First Kill tells the story of high school students Juliette and Calliope — a legacy vampire and a monster hunter, respectively, who fall in love, even though their families work desperately to keep them apart. Star-crossed though they might be, the Netflix series follows Jules and Cal as they experience many firsts together: their first kiss, their first argument and even their first grisly murders. 

For V.E. Schwab, memorable firsts aren’t just the foundation for Jules and Cal’s love story, they’re the inspiration for it. Schwab wrote the short story that would become the eponymous series, and she tells Tudum, “A memorable first for me… [is] the first time that I realized that I wasn’t straight.” The author, who also is an executive producer on First Kill, explains, “I thought I was straight until I was, like, 26 and was just bad at it. I would go to kiss [a boy], and I would be like, ‘This doesn’t feel nice, I must be bad at kissing.’ Then I had this lightbulb moment.”

Although Schwab didn’t want First Kill to be a coming-out story or a show about overcoming homophobia, she did want to challenge the idea that sexuality “should be simple.” She says, “When it doesn’t feel simple to us, we make it complicated. What if we took away the binaries and we just said, like, ‘You’re attracted to who you’re attracted to?’ ”

Here are Juliette (Sarah Catherine Hook) and Calliope (Imani Lewis), two girls just being authentic with each other.  

This clarity is evident — and welcome — in the series; confusion and angst about their sexuality is not part of Jules and Cal’s story, and that’s on purpose. “I wanted to write a show where it wasn’t [just] about the queerness,” Schwab says. “I feel like we’ve come really far in queer storytelling — we see more queer characters and we’re starting [to] see queer characters at the center of the narrative. But 99% of the time, the narrative is about their queerness. And what that says is that we are not valid in the story unless it’s about our identity, unless it’s about that one aspect. We never reduce straight characters to that.”

“What it tells queer viewers,” Schwab points out, “especially young queer viewers, is you don’t get to be the main character, unless it’s about your queerness.”

Jules and Cal, Schwab says, “are out. [They] already know who they are.” That’s not to say that these girls don’t have their share of problems. In addition to just being in high school, the two girls are also the unwilling heirs to a centuries-old family feud. One side — Juliette’s — is a clan of legacy vampires who require all members to drain the blood of unsuspecting humans in order to maintain their collective power; the other — Calliope’s — is a guild of monster hunters determined to eliminate all evil beings (especially vampires) from the face of the earth. And that definitely causes some tension between Jules and Cal.

And yet, Schwab emphasizes, “It is not about the fact that they’re queer — it’s about the fact that there are systems in play on both sides.” While not everyone can relate to these specific familial problems affecting their personal relationship, First Kill’s conflict speaks to something more universal. “It’s about family indoctrination,” she says. “We have these two families and each of them have systems of entrenchment that are thousands of years old. Who are you supposed to be? What is your pride, your duty, your honor?”

Nothing Sucks About Cal and Juliette's Relationship In First KillFor members of the Cal and Juliette fang club.

For queer viewers who, like Jules and Cal, have found themselves having to choose between their true identities and what they’ve been taught to believe was true by their families, First Kill feels really relatable — even with all the supernatural beings. 

“The real monster [in First Kill] is just... is history,” the author says. “The history, the legacy that we bind ourselves to. Both of these families are tethering themselves to entrenched systems of power, and they’re not thinking about why anymore. They’re just doing their job.”

“The problem with tradition,” she continues, “ is that [it’s] intoxicating. Tradition is comfortable. But, sometimes, traditions have got to die.” That’s why First Kill is a story about finding out who you are outside the influence of parents, older siblings, societal pressures and, yes, tradition. Schwab adds, “Don’t think traditions don’t hurt us. [They] got you where you are, but you do not need to carry that forward in perpetuity. You need to thank it and let it go.”

One tradition that isn’t quite ready to be let go of yet is that of narrativizing young love through a supernatural lens. But Schwab hopes to tell a deeper story than a typical angsty vampire romance. “I want the world to be bigger than it is. I want the world to be stranger and more magical than it is. And I love it when magic and supernatural elements are laid directly on top of our existing world,” she explains. “It’s about giving antagonism a shape because then it can be fought. When you’re a teenager, how do you fight a system? You can’t. You can’t fight violence with a capital V. But you could fight a monster.”

The real monster in First Kill? The kind of people who “tether themselves to systems of power… not thinking about why anymore.” 

Brian Douglas/Netflix

Schwab has engaged quite a bit with this type of world-building beyond the narrative of First Kill. The New York Times bestselling author of The Monsters of Verity duology, the Darker Shade of Magic series and The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue loves to spotlight characters with magical powers who go on adventures of self-discovery. First Kill is based on a short story Schwab wrote for an anthology called Vampires Never Get Old, and its adaptation is her first time working in filmed media.

“I’m so used to being in control with books,” she says. “When you’re writing a novel, you’re kind of playing God, you’re the one voice. But when you go on to work on a TV show, everyone has a voice and a vision, and it’s about creating a much more complex music that maybe sounds less like the one in my head but is also a song that other people will all enjoy.”

“It was deeply important that the creatives both in front of the camera, behind the camera and below the line, were representational of the story we were trying to tell,” she says, pointing to the importance of working with showrunner Felicia D. Henderson to create a diverse, inclusive show. “[It was] not a road I ever would’ve wanted to — or could’ve — walked alone.”

For Juliette and Calliope, “obviously, the kissing is very good.”

At the heart of First Kill, after all, is the desire for two young women to get to be themselves, no matter what anyone else says, and to represent themselves to the world in the most authentic way possible. As Schwab says, “[Vampires] are just the deep incarnations of just being who you want to be and being unapologetic about it.”

And there’s nothing more intoxicating than finally being appreciated for who you are, rather than for who others want you to be, she notes: “These two girls very quickly realize that they can be authentic with each other in a way they can’t be authentic with their own families, in a way they can’t be authentic with their whole world.”

“There is a deep power in feeling seen by somebody else. Especially at that age,” Schwab says. “Also, obviously, the kissing is very good.”