Finally Finished Watching FX’s The Strain This Weekend and…

 December 20, 2021

FX dropped The Strain back in 2014, and when it first aired I watched about a season before life dragged me away. But over the last few weeks I finally sat down and finished it. I always thought it had an interesting spin on “vampires”—not the sparkly Twilight nonsense or the suave aristocrat bloodsuckers, but something different, biological, parasitic, and genuinely unsettling. So I ran it back from the start.

If you’ve never seen the show, this is your spoiler warning. I’m going to break down the setup, the characters, what worked, what didn’t, and why Zack Goodweather made me want to throw my TV through a window.

The Setup

The show follows Dr. Ephraim Goodweather from the CDC, who’s called in when an international flight lands in New York with almost everyone dead. Four survivors remain, no explanation in sight. While Eph and his team try to quarantine them, shady rich-white-power-villain #47, Thomas Eichhorst, is out here working in the shadows, moving a mysterious coffin-like cargo out of the airport.

Enter Abraham Setrakian, an old man who rolls in like “Hey, y’all about to die horribly,” and of course the CDC ignores him because, you know… bureaucracy. But Setrakian has history with Eichhorst going all the way back to WWII, and this “disease” is something he’s seen before.

When the cargo crosses the river, all the dead passengers… aren’t dead anymore. And that’s when the show says, “Yeah, forget what you thought you knew about vampires.”

The Takeover Begins

Eichhorst and his boss, The Master—basically the final evolution of “Nope”—start quietly taking over the city. They team up with billionaire Eldritch Palmer, a dying man who wants eternal life and is willing to sell humanity out to get it. With the help of a hacker, they break the internet, control the narrative, and flood NYC with confusion.

Meanwhile Eph teams up with Setrakian and Vasiliy Fet, the most badass exterminator alive, who takes one look at these creatures and says, “Bet. I’m hunting them too.”

The team gets stuck in a gas station with Dutch, the hacker, and that’s when the show really finds its rhythm: survival horror, urban apocalypse, and a weirdly functional dysfunctional squad.

Then there’s the family drama: Eph’s wife gets turned by The Master, and their son Zack becomes the single biggest liability in the entire series.

Yes. I said it. And we’ll get there.

Zack: The Beginning of the Bullshit

Season 1 ends with Zack seeing his turned mother, and instead of “That ain’t my mom anymore,” he immediately becomes the “but we can save her” kid who ruins everything.

By Season 2 he’s full-on gullible hostage bait. The Master uses him, Eph can’t control him, and the kid starts making choices that get people killed—choices he’s old enough to know better about.

The team manages to hurt The Master and force him into a new host, and we meet Quinlan, the half-human, half-vampire warrior who lives to kill The Master. Great addition. Best addition. No notes.

Palmer eventually gets tired of being treated like an errand boy and flips sides just enough to become useful. But The Master doesn’t appreciate sass and kills Palmer’s girl, which turns Palmer into a secret double agent.

Season 3 ends with one of the most infuriating moments in the whole show: Zack presses the button on a damn nuclear bomb. Yes. He nukes New York. Millions dead… because he’s mad at his dad.

I’ll get back to that too.

Season 4: The Aftermath

The nuke blocks out the sun and gives vampires free rein over New York. Humans are basically cattle now, living under a creepy “partnership” agreement where they work until the vampires want a snack.

The squad is scattered:

  • Eph is in Philly, depressed, useless, and slowly getting his spark back.

  • Fet & Quinlan are off hunting a nuke.

  • Dutch gets kidnapped to a breeding facility (yeah… very Handmaid’s Tale).

  • Setrakian gets captured and experimented on.

Eventually everyone returns to New York for one final attempt to kill The Master.

Zack returns with The Master’s influence all over him, and nobody trusts him (as they shouldn’t). Eph tries a father-son moment on a rooftop, but Zack lies straight to his face about why he cut himself opening a soda can. Eph calls him on it and leaves him locked up.

Good. Should’ve done that in Season 2.

The finale involves luring The Master underground with a nuke. Quinlan lands a fatal blow but dies, The Master tries to jump into Zack, Eph stops it, and The Master ends up in Eph’s body instead.

Eph momentarily fights the possession long enough to arm the bomb. Zack—out of nowhere—finally grows a conscience, hugs him, and detonates the nuke. Both die along with The Master.

Humanity saved.

But let’s be real… it should not have been Zack.

What I Liked

1. The Worldbuilding

The Strigoi concept was a fresh take on vampires—more parasite than fantasy monster. The biological approach, the hive mind, the worms, the transformation process—all great.

2. The Plot Style

The takeover felt methodical. Breaking the internet? Underrated move. Turning NYC into a controlled feeding farm? Dark, believable, and practical.

3. The Characters

Fet, Setrakian, Quinlan, Dutch—good mix of personalities without forced clichés. They fought, argued, and still leaned on each other when it counted.

What I Didn’t Like

Zack. Just… Zack.

Look, using the kid as emotional leverage made sense at first. But by Season 2 he turned into a menace.

  • He lets a pet vampire kill a guy trying to help him.

  • He kills a girl he likes because she has a boyfriend.

  • He nukes a city out of spite.

And he never gets real consequences. No real character growth. No real redemption arc. Nothing.

Then in the finale, he’s suddenly the hero?

No. Absolutely not.

The ending would’ve made way more sense if:

  • The Master possessed Zack, not Eph

  • Eph had to kill his own son to save humanity

  • That was the emotional payoff

Instead we get the kid who destroyed everything being the one who "saves the day." It feels cheap, unearned, and honestly… annoying.

Final Thoughts

The Strain is a solid, unique horror series worth watching. It’s not top-tier prestige television, but it isn’t trash either. It sits perfectly in that “watch this while waiting for your favorite show to come back” space.

Four seasons. Good pacing. Great creatures. Good characters. Just… Zack.

Would I recommend it?
Yeah—just prepare to yell at the screen every time that kid shows up.

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