – several of his crew could succeed him – he wants a consanguine heir; specifically, a male blood relation successor. But he has only one child, and she wants no part of his world.
Seeking to escape both her father’s control and the weight of his dynastic demand, Janni flees to London and adopts the alias Jenny Diver. Taking refuge in a shabby dockside hotel, she tries to go unnoticed, not just to the brutish men in the bar but to her father as well. Her anonymity, however, is shattered when one of Nemo’s crew arrives bearing news of his death. Soon after, a gang of men attack her in the hotel yard, leaving her brutalised and broken. Fuelled by pain, loss, and a thirst for vengeance, Janni summons the Nautilus – its hull now painted black, her father’s skull nailed grimly to the forecastle – and calls its crew to her. She will become Captain Nemo.
Descending upon the waterfront, the riotous pirates unleash destruction, annihilating everything and everyone in their path. Amid the chaos, veteran pirate Broad Arrow Jack seizes a rare moment of calm to present Janni with her father’s greatcoat and sword. As the swashbuckling rescue reaches its orgiastic climax, Jack presents her with one more thing: her hangdog rapists, asking whether they should die slow or quick. Without hesitation, Janni replies, “Kill them slow.”
Her first command as Captain Nemo seals their fate – and her own. Seeking refuge in London, she had hoped to lose herself, to start over as a nobody. Yet this small death, this petite mort, twistedly grants her wish, erasing Janni and leaving only Nemo in her place. She disappears forever into the folds of her father’s great green mantle coat and into his name, bound by their reluctant blood covenant. Like Oedipus, Janni is condemned to a destiny she did not choose, her actions and identity shaped by forces beyond her control. She will live cursing a fate that compels her to embody the very role she had sought to escape: the fearsome pirate queen, Captain Nemo.
Before departing for Lincoln Island, Janni crosses paths with Mina Murray who is unaware of the piratical power shift. When Mina inquires her name, Janni delivers a sardonic, hollow reply, “Me? I’m no one.” And with that, the Nautilus dives to depth, carrying its ribald crew back to self-imposed seclusion. In retreating, it exits both the scene and the story, effectively segregating this chapter – and the new Captain Nemo – from the broader League narrative.
Figure 4: Spin-off trilogy front cover designs
The Jeopardy of Genderswap Storytelling
The late Captain’s conflicted, reactionary stance reflects real-world resistance to women and gender diverse people assuming positions of public power. As Janni rightly notes, her father needs – but does not want – to see a woman inherit his place in the world. Yet, this is the cost of immortality and relevance, ensuring his story continues. It’s difficult not to draw a parallel between this tension and the creative industries’ own conflicted approach to diversity and inclusivity in an increasingly polarised world, a world caught in the struggle between progress and tradition. As the supremacy of straight white men is contested, swap storytelling becomes not merely a means of reshaping stories but a lens through which existing power structures can be challenged, or perhaps left largely intact.
Captain Nemo is undeniably now a woman, yet what truly changes?
Autocracy – or more specifically, piratocracy – remains the name of the game. Hierarchies persist: captain, mate, crew. Under Janni’s rule, Lincoln Island remains a patriarchal society – men “play,” while women are playthings. Old-guard values of vengeance violence, and competitiveness persist. Men continue as sole agents of change, still shaping the trajectories of women’s lives, still saving them from other men. The Nautilus’ crew too accepts Janni as their leader without hesitation. This ready acceptance, while affirming on the surface, ultimately underscores the persistence of the status quo rather than signalling any meaningful shift or challenge to established norms. After all, if any group were to rebel against unwelcome changes, wouldn’t it be pirates, the very embodiment of defiance and unruly independence?
And that’s the heart of the matter, isn’t it?
Things have changed, but the deeper implications – the true transformation – remain elusive. For, if the essence of Nemo remains unchanged, then what does this identity swap actually do? Does it challenge entrenched power structures, reframe the character’s motivations, or explore how gender itself shapes the experience of leadership and rebellion? Or does it merely dress the story in a different form, leaving the core untouched?
Figure 5: Mobilis in Mobili
Alas, no. Janni does not redefine what it means to be Nemo. Instead, walking in his footsteps and dwelling in his shadow, she inherits her father’s legacy – occupying the space he once held in the world and in the imagological realm. Yet she seems to fall short of embodying his maxim, Mobilis in Mobili: “moving within motion” or “changing through change.”
Inscribed on a mirror in the captain’s quarters, this motto encapsulates the interplay of change and continuity, offering fertile ground for reimagining characters like Captain Nemo in different forms, such as a different gender. It invites a moment of reflection: when Janni gazes into the mirror, does she see herself, her father, or an intermingling of both? And how, in turn, do we perceive her? Is she a commanding pirate queen, steering her own course, or simply a reassuring echo of stability amid change?
The tension between the potential for radical reinvention and the preservation of legacy lies at the core of this character’s resurrection. When change is only superficial, the promise of transformation dissolves into continuity. And that perhaps is the contradiction at the heart of “Mobilis in Mobili” – movement that appears fluid, yet remains bound within its own constraints. Though Janni possesses qualities both inherited and uniquely her own, her story does not fully realise the potential of swap storytelling, which could explore identity through transformation while still preserving the essence of the original character. But here, as in most mainstream cases, it does not.
Figure 6: Janni Dakkar, Captain Nemo II overshadowed by her father
Illusions of Change and Failed Imaginaries
Moore and O’Neill may have had radical intentions when they set about genderswapping Captain Nemo, but their plan had a fatal flaw: it relied on reimagining, on building upon what came before: an approach that seldom sparks the radical imagination, whether for characters or the world. This flaw that becomes further compounded when we consider the essence of a swap: an exchange of like for like, where what is given or received carries similar or equal value, meaning, or significance. Again, the sense of continuity rather than disruption, succession rather than innovation – of radical change interrupted.
Considering the nature of swapping, it’s hardly surprising how little truly changes. And – without veering too far into cynicism – it’s easy to see why the creative industries so readily embrace these methods. After all, the “swap system” not only affirms binary frameworks but also accommodates the surface-level change that institutional power finds acceptable.
The architects of Nemo’s reimagining offer an illusion, a ripple on the surface, a promise of something different. Yet Moore’s and O’Neill’s decision to genderswap Captain Nemo surely speaks to a desire to imagine the world anew. Unpicking this tension reveals the trajectory of a conflicted creative impulse, moving from the imaginary realm to the page: a radical urge – the wish to craft a powerful female character – is stifled through its enactment – genderswap – only to flicker briefly in characterisation – Janni’s reluctance to become another Nemo – but, in the end, is derailed by the constraints of the storytelling mode and a vaulted imaginary – Janni takes her father’s place, and the status quo persists.A creative struggle that mirrors real-world tensions in the pursuit of radical alternatives, whether in storytelling or social action. At its core lies the ever-present dilemma: evolution or revolution?
Janni’s story, much like the portrayal of her ascent to power, is deeply conflicted, a journey ignited by violence and shaped not by her own will but by men’s desires and actions. What intrigues me most about her rise, however, is the reluctance that defines it, a hesitation that does not stem from rejecting power or fearing self-determination. After all, she actively forges a new life in London. Rather, her reluctance to become another Nemo reveals a deeper struggle: a resistance against the burdens of legacy, succession, and replication, which threaten to erase her individuality. Put otherwise, Janni yearns for a revolution of the self and fears the prospect of a simple swap, an evolution that threatens to snuff her out. Her fear, deeply rooted, proves justified; the inheritance of her father’s “burdensome legacy” and the seizure of power demand a terrible price – her very self.
Moore and O’Neill give us a truly bleak representation of a gendered power shift that utterly erodes the symbolic force of Janni’s transformation from disempowered girl to formidable pirate queen. A portrayal that does little to challenge existing stories of power and women’s emancipation, in which familiar, binary perceptions emerge: nothing truly changes when women hold powerful positions; empowering women is only doable within the constraints of the status quo. Women’s liberation remains tolerable precisely because it sidesteps, or postpones, profound societal transformation. For women, the cost of emancipation is the loss of self. As Mary Beard observes, “we have no template for what a powerful woman looks like, except that she looks rather like a man.”
Janni’s admission that her father’s coat weighs heavily upon her shoulders – that his legacy is suffocating – parallels, for example, the experiences of many women in prominent public roles: corseted into established norms of behaviour, burdened with the responsibility of upholding institutional legacies, compelled to defer to men’s authority, knowledge, and experience, and conditioned to self-police for fear of having their leadership be dismissed or condemned. Remembering the layered meanings of “Nemo” – as no one, as anyone, and as “the man” – it’s clear that anyone can, indeed, be Nemo, as long as they continue to enact male power.
Feminist social action is also marked by gradualism, succession, and continuation – what Virginia Woolf called “procession.” It’s the pursuit of change through patience, negotiation, legislation, and civility politics: methods that aim to assimilate rather than disrupt. Yet these step-by-step strategies rarely yield radical transformation. Progress remains fragile, vulnerable to backlash and reversal, as seen in the persistent fight for equal pay, the erosion of reproductive rights, and the Taliban’s brutal dismantling of women’s freedoms in Afghanistan.
Such incrementalism demands time – too much time. It breeds frustration, echoing Fannie Lou Hamer’s cry of being “sick and tired of being sick and tired.” In storytelling, as in activism, I find it hard to champion approaches that gesture toward change without fully committing to it. Like real-world politics, they often seek to swap the status quo rather than snap it, offering symbolic shifts instead of structural ruptures.
Scratching the surface reveals the unmistakable scent of something rotten, an enduring moulder that mere rebranding cannot remedy: social hierarchy. To extend the metaphor further, we can also sniff out the ruinous idea, expressed by Murray Bookchin, that the “assumption that what currently exists must necessarily exist is the acid that corrodes all visionary thinking.” In both fiction and reality, swapping practices reveal the corrosive impact of failed imaginaries, undermining the potential for meaningful systemic transformation and leaving existing structures intact.
While appearing to wildly speculate on alternate realities – populated by immortals, monsters, time travellers, and a pirate queen – Moore and O’Neill ultimately failed to imagine meaningful alternatives. This failure of imagination reaches beyond official creators, touching media fans and activists alike. Encouraged by mainstream media propaganda and so forth, it’s easy to mistake surface-level change for genuine progress, drawn in by what Forough Farrokhzad called “pleasing promises.” Think “bait-and-switch” tactics, where corporate creators and producers offer the illusion of something desired, such as greater diversity, but fail to follow through. (Audiences, however, are increasingly aware of the need to examine not just the content of stories but also modes of storytelling. Who is doing the telling, the making, and the sharing?)
The diversification of mainstream media is undeniably exciting. But sometimes – okay, a lot of the time – I feel deeply conflicted about how my dream of an equal world appears on page, stage, and screen, particularly in swap stories.It’s not how I imagine it. This emotional dissonance isn’t mine alone; many feel unsettled by these stories, which blend progressive aspirations and reactionary undertones, leaving few satisfied. Confronting these feelings is essential, not merely to grasp why “plastic” stories disturb us but to recognise and resist the limiting effects of failed imaginaries on our potential to create radical, alternate worlds.
And I wonder how these veiled failed imaginaries – betraying, as James Baldwin argued, a “thinness of imagination” – reflect broader failures to radically imagine emancipation, justice, and equality. What do we lose when seemingly well-intentioned creators produce this becalmed kind of work, all roar and no bite, like a paper tiger? What purpose does it serve to create illusions of change, and what is the cost? If “radical” imagining does not open other ways of seeing and being in the world, then, I wonder: what is the point?
Though it may seem cynical to suggest a deliberate effort to limit public imagination regarding the nature of social change, history offers ample precedent. Propaganda has been with us for as long as people have been telling stories, lurking in every book and artwork, as George Orwell observed. What, then, are mainstream swap stories trying to tell us, to persuade us, about social change? What perceptions and sensibilities might they seek to cultivate within their audiences?
Confusion. Distraction. Indifference. Helplessness. A few effects that come quickly to mind. Acclimatisation is another: fostering the belief that gender equality will never alter anything substantively nor systemically, leaving the status quo intact. Inevitability too: the disheartening sense that the social world we inhabit cannot be escaped, and that imagining alternatives is futile because the outcome was always predetermined. It narrows the scope of debate around gender equality and encourages the harmful fallacy that creating original women characters is difficult, unrewarding, unprofitable, and ultimately not worth the effort.
Curbing meaningful progress is another consequence, which goes hand in hand with the tempering of public expectations. Closely tied to this is the notion that progress is best ensured through social evolution rather than revolution, invoking ideas of gradualism, gesture politics, symbolic transformation, and the persistent call for patience, to wait just a little longer for the “right” conditions. While the creative industries are a vital part of our storytelling apparatus, capable of bringing both sunshine and rain, they must be approached with care; we must, that is, remain vigilant about the processions we wish to join.
Yet people aren’t sitting around helplessly hoping for authentic, radical stories. They’re out there making them, for themselves and for each other. Stories to enlighten, empower, provoke, unite, and mobilise. Media fans, as we saw earlier, routinely create genderswap fanworks – though they more often call it “genderbending” or “genderfuck.” A linguistic choice both critiquing and resisting the limitations of its mainstream counterpart and a story for another time. Unlike, or perhaps in defiance of, the creative industries, media fans, DIY creators, and grassroots activists understand one crucial truth: that we cannot simply swap our way into a just and equal world.
Ultimately, building such a world demands bold, transformative action and authentic storytelling: narratives that confront entrenched systems rather than merely reconfigure them. Only then can we begin to newly imagine the future.
Biography
Ellen Kirkpatrick is a writer with a PhD in Cultural Studies and a passion for (counter)stories. Based in the north of Ireland, she writes mostly about pop culture, fan cultures, radical imaginaries, and the transformative power of story. Her book Recovering the Radical Promise of Superheroes: Un/Making Worlds was published by punctum books (2023). ellenkirkpatrick.co.uk
‘Emmys Watch 2025’ showcases critical responses to the series nominated for Outstanding Drama, Outstanding Comedy, and Outstanding Limited Series at that 77th Primetime Emmy Awards. Contributions to this theme explore critical understandings of some series nominated in these categories.
Throughout the six seasons of FX’s vampire mockumentary sitcom What We Do in the Shadows (2019-2025), there is a recurring refrain: “nothing ever changes.” The show, created by Jemaine Clement and building on Clement and Taika Waititi’s New Zealand film What We Do in the Shadows (2014), is set in a rambling house in Staten Island and follows the daily lives of four vampire housemates: Persian warlord Nandor the Relentless (Kayvan Novak); married couple Laszlo Cravensworth (Matt Berry), an English dandy, and Nadja of Antipaxos (Natasia Demetrious), a Greek Romani peasant; and American energy vampire Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch), who lives in the basement and feeds by irritating and boring other people. The immigrant vampires arrived in Staten Island by boat, tasked with taking over the new world by Baron Afanas (Doug Jones), but were too lazy and incompetent to advance beyond conquering their street (and half of Ashley Street); Colin just came with the house. Nandor’s long-suffering and hypercompetent familiar Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) provides a link to the mortal world. His intimate relationship with Nandor and his desire to become a vampire himself offers the show emotional stakes and a narrative throughline.
What We Do in the Shadows (2014)
What We Do in the Shadows (fx, 2019-2025)
Like its precursor, Shadows riffs lovingly on the history of vampire media and the absurdities spawned by placing ridiculous characters with high opinions of themselves in banal settings. More interestingly, the formal demands of episodic, longform storytelling quicky butt up against vampiric torpor in curious ways, just as the mockumentary form creates unexpected opportunities to enrich the show’s themes. For the vampires, time is effectively infinite, so boredom and indifference easily set in. Similarly, the repetitive nature of the sitcom format demands episodes that move from order to disorder and back again but limits the amount of character and narrative development that can happen over seasons or shows. Guillermo complains about the vampires’ inability to change, the mess in the house, and the “Groundhog Day” like sense of inertia that comes when you’re surrounded by indifferent immortals.
Nonetheless, What We Do in the Shadows becomes a fascinating exercise in comic storytelling as it takes a well-worn “fish out of water” (or out of time) narrative common to comic vampire media (Bacon 2022) and finds ways to prompt (and sometimes comment on) character and narrative development in the face of formal and vampiric stagnation – something very visible now that the show has wrapped after six highly acclaimed seasons. Shadows is notable for many things: its rich world-building; its terrific production design; its enthusiastic and capacious attitudes towards diverse sexualities; its contributions to vampire lore; its genre hybridity; its international creative and production teams, which result in a unique combination of different national approaches to humour; its melding of the comic and the gothic; its combination of scripted and improvised material. But it is its awareness of its own form, and the strengths and limitations of that form, and formula, that particularly mark the show’s intelligence.
vampire residence in what we do in the shadows
The rubber band ping of a return from chaos to stasis becomes its own kind of comic engine. Each season the setting is the same, but the characters have individual arcs, goals, or preoccupations that drive the situations. Nandor wants a wife (and gets one and regrets it). Nadja decides to open a night club (and does and ruins it). Laszlo wants to go full mad scientist and build a monster (and succeeds but then must look after it). The vampires ascend to the Vampire Council, with the support of The Guide (Kristin Schall), but renege on their duties. They travel overseas but return home again, or they grow bored with their new hobbies. They run up against old foes and nurture never-ending grudges. In the spirit of playful Gothic “bizzarchitecture,” the “vampire residence” seems to grow bigger and bigger on the inside as new rooms or spaces are discovered.
The show has also been prone to some odd resets, as entire storylines from earlier seasons are not quite retconned but certainly discarded. In season two, Colin, subject to his own peculiar and unknown biological life cycle, ails and dies. In season three he is reborn, and raised through adolescence by Laszlo, before arriving at adulthood with no memory of the transition. (This wryly points to the way sitcoms that are stuck in a rut might shake things up with the introduction of a baby.) The ideological impulse under the sitcom format structurally may be seen as conservative, falling back into the familiar and unable to get traction on meaningful change, leaving its subjects to make do and accept their lot (Mintz 1985). Here that rhythm, and those limitations, enrich an understanding of the vampires’ immortality (and their uselessness!) and form the series’ comic underpinnings.
This creates problems for Guillermo, who offers the audience an emotional anchor. Queer, misunderstood, shy, low status, and full of want, Guillermo starts the series desperate to become a vampire and to be recognised as an equal, if only oblivious Nandor will recognise his potential and grant his wish. It’s a “will they, won’t they” storyline, ripped straight from the romantic comedy playbook (Lord and Hogan 2024), but there is something a little tragic about Guillermo’s character development over the seasons. He learns that he comes from a long line of vampire hunters, which puts him at odds with his beloved master. He is “promoted” from familiar to bodyguard (with very few changes in duties) and eventually has his wish granted, but he struggles with his new vampire identity. He seems to have a closer connection to the film crew than the vampires, but his vulnerabilities are more on display. More than anyone, he finds himself back where he started. The vampires are happy in their elastic afterlife, but Guillermo chafes against various thwarted ambitions. His frustration that nothing ever changes becomes resignation, until he’s able to engage in some drastic soul-searching that honours his character’s vulnerabilities; physician, heal thyself. A dynamic that could be seen as repressive, or even a sideways act of queerbaiting, takes on a different and more complex cast.
These beats and returns manifest in other ways. One of Shadows’s most striking contributions has been its approach to mockumentary. The 2014 film framed itself as an expose of a secret society of the undead, in which the intrepid crew, sometimes protected by crucifixes, gained access to something secret and dangerous. The series, too, is framed as an ongoing documentary about vampires, although for whom (and why) is never really answered. For the most part, the series adopts the conventions of what Brett Mills (2004) has described as “cinema verité.” This refers to a style of situation comedythat embraces the language of observational, fly-on-the-wall documentaries for narrative, comic and aesthetic effect. This includes shows like The Office, Parks and Recreation, or Abbott Elementary, which draw from the conventions of documentary form. These shows combine “candid” and hand-held footage and techniques (such as obvious, clumsy zooms) with cutaways and direct-to-camera interviews, even if they are also highly selective in the ways that they acknowledge the diegetic presence of the cameras or even the rationale for the crew’s presence. In What We Do in the Shadows, these features work to fabricate a sense of factuality that comes into comic friction with the show’s ridiculous conceit – namely, that we are following the filming of a “real” documentary (of sorts) about actual vampires who exist relatively normally in the “real world.” This is enriched by the series’ frequent use of other fabricated or altered media, such as paintings and photographs, to establish the vampires’ history and relationships.
As the series progresses, this form offers creative opportunities. Characters frequently engage with the diegetic camera (and the unseen crew), and therefore the audience, in a manner that heightens dramatic and situational irony, and occasionally drives the narrative. It contributes to the vampires’ characterisation, notably that they are quite happy to be tailed by a crew because they are both naïve and narcissistic; why wouldn’t people want to see the minutiae of vampires’ everyday lives? Over time, the series incorporates other forms of (found) footage in novel ways, including material from surveillance and security cameras, local government meetings, video conferences, social media, behind-the-scenes material, news broadcasts, and – most impressively, in the season 4 episode “Go Flip Yourself” – reality television.
nandor in “P I Undercover: New York” of what we do in the shadows (season 6, episode 8)
In the final season, this becomes delightfully meta, as in a narrative arc which follows Guillermo into a job at a shady venture capital firm, where his terrible boss is convinced the camera crew is there for him – much to the amusement of the vampires. In the episode “P I Undercover: New York” (season 6, episode 8), the vampires discover that their street and the exterior of the “vampire residence” have been appropriated by a television film crew who are filming a crime police procedural. Nandor and Laszlo must balance their anger at the disruption (including a crew truck damaging their backyard) with Guillermo’s fandom of the show, but despite declaring war on the crew, they become increasingly invested in being involved behind the scenes. Beyond the overt visibility of the workings of a television show, there’s a deeper joke here too, about hyperreality and representation in film locations. The show within a show is using Staten Island to stand in for elsewhere in New York, even as establishing shots of the exterior of the vampire residence are Cranfield House in Riverdale in season 1, then of the Jared S Torrance House in South Pasadena, with other exteriors filmed on a set in Toronto, all of it “authentically” captured by the fictional crew.
This all pays off beautifully in the show’s well-pitched final episode, which finally addresses, head on, the show’s guiding conceit. It’s a finale about a finale, which also intertextually references another notable television finale about the nature of televisual reality. It finally interrogates the role that the presence of the documentary crew has had on the lives of the vampires, who are perhaps more media savvy than we have given them credit for, and on Guillermo in particular, given his various identity crises. It asks questions about how we fashion ourselves for the screen and how this impacts our sense of self. For the vampires, maybe this has just been another entertaining diversion; for Guillermo, maybe not. It’s an impressive and deeply satisfying play that ensures that Shadows ends meaningfully on its own terms, while honouring its sitcom and mockumentary forms – something that rarely happens in comparable shows.
This conclusion challenges other comparable shows to make more of the mockumentary format. Here, it is something that informs narrative, theme and character. I can drive action, rather than just respond to it – especially as this resolution asks challenging questions about what it is that Guillermo has wanted all along. In the world of story, perhaps nothing ever changes, but in terms of its wider cultural impact, What We Do in the Shadows has certainly changed a lot.
Works Cited
Bacon, Simon. “Introduction.” Spoofing the Vampire: Essays on Bloodsucking Comedy, edited by Simon Bacon, McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2022, pp. 12–35.
Lord, Kristin, and Kourtnea Hogan. “Gay Vampires: Metaphor, the Erotic and Homophobia in Film and Televison.” The Palgrave Handbook of the Vampire, edited by Simon Bacon, Springer International Publishing, 2024, pp. 1087–102, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36253-8_47.
Mills, Brett. “Comedy Verite: Contemporary Sitcom Form.” Screen, vol. 45, no. 1, Mar. 2004, pp. 63–78, https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/45.1.63.
Mintz, Lawrence E. “Ideology in the Television Situation Comedy.” Studies in Popular Culture, vol. 8, no. 2, 1985, pp. 42–51, https://www.jstor.org/stable/23412949.
Biography
Erin Harrington is a Senior Lecturer Above the Bar in critical and cultural theory in the English department of the University of Canterbury Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha, Aotearoa New Zealand, where she coordinates the Cultural Studies programme. She is the author of Women, Monstrosity and Horror Film: Gynaehorror (Routledge 2018), and has published on topics including female-directed horror anthologies, New Zealand horror, horror comedy, horror and theatre, and connections between horror and contemporary art practice. She is currently completing a monograph on transnational comedy horror, mockumentary form, and the What We Do in the Shadows universe for Auteur (Liverpool University Press). She sits on the editorial boards of the peer-reviewed journal Horror Studies and Edinburgh University Press’s 21st Century Horror series. She also sits on the board of trustees of the books and ideas festival WORD Christchurch and appears regularly as an arts critic and commentator.
‘Emmys Watch 2025’ showcases critical responses to the series nominated for Outstanding Drama, Outstanding Comedy, and Outstanding Limited Series at that 77th Primetime Emmy Awards. Contributions to this theme explore critical understandings of some series nominated in these categories.
Adolescence is probably going to do very well at this year’s Emmys. It has been nominated for 13 awards including Outstanding Limited Series or Anthology and broke viewership records for Netflix with 66.3 million views in two weeks. The series was widely praised for performances from Stephan Graham, Erin Doherty, Ashley Walters, and Owen Cooper (all of whom are also nominated) as well as its ‘innovative’ use of long-takes and ‘real-time’ storytelling to explore deeply confronting subject matter.
It is hard to deny the cultural impact of Adolescence. In the weeks following its release came a surge of lengthy editorials, features, and think pieces from outlets such as The Guardian, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), The New York Times, and The Conversation. In their Emmy coverage this year, the The New York Times described Adolescenceas a “hit Netflix series turned water-cooler talker” (2025). The show certainly raises important questions—sexism (violent or not) is a terrible cultural problem that can have a wide range of devastating effects. In this respect, the final scenes of the series are confronting: Eddie (Stephan Graham), sobbing in his son’s bed, wonders what we could have done differently. As an audience, we are also forced to consider this question without being told a clear answer.
eddie approaches his son’s room in episode 4 of adolescence
eddie in his son’s room in episode 4 of adolescence
If Adolescence is to win big, it’s almost guaranteed that acceptance speeches will stress the importance of the on-going dialogue and conversations that came from the show. It is precisely these public conversations—and television’s role in public discourse—that I am interested in. These conversations are what will likely endure in our collective memory, perhaps more so than the show itself. However, I cannot help but feel that these conversations that were had around Adolescence were subsumed into a more simplistic rhetoric about social media restriction.
The paratexts generated by a TV show are in some cases as important as the programme itself. In his work on True Detective (2014), Michael Albrecht makes this very case. He analysed the lively public debates about whether the show was plainly misogynist or if it was, instead, a layered critique of misogyny. This played out in outlets like The Guardian, The New Yorker, and Jezabel. For Albrecht, this question is of secondary importance to the discussions the show prompted. He suggests that,
Conversations that at one point might have been confined to the academy or to leftist enclaves ascend to the mainstream through the convergence of multiple media and the confluence of a multiplicity of voices. True Detective thus became a discursive point of convergence for problematising masculinity and the ways in which prestige television intersects with discourses of toxic masculinity. (2020, p. 23)
Albrecht’s work echoes valuable insights about the often-underappreciated role that paratexts and news coverage play in television’s contribution to cultural discourses. In fact, this insight is even more pronounced in the programming logics of streaming platforms such as Netflix. There is an observable pattern of short-lived ‘buzzy’ programmes—typically limited series that are provocative and culturally resonant—that receive short but intense bursts of attention on social media and in the press. Take, for example, recent programmes such as Baby Reindeer (2024), Inventing Anna (2022) or Monster: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story (2024). It is possible that more people have read about Adolescence than have watched it the full way through.
In the case of Adolescence, these cultural discourses have extended to policy makers and world leaders. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer talked openly about the ‘difficulty’ he had watching the show (Youngs, 2025). Both he and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese suggested that it should be shown in secondary school as an educational tool against the ‘manosphere’. A statement from Starmer’s office states that the show will “help students better understand the impact of misogyny, dangers of online radicalisation and the importance of healthy relationships”.
These deep-seated cultural problems around violence, misogyny, and masculinity are not new, and they are certainly not easy to ‘fix’. Starmer said as much when he discussed the show—“[there is no] silver bullet response” or “policy lever that can be pulled.” Additionally, in various press engagements, co-showrunner Jack Thorne was careful to stress that there is no “one reason” Jamie Miller is the way that he is. Rather, it is constellation of complicated social, cultural, and personal factors. However, the show comes at a critical time when governments across the world are seriously considering social media bans for young people. Something that is sold to voters as a kind of silver bullet.
In Australia, my writing context, young people (under 16 y/o) will soon be banned from using social media (with adults required to undertake age-verification). Similar social media restrictions are also being considered in countries such as the United Kingdom, Norway, France, Italy, and the United States. In fact, showrunner Jack Thorne is often cited as an advocate for these types of bans with headlines such as “Adolescence writer suggests social media ban for kids” (BBC), and “Adolescence Has People Talking. Its Writer Wants Lawmakers to Act” (NYT). It is in this global context that we might worry that Adolescence has been dangerously integrated into panics about violent youth, and discourses that oversimplify dangerous, everyday cultural misogyny as easily ‘fixable’ through social media restriction.
Indeed, writers often praised Adolescence for its layered exploration of youth crime, and illumination of danger that social media poses to teenagers. Articles from The Conversation (AU & UK), The Guardian, and The ABC commended the programme for identifying the true depths of toxic male communities and the way that they are influencing teenage boys. In an article for The Conversation (AU), Kate Cantrell and Susan Hopkins suggest that Adolescence exposes the “darkest corners” of “incel culture and male rage.” They suggest that,
At the centre of the show’s broken heart is a devastating truth: the most dangerous place in the world for a teenager is alone in their bedroom. Trapped in the dark mirror of social media, Jamie—like a growing number of teenage boys—turns to the digital ‘manosphere’ and the grim logic of online misogynists. (Cantrell & Hopkins 2025)
Adolescence lays bare how an outwardly normal but inwardly self-loathing and susceptible youngster can be radicalised without anyone noticing. His parents recall Jamie coming home from school, heading straight upstairs, slamming his bedroom door and spending hours at his computer. They thought he was safe. They thought he was doing the right thing. It’s a scenario which will ring bells with many parents.
While much of this discussion does highlight the insecurities and vulnerabilities that come along with the normative, heterosexist embodiments of masculinity, there is also a sense of urgency. There is an understanding that problems identified in Adolescence have been building for years and have now reached a boiling point. We are invited to view violent misogyny as something intrinsically connected to social media and the internet. In this sense, there is an implication that it is solvable through restriction and regulation.
As such, I can’t help but feel as though there is something missing in the conversations that have surrounded Adolescence so far. Its forecasted Emmys successes signal something of a victory lap for not just the show, but for a kind-of nobility and honesty to incite such pressing cultural discourse: and therein lies a risk that turning to television to drive policy debate paints an incomplete picture. In the case of Adolescence, we risk sweeping upcomplicated and controversial social media bans into the show’s ongoing applause.
Of course, social media can pose risks to young people. However, misogyny was not invented there, and the roots of Jamie’s are embedded into our society. It is important that we remember that gendered violence, above all else, is a cultural problem. An element of the Adolescence which I found particularly interesting was its focus on the mundane and ordinary aspects of the Miller’s life. Through spending time with them, we saw glimpses of just how pervasive and normalised sexism is in the everyday. By framing Adolescence through the urgent lens of social media bans, we lose an opportunity to consider something deeper. That is, a deeper reflection on the place of gender and masculinity in our society.
References
Albrecht, M 2020, ‘You ever wonder if you’re a bad man?: Toxic masculinity, paratexts and think pieces circulating around season one of HBO’s True Detective.’ Critical Studies in Television, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 7-24.
Hogan, M 2025, “Unnervingly on-the-nose: Why Adolescence is such powerful TV that it could save lives”, The Guardian, March 17. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/mar/17/adolescence-netflix-powerful-tv-could-save-lives
Marshall, A 2025 “Adolescence has people talking. Its writer wants lawmakers to act”, The New York Times, March 24. Available at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/24/arts/television/adolescence-netflix-smartphones.html
Alexander Beare (He/him) is a Lecturer in Media at the University of Adelaide. His research specialises in streaming television, audience cultures, and gender. He is the author of The New Audience for Old TV (Routledge 2024) and has published with Television and New Media, Critical Studies in Media Communication, and Critical Studies in Television.
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