Never be so prejudiced in life that you don’t give things a chance. On the face of it, I Woke Up A Vampire is a kids’ show. But you don’t need to go deeper into it to realize how entertaining it is for adults. Perhaps the best quality of it is how easily invested we become in its world, and we cannot wait to grab those fictional books in the series. Without much ado, let us just get into the recap and ending of I Woke Up A Vampire to see why it is so good.
Spoiler Alert
What is Vampling and the World of the Blended?
True to the title, Carmela, aka Carmie, wakes up as a half-human and half-vampire on the day of her thirteenth birthday. She can go out in the sun, and so far, she hasn’t shown an inclination for blood, but she is super-fast and strong and can fly. When she tells this to her friend, Kev, he immediately identifies that all of this seems similar to a comic book franchise that he is a fan of, Blended, where the characters are offspring of humans and supernatural beings. Just as he suspected, Carmie’s new life is straight out of the blended universe, and though she is still enjoying her new life, Kev is worried about her and pushes her to read the books, though she doesn’t listen. Carmie has three years, until her sixteenth birthday, to decide if she wants to live as a human or as a magical being, and then she will fully turn over to her chosen side.
Carmie is adopted, and her parents tell her that they don’t know who her birth parents are. But Carmie has a clue since she can directly contact the author of the Blended books, Olivia Rhodes. Upon meeting her, Olivia recognizes Carmie and tells her that her father was a human and her mother was an evil vampire who must be looking for her daughter. Olivia wrote the books because she herself was a vampling once. Once you make the choice to be a human or a vampire, you forget all the memories you have of your other side. Olivia had her heart broken when she was a vampling, and she did not want to forget any of it, which is why she wrote it all in her journals. But while doing so, she realized that being human was a much richer and more beautiful experience, and that is why she chose that path. After choosing to be a human, she had forgotten her experiences as a vampire, but she had all the records with her, which she turned into books after doing some more research.
At a different time, Carmie also meets a warlock, who warns her about using her powers too much and revealing herself. He tells her that since they all live in the world of humans, they must abide by their rules and not interfere too much with their powers. That is the only way to keep the peace, and Carmie must hide her real self if she doesn’t want there to be trouble.
At first, only Kev knows about Carmie’s powers, but then her siblings also discover what she can do, and they ask her to help them win a tournament by protecting them from cheaters. Further into the story, even Madison comes to know of Carmie’s powers since she herself is a half-werewolf. Madison’s powers were apparent to the audience from the get-go, and on the night of the blue moon, even Carmie discovers them. This makes them better friends since Carmie is happy to find someone like herself, and Madison is a genuinely nice person.
Who is Dylan?
Dylan Helsing is a vampire hunter, descended from a long line of them, and he is in town to hunt down some Blendeds because that is what his family does. He says that he is very agile, and he has some great tools that can shrink anyone upon touching, and they would need to eat an onion to come back to their original size. Dylan, much like Madison, has always been on the move, and that is why he has never made many friends. But in this town, he gets along well with Carmie and has also found a great friend in Kev, due to their shared taste and love for comics and manga. Kev and Carmie discover that Dylan is a vampire hunter when they spot him practicing with his tools, and they also escape before he can spot them. However, this incident gives Dylan a clue that the Blended might be a part of the school play since he finds their script lying nearby.
Who is Carmie’s mother? What does the Collector want?
In the current story, Dylan has been hired by the Collector to hunt down the Blended. But Dylan never asks him why he needs the beings and what use a human could have for them. But since Kev works for the Collector, he stumbles upon an important conversation between him and the Shapeshifter, which changes everything. The Collector needs the Blended because the Shapeshifter is blackmailing him for it in exchange for his daughter. The Collector calls his daughter ‘Jewel,’ but that could be a lie, and there could easily be more that he is not telling Kev or anyone else about the matter. Either way, now that Kev knows that Dylan is not just hunting the Blended as his family job but for a supernatural being whose intentions are most definitely corrupt, he tells this to his friends.
Since Madison turned into her wolf self and showed herself to the Collector, he gave Dylan the clue to capture her. Madison also gave herself up to protect Carmie, and she is being held captive by the Collector. But once Dylan comes to know the truth, he immediately comes up with a plan with his friends. He shrinks Carmie and takes her to the Collector. It is when the Shapeshifter comes to meet the Collector that she finds that there is not a single Blended in his cupboard. Furious, she strikes him down and goes away. This was all a plan by Dylan and Carmie to help their friends escape. Now that it has happened, they go ahead and participate in the musical. Leanna, who had been very snooty and delusional till the very end, is a supportive cast member and helps everyone with their choreography and lines. Dylan has to take the place of Carmie’s partner since the original one also injured his leg, just like Leanna did. Fortunately, the play is a success, and everyone celebrates their victory.
During I Woke Up A Vampire‘s ending, Kev finds something in the comic books that suggests shapeshifting is a power of the vampires, and the one they had seen in the Collector’s place was none other than Carmie’s mother. Carmie is undoubtedly made for some great upcoming war, as she has been told by quite a few people, and her mother is no doubt setting the stage for that. In the meantime, even the Collector is not an ordinary human. Our instinct says that he is probably a warlock who is keeping an eye on the competition, but it could be something else. After all, why would Carmie’s mother blackmail an ordinary human to hunt down the Blended, and what exactly did she need them for? But we also see the Collector look at a photograph that is exactly the same as Carmie’s childhood photos, meaning that he is her father. We believe that one of the reasons he was helping Dylan was so that he could find his own daughter. That would explain his reaction when Dylan brought the miniature version of Carmie in a glass jar. In the beginning of the series, Kev suspected that the Collector had seen his message from Carmie, where she told him that she could fly. If that is true, the Collector was running an elaborate double bluff this whole time, and he may be the most dangerous obstacle in the kids’ path going forward. These are the questions we will find the answers to in I Woke Up A Vampire season 2.
Final Thoughts
Essentially, I Woke Up A Vampire was fun. The parody is not very overt, and the choice of the kids’ age is very skillfully used. We were not expecting this show to leave us genuinely curious about the myths they were building in the story, and that surprise made us happy. We would be looking forward to this.
