The Entire Nefarious V Wars Finale Twist, Explained

Netflix’s V Wars is wild. As a foundation, it’s about a Mad Cow-like vampire epidemic that we can blame on an ancient virus and the climate change crisis. Then you add on top of that delightfully nutty premise the fact V Wars is led by Ian Somerhalder, an actor best-known as one of the decade’s sexiest, smirkiest TV vampires. Damon Salvatore is now a doctor named Luther Swann, and he is still has hunky as ever — just with a lab coat instead of a leather jacket. 

It is the Netflix horror thriller’s season 1 finale, “Bloody But Unbow’d” that truly cements V Wars as one of 2019’s most bonkers streaming series. The final scenes of the series flip allegiances, kill off major characters, and introduce absolutely incomprehensible classifications like “Verdulaks.” One very bad man is at the center of this bloody whirlwind: Department of National Security scientist Calix Nikolos (Peter Outerbridge), a man with a name so obviously villainous he makes Bond villains jealous. 

If we’re going to understand “Bloody’s” ending, we’re going to have to unravel Calix’s surprise plot for vampire domination. 

Throughout most of V Wars, Calix appears to be the supreme antagonist of the “Bloods,” or the humans who have contracted the vampire virus. Calix plots with anti-Blood senator Smythe (Ted Atherton), helps run Blood concentration camps, and attempts to kill Blood sympathizer Luther multiple times.

Everything changes for Calix in penultimate season 1 episode “The Junkie Run of the Predator Gene.” During that chapter, Luther confirms the DNS concentration camps exist during a televised congressional hearing. Calix's career is ruined in the human world, and his entire history is promptly scrubbed from government files going back to childhood.

Calix decides to switch teams. 

There are three important scenes that set up this evolution. In the first, we see Calix on a video call with a group of unseen “gentleman,” as he says, explaining he has an upcoming procedure. “After which, I’ll be ready to go nationwide in a few days,” he explains. Then, in the second integral scene of “Predator Gene,” we see a doctor (Hrant Alianak) injecting a black substance into an IV connected to Calix. This is the serum he has created from the original “biomass,” as Luther calls it, that infected patient zero Michael Fayne (Adrian Holmes) in the Arctic, leading to the vampire pandemic. 

“There’s no going back from it,” the shady doctor tells Calix before shooting up his IV. This is what turns Calix into a vampire. The black substance is also a form of the same biomass Luther hoped he could use to create an immunity shot against the disease for humans. That pipe dream appears to be over. 

The final important scene of “Predator Gene” suggests how a majority of Blood Nation, lead by Michael’s second-in-command Ava O’Malley (Sydney Meyer), betrays Michael in favor of Calix. In the first half of the episode, we see Ava acquire some carfentanyl from a human dealer. The dealer predicts the drug, which is much stronger than fentanyl, would impair a Blood’s nervous system, convincing the afflicted they are sick. In that same episode, Michael begins to fall ill, only adding to Blood Nation’s mistrust of his leadership. 

Ava dosed Michael with the carfentanyl — likely under the orders of Calix. As we see in the finale, she is the one who announces Calix’s newfound title as Blood Nation leader. 

Finale “Unbowed” continues to explain to us how Calix is manipulating the hysteria around the vampire outbreak to gain power. Senator Sasha Giroux (Laura de Carteret) hoped to control that panic by giving Bloods an unlimited supply of BludSub, a synthetic blood substitute. Calix’s people poisoned half of the batches sent to the public, killing dozens during a televised reconciliation event. It’s a scene that convinces Bloods not to trust humans, which is exactly what Calix wants. 

Soon enough, “Rebel Bloods,” as Ava calls them, are murdering humans in the streets. Ava tells Michael “someone” has armed the alleged rebels with high-grade military weapons. Considering this entire conversation is a trick by Ava to eliminate Michael for Calix, we can assume Calix armed the “Rebel Bloods,” and Ava knows as much. Michael is supposedly killed via execution after this encounter.

In the last we see of Calix, he uses a news broadcast to explain his grand vampire plan. As the new leader of the Bloods, he announces the group will never deal with humanity again until they accept their fate as a food source rather than vampires’ “masters.” Then Calix reveals this plan will work because he improved the infectious biomass to its optimal virility and had his followers drop some into the water supply of 10 major cities. Now 30 million people have been exposed to the virus. Blood Nation will become a massive section of the population rather than a vulnerable minority. Lastly, Calix has kidnapped Luther’s son Dez (Kyle Breitkopf), the only person with vampire infection immunity, to halt all attempts at finding a cure.  

In Luther's finale scene — who takes place after a four-month time jump — he is ripped, bearded, and ready to take down the new Blood Nation for kidnapping his son and infecting millions of Americans with a vampire disease. So, yeah, Calix Nikolos really is as bad as his supervillain-y name would suggest.