It’s been far too long since we’ve spent time with our new favorite vampires in FX’s mockumentary series What We Do in the Shadows. Based on the film of the same name, the series follows a group of vampires living in the United States as they deal with the trials and tribulations of being bloodsuckers in the modern American world. With two seasons under its belt, the What We Do in the Shadows TV series has proven it’s every bit as good as the original movie, and it’s expanded the mythology of the series in an entertaining and creative way. But what’s in store for What We do in the Shadows season 3?

The annual PaleyFest is unfolding in Los Angeles right now, celebrating the best TV shows on the air right now, and that includes a a tease of what’s to come on the next season of the Emmy-nominated What We Do in the Shadows. We’ve already heard that the third season will bring new creatures like gargoyles and hellhounds into the fray, but showrunner/executive producer Paul Simms and executive producer Stefani Robinson teased a returning character.

Series regulars Nandor the Relentless (Kayvan Novak), his Familiar-turned-vampire-hunter Guillermo de la Cruz (Harvey Guillén), fellow vampires Laszlo Cravensworth (Matt Berry) and his lover Nadja (Natasia Demetriou), and energy vampire Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch) are all coming back. But Simms says they’ll be joined by a returning character who will be involved in a season-long arc. The showrunner only went so far as to say it’s not Nick Kroll as Simon the Devious, but it will be “someone we all know and love.”

My initial hope was that we might see Jemaine Clement returning to What We Do in the Shadows in a major capacity. It doesn’t seem like he’s super busy with anything else right now, and bringing him into the show would be a lot of fun. He previously appeared as part of the Vampiric Council along with Taika Waititi and Jonathan Brugh as What We Do in the Shadows movie characters Viago von Dorna Schmarten Scheden Heimburg and Deacon Brucke, and it would make sense if he had to check in with the Staten Island bloodsuckers after the events of the second season. It could just as easily be Brugh stopping in too, but it’s unlikely to be Waititi since he’s very busy in production on Thor: Love & Thunder and will be working on that movie for awhile.

However, another potentially more interesting guess that would help expand the show’s narrative would be the return of Beanie Feldstein as Jenna, a college LARPer who was initially lured to the vampire clan by Guillermo as a delicious virgin feast. But in the first season, Jenna ended up being transformed into a vampire by Nadja after she saw the young girl wasn’t treated so well by her fellow students. Jenna was even learning how to hone her skills as a vampire, discovering she had the ability to become invisible. But we haven’t seen Jenna in quite some time, mostly because of Feldstein’s movie schedule, and bringing her back has a lot of potential. Maybe she’s even been around the whole time, just standing around being invisible.

Unfortunately, there’s one character who we probably won’t see making a comeback anytime soon. Even though fans loved the second season debut of Jackie Daytona, a separate human character who definitely isn’t a disguise donned by vampire Laszlo Cravensworth, Simms and Robinson won’t be going back to that well anytime soon. But it did give them the confidence to take the show in even more surprising new directions. Robinson said:

“That episode gave us the opportunity to break format with all of the characters and push the show into new settings, formats, characters to explore what we’ve established. So not another Jackie Daytona adventure, but we have plans for the show to go into completely different directions.”

Simms and Robinson weren’t ready to reveal what those directions might be, but you can bet we’ll be ready when the time comes. Sadly, we’ll be waiting a long time before we get the third season. Production was intended to begin last month, but due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, production won’t begin until sometime later this year, which means we probably won’t see the show return until late in 2021 and possibly not until early 2022.

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