If you’re a fan of vampires and other monsters, do yourself a favor and watch Netflix’s First Kill now, not only because it’s awesome (ignore the haters), but also because this review contains spoilers.
I’ve seen a lot of people who like this series say even though First Kill isn’t “art,” it’s good, campy fun and should be enjoyed on those merits alone. Though I don’t believe that “art” is the be all and end all of stories, or that “art” can be defined with any degree of satisfaction, I disagree with the indication that this series doesn’t qualify because, underneath the genre, the bad CGI, and the red-hazed vampire blood lust, there are compelling ideas, narrative mirrors and foils, and other trademarks of what is generally considered good writing. So why not consider it art? Why is it that queer stories have to jump so much higher than their straight counterparts?
The plot of First Kill is bookended with the coming of age rituals of two girls: it’s time for Juliette to make her first kill as a vampire, and it’s time for Calliope to come into her own and kill her first monster as a hunter.
Even if the protagonist wasn’t named Juliette, it’s obvious that First Kill takes a lot of its cues from Romeo and Juliet. Not only are there two houses with their own legacies, both alike in dignity one could say, but the protagonists quote it, at one point even sharing a stolen night together on a Romeo and Juliet set. Their two houses are a little more appropriate for their genre: Juliette Fairmont comes from a family of Legacy Vampires (born not made), while Calliope (Cal) Burns comes from a family of monster hunters, who are very good at what they do.
Of course, their love was doomed from the start.
With how pervasive Romeo and Juliet is in western culture, First Kill is hardly the first vampire story to take its cues from it. After all, Buffy fell in love with Angel, Bella with Edward, and so on. First Kill gives us a sapphic love story, though, a breath of fresh air from the hetero love stories that pervade the genre.
Cal is the Romeo in the story. Though their names have no similarities, she does joke about the names of her brother, Apollo and Theseus (Theo). Apollo is a god of a lot of things, though most people may be most familiar with his role as a sun god and a god of prophecy. And, as most tragedies are, the heartbreak foretold is self fulfilling, in part because of Apollo’s decisions.
Theseus is the name that surprised me the most, and had the most blink-and-you’ll-miss foreshadowing. Many may be familiar with Theseus because of the minotaur story (yeah, he’s that guy who entered the labyrinth and slew the beast within). And, in many ways, that fits who Theseus is in First Kill: a hunter from a legacy of hunters, a hunter whose own mother was killed by the monsters he swears to hunt, who is haunted by the monster of his own past.
But the ship of Theseus is a thought experiment: if something has its parts replaced, is it still the same thing? If your human son is transformed into a vampire, is he still your son? Or is he something else?
Dad says no. Mom says, over her dead body.
Like Romeo and Juliet, First Kill is a tragedy, so if you’re hoping for a closing scene with Cal and Juliette driving off into the sunset, disillusion yourself now. When so many can survive death through monsterhood, the stakes are so much higher than mere life or death.
Yes, pun absolutely intended, because after sharing a kiss in a pantry, Cal stabs Juliette with a stake. To be fair, Juliette did bite her first, and even though Cal knows Juliette is a vampire when she joins Juliette after a game of spin the bottle, it’s indicated she wouldn’t have done the stabbing if Juliette hadn’t done the biting.
There are so many moments dedicated to its queer viewers, to let them feel heard. Cal and Juliette dress like Eves in a garden of Eden, featuring a peach tree instead of an apple tree. Many may be familiar with the phrase, “It’s Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve,” but viewers get to enjoy a delightful subversion where it’s Lilith and Eve. Juliette’s and Calliope’s first kiss transforms into first bite and first stake, a scene viewers get to see multiple times in multiple contexts. In this moment, the story only seems to care what an adolescent queer viewer wants, unconstrained with whether or not it’s appropriate, concerned only with the tension of a vampire and a vampire hunter kissing each other, and what’s going to happen next with the conflicting needs of their nature.
Events conspire to push the protagonists beyond their first kiss turned first bite/first stake as Cal is actively harassed and kidnapped by another hunter who thinks she’s under Juliette’s control. Of course, it leads to the moment everyone is waiting for: Juliette biting, draining, and ultimately killing that POS, revealing the monstrous part of herself to the girl of her dreams, full well knowing it is this very part that Cal is revolted by, that Cal has been trained to kill. The vulnerability of it, the romance of it–the text revels not just in its genre but in the sapphic love story of its two protagonists, delivering on every expected, anticipated beat that the straight romances always seem to get without question.
It’s hard to write a tragedy because the choices the characters make sometimes seem made in favor of the genre, instead of in keeping with their character. First Kill doesn’t fall into this trap. Cal told Juliette from the beginning that she would choose her family, and Juliette told Cal she would always choose her.
As events escalate, in part because the hunters decide to take out the Legacy vampires who have come together to celebrate Juliette’s first kill, and because both sets of parents become increasingly agitated at their daughters’ desire for each other, the way the houses mirror each other become a narrative feast as it fuels the protagonists’ choices.
Talia is the matriarch of the Burns hunter family, while Margot is the almost disowned matriarch of the Atwood vampires. Margot had her own little Romeo and Juliet love story when she married a human whom she turned into a vampire instead of a Legacy vampire like her mother wanted. Still, it’s difficult to see how her decisions have disenfranchised her in a meaningful way. In her human circle, she’s clearly in the echelons of the upper class, and her husband is a DA to help tidy up those messy feedings that go too far. In her vampire circle, even though she’s a disappointment, she is still the heiress to her family’s great power.
Talia’s and Margot’s interactions become very compelling within the context of family. It’s revealed that Juliette has a brother, Oliver, who has been discretely sent off to Prague, in thanks to Elinor’s, Juliette’s sister, machinations. Even as Elinor encounters her own tragedy, her parents are already considering leaving her behind, just as they sent Oliver away. The family’s decision to abandon Oliver fuels the external plot points as designs to ruin the lives of everyone who hurt him, including Elinor. He enlists Juliette’s help with Elinor with a promise that a witch can turn her human with a spell.
Though we don’t get a lot of backstory on Talia, we do know she isn’t Theseus’s biological mother, but that doesn’t stop her from loving him like her son. Even when he is turned into a vampire, she won’t let her husband kill him. Consistently, over everything, even over her husband, she has insisted that her children will come first, even before being a hunter.
It’s no wonder, really, that Juliette would choose Calliope under such conditional familial bonds while Calliope would choose her family.
While the vampires are stealing lives and, though this isn’t textually explicit, wealth, Talia tells her son he broke a simple rule that put all their lives in danger: don’t steal shit. That the “shit” he stole was in a graveyard conveys unspoken significance for those who know their history. That the most powerful Legacy vampire family is white isn’t an accident as they actively align themselves with white political power structures. As the town becomes more and more alarmed that the monsters have returned, police set their sights on Cal as the monster, even though she’s actually the hunter intent on protecting them, and even though she visibly passed a silver test. Meanwhile, Juliette, perceived as a young white woman, doesn’t obviously pass the test, but the cop doesn’t seem to notice. These racial dynamics aren’t the focus of the plot, but it shows the care the writers took with their world building and character development.
Throughout the course of the story, Theo realizes his mother was likely killed by a Legacy vampire, though he doesn’t know to which family she belonged. He and Apollo decide to interrogate Elinor to see if she will share, but when Apollo’s interrogation tactic turns into a flirt with the monster then make out in the bathroom tactic, Theo decides to take matters into his own hands. They fight, and as Theo holds Elinor in position for Apollo to stab her, she shifts out of the way so the stake plunges into Theo. Later, as Juliette helps clean up the evidence, she realizes that he’s still alive and turns him.
It’s a turning point for both families. Hunters always risk becoming the hunted, but it seems this hasn’t been an issue for the Burns family until now. It divides the family, with Jack declaring that Theo is no longer his son, and Talia declaring that he is. The turmoil Calliope feels is visceral: her brother is a vampire, and she is a vampire slayer. Perhaps the problem with defining yourself completely by your purpose, the mission to hunt, falls hollow because becoming a certain kind of monster isn’t something that one can just control. It’s a thing that happens to someone, that must be survived — but to navigate this, one must acknowledge the personhood of a monster, which the family has resolutely rejected. In some parts, the stark nature of their choice is one of their own design.
For Juliette, who had always been against murdering people, who has rejected the food chain argument, Elinor’s actions trigger her ultimate act of betrayal: giving up Elinor to the police because, like all serial killers, Elinor had been keeping trophies of her kills. Juliette did it because Elinor did the one thing that she could not forgive: hurt Calliope and her family.
When Cal finds out it was Juliette who turned Theo into a vampire as a way to save him, she can’t forgive Juliette. Cal can only see it as an act of betrayal. Their family hunts monsters. They don’t become them.
Juliette knew that she risked her relationship when she saved Theo, because when she accuses Elinor of her murder, she had already turned him. Juliette knew there was no good choice: Theo dead by a vampire or Theo a vampire both threatened the integrity of his family.
This reality cracks the foundation of their romance, because if Calliope cannot accept a vampire as family, then how could she possibly love one, love Juliette? They separate from each other, divided by this mutual betrayal. On the set of Romeo and Juliet, Cal says that she will always be a hunter, but never hunt Juliette, and Juliette promises to never hurt her. Both these promises become broken.
Besides the plot hitting every beat a love story between a vampire and a monster hunter should hit, the soundtrack is fantastic. Some may find the lyrics matching the images on screen a little too on the nose, but I think it just shows how much love and joy the creators had in making this series. Perhaps First Kill isn’t the pinnacle of good art, but it’s the vampire love story that the queer kids deserve, and the queer adults who had to grow up with the feaux feminism of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Twilight. It shows its vulnerable heart, and the story feels real even when it looks its fakest. Even if you’re not queer, the rich story telling elements are more than enough reason to watch.