Dhruv Sharma
In its first few moments itself, ‘Vampires’ establishes what’s it all about. Martha, one of the pivotal figures of the show, frantically looks for her husband Redouane. Breaking her own previous vows of peace with the vampire community, she breaks into Csilla’s home and burns half of her face by exposing her perfect vampire skin to the sun. While Csilla shrieks in pain and confesses that she knows nothing about her husband, as a viewer, you just assume that she probably deserved what she got.
Little do you realize that all of this will eventually come in full circle with the ending. ‘Vampires’ does not involve multiple plot threads and neither does it tangle you in intriguing questions throughout its runtime. However, it does have a confusing ending which traces all the way back to its initial episodes. So here’s the ending of ‘Vampires’, explained.
Plot Summary
The bulk of ‘Vampires’ is dedicated to a kind of civil war that ensues between an entire clan of vampires and a family that struggles to defy the norm and leave behind its lust for blood. In the world of ‘Vampires’, drinking the blood of a human is considered to be a sin and Martha’s family takes this very seriously. Her elder son and daughter, Rad and Irina, work at an animal butcher warehouse, from which they manage to steal blood and fulfill their own basic need for survival.
Martha, who seemingly despises her vampire identity, makes sure that her younger son and daughter, Doina and Andrea, take a certain medication to suppress their vampire urges. While the other members of the family cannot step out in daylight because the sun burns their skins, Doina and Andrea are immune to all the “side effects” that come with being a vampire. But then comes a day when Doina takes the risk of not consuming her daily medication and this itself sets off a spark, leading to a much bigger conspiracy that will reinstate the family to its dark past.
The Ending: Why Did Rad Imprison his Father?
In the final episode of the show, Andrea goes to Rad’s house and finds his father there. Even for a viewer, this completely changes what we knew about the family. According to the story that his mother was feeding him all this while, his father was abducted by the Nemeth family and was later killed, but it turns out that his own elder stepbrother had kept him in captivity all this while. In the closing scene, Rad and Andrea get into a fight and Andrea ends up stabbing his brother for betraying the family.
But even before he dies, Rad keeps telling Andrea that he does not know what’s going on. What turns out to be even more startling is that after being set free, Andrea’s father, Redouane, walks up to Rad’s body and starts feasting on his blood. As viewers, all this while, we were told that Redouane was killed by the Nemeths. Moreover, since Andrea is a human and his sister is a mixed breed, their father is supposed to be a human. So how is he suddenly a vampire in the closing scenes and why was Rad keeping him in captivity?
So if we look back at the first episode itself, when Andrea first meets Ladislas Nemeth and asks him about his father, Ladislas claims that no one from his family ever harmed his father. He later ends up meeting his father’s research assistant, Elise, who tells him that she and his father were researching gene therapy to find a way to extend human life. And since vampires live longer than humans, he was also experimenting with his family for his research.
Much later, there’s a scene in which Elise ends up at their place and Rad seems to be very hostile towards her. He even treats her like he knows her from somewhere. Rad later tells her that he was the one who had abducted her lab years ago. Later when Elise also disappears, Andrea decides to look for her at Rad’s place and ends up finding his own father there. This suggests that the Nemeth family had absolutely nothing to do with Redouane’s disappearance. It was Rad who had abducted him and had kept him trapped in his home all this while.
How Did Redouane Become a Vampire?
The closing scene in which it is revealed that even Redouane is now a vampire suggests that Rad had figured out about his dad’s experiments and he took it upon himself to serve him justice. But before he could do that, Redouane had already performed his gene replacement procedure on himself to become a vampire. Redouane was no hero and was certainly not trying to find a cure for his family. Instead, he was fascinated by the supernatural abilities of the vampires and wanted to introduce the entire world to it. Or in better words, as one of his own old tapes suggests: “If we extend the lives of sick patients why not extend the lives of healthy ones.”
Read More: Vampires Season 1 Review
