What We Do in the Shadows, Lower Decks, and more new TV to watch

We’re inching closer and closer to Halloween — just ask our Halloween countdown calendar! So it’s once again no surprise that we’re getting more horror options with our new TV options for the week. But that’s not all we’re getting. Notably this week brings us the return of Lower Decks, which is back for its fifth and, sadly, final season.

But if you’re more interested in horror (which, let’s be honest, who can blame you!), then you have two extremes to pick from: the comedic stylings of What We Do in the Shadows, also returning for its final season with plenty of buzz around who’s a vampire and who’s not; or you can go for the more gonzo (complimentary) walloping of Hellbound season 2, which promises to pick up from all the chaos of season 1 with more religious frenzy and smoke monsters.

Here’s the best TV premieres to check out this week.

Genre: Hell in a handbasket horror (with monsters)
Release date: Oct. 21, with all episodes
Showrunner/creators: Choi Gyu-seok and Yeon Sang-Ho
Cast: Kim Hyun-joo, Kim Sung-cheol, and more

If season 1 of Hellbound was the end of the world as we know it, then season 2 will not likely leave the characters of the show feeling fine. In a world where demons are, apparently, coming to the mortal realm to claim those who get cursed with a countdown clock, Hellbound season 2 picks up after the astonishing late-season twist: What happens if someone whose clock reached zero didn’t die?

Genre: Vampire nonsense (complimentary)
Release date: Oct. 21, with three episodes
Showrunner/creator: Paul Simms
Cast: Harvey Guillén, Kayvan Novak, Matt Berry, and more

Your favorite Long Island vampires are back! Sadly, this is the FX show’s final season, but rest assured, there’s a lot of ground to cover between now and then. Like Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) evaluating his life after becoming a full-blown vampire — who is he if not a familiar? What will come of Nadia’s (Natasia Demetriou) nightclub, if anything? Will Jackie Daytona ride again? These are the questions that keep us up at night day.

Genre: Goofy animated Star Trek
Release date: Oct. 24
Showrunner/creator: Mike McMahan
Cast: Jack Quaid, Tawny Newsome, Eugene Cordero, and more

Things are going great on the Cerritos — at least, by one captain’s log. In actuality, it’s Lower Decks season 5, and there’s a ferocious (maybe) axolotl, a bunch of Kims, and a large boulder, just for starters.

Genre: Psychological thriller
Release date: Oct. 25, with two episodes
Showrunner/creator: Sarah Thorp
Cast: Billy Crystal, Judith Light, Rosie Perez, and more

Eli (Billy Crystal) is a child psychologist who’s recently been widowed. He’s understandably pretty unmoored, and all the more so when his next client is a troubled young boy who’s been bounced around foster parents because they found him “unnerving.” As if that wasn’t enough of a puzzle for Eli to figure out, the kid seems to have a haunting connection to Eli’s past — like, “can’t stop drawing the vision Eli keeps having of a specific house” kind of connection.