Netflix’s First Kill wants to be a sharp, romantic twist on the vampire genre. It mostly isn’t. This eight-episode teen drama, created by novelist V.E. Schwab and based on her own short story, follows Juliette Fairmont, a sixteen-year-old vampire whose coming-of-age ritual demands her first kill, and Calliope Burns, a teenage monster hunter from The Guardian Guild who needs her first kill to prove herself. The setup is clever, the leads are magnetic, and the premise could have gone somewhere interesting. Instead, it spends most of its runtime circling the same moralistic arguments about bloodlust and family duty, wrapped in a romance that never quite earns its stakes.
Trailer, via Netflix.
Juliette and Calliope
Sarah Catherine Hook plays Juliette as a girl trapped between her monstrous nature and her human heart. She celebrates her sixteenth birthday and is told she must drink the blood of a human to mark her passage into adulthood. Her family is the Legacy vampires, direct descendants of Lilith who chose to be bitten by the Serpent in the Garden of Eden, and Juliette struggles with the idea that draining humans is wrong. She sets her sights on Calliope Burns, the new girl at school, and the chemistry between the two is immediate and palpable.
Imani Lewis plays Calliope as a fierce, lonely hunter. Her family expects her to slay her first monster to earn their approval and officially become a Hunter herself. Calliope is drawn to Juliette, but she also knows that her duty requires violence. The tension between their two worlds is the engine of the show, and it drives the early episodes with genuine emotional weight.
The Family Dynamic
Juliette’s family is a mixed bag. Elizabeth Mitchell plays Margot Fairmont, the matriarch who insists on the ritual. Aubin Wise plays Talia Burns, Calliope’s sister, and the show leans on her as a bridge between the two families. Gracie Dzienny plays Elinor Fairmont, Juliette’s younger sister, and Dominic Goodman plays Apollo Burns, Calliope’s brother. Phillip Mullings Jr. plays Theo Burns, and Jason R. Moore plays Jack Burns. Will Swenson rounds out the Fairmont side as Sebastian Fairmont.
The problem is that none of these supporting characters get enough room to breathe. They exist primarily to push Juliette and Calliope toward their inevitable confrontation. The show’s focus on the central romance means the rest of the cast feels like furniture in a dollhouse, there to fill out the rooms but not to live in them.
The Canceled Season
The show premiered on Netflix on June 10, 2022. Eight episodes later, it was canceled in August 2022 after one season. That brief window shaped how the show was made, and it shows. The pacing is rushed, the subplots are truncated, and the finale feels less like a conclusion and more like a placeholder. The show had one season to establish its world, its rules, and its characters, and it barely scratches the surface of any of them.
The show’s premise is rich. Juliette’s Legacy vampire heritage, rooted in Lilith and the Serpent, offers a fascinating mythology. The Guardian Guild hunters provide a counterweight to the supernatural elements. There is room here for a show about power, tradition, and the individual caught between the two. First Kill gestures at all of it, but it never commits.
The Romance and Its Limits
The core relationship between Juliette and Calliope is the show’s strongest element, and it is also its biggest weakness. The show spends a lot of time establishing that Juliette is a vampire who cannot harm humans and Calliope is a hunter who cannot let a monster live. The tension between them is real, but the show never quite trusts its own setup. The resolution comes too easily, and the final act feels like a compromise between the show’s ambitions and the constraints of its limited runtime.
The show also leans heavily on the idea that killing is wrong. Juliette struggles with her bloodlust, and Calliope wrestles with the violence of her calling. These are good starting points for character drama, but the show treats them as conclusions rather than journeys. By the end, the moral argument feels more like a lecture than a story.
What Works
The acting is strong across the board. Hook and Lewis sell the romance without ever making it feel cheap, and the supporting cast delivers solid performances within the confines of their thin roles. The production values are competent, with a clean visual style that suits the show’s Gothic YA tone. The show also does a decent job of building a sense of dread around the ritual, even if the payoff is underwhelming.
What Doesn’t Work
The pacing drags in the middle episodes, where the show spends too much time explaining the rules of the Legacy vampires and the Guardian Guild rather than letting the characters breathe. The supporting cast gets short shrift, and their arcs feel like unfinished business. The finale rushes the resolution, and the show’s cancellation is visible in its lack of closure.
The show also falls into familiar genre traps. The hunter-vampire romance is a well-worn trope, and First Kill doesn’t do much to freshen it up beyond the specific mythology. The show’s attempts to be edgy about violence are undercut by its insistence that killing is wrong, creating a tonal whiplash that never quite resolves.
The Verdict
First Kill is a show with a great premise and a middling execution. It has a strong lead pairing, a compelling mythology, and a directorial touch that suggests ambition. But the show’s refusal to commit to its own ideas, combined with its rushed pacing and truncated arcs, leaves it feeling more like a pilot for a show that never got made than a finished product. It is worth watching for the early episodes, where the tension is high and the romance is genuine, but the back half loses steam.
Key Facts Box
- Creator: V.E. Schwab
- Network: Netflix
- Season: 1, 8 episodes
- Premiere: June 10, 2022
- Finale: June 10, 2022
- Canceled: August 2022
- Cast: Sarah Catherine Hook, Imani Lewis, Elizabeth Mitchell, Aubin Wise, Gracie Dzienny, Dominic Goodman, Phillip Mullings Jr., Jason R. Moore, Will Swenson
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
