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Jul 22

The Vampire Daniel Molloy: An Autopsy

or, a loving dismemberment of the character and an attempt to explain why "Dan" hates Lestat so much, why the Devils are already being Minioned, and why Daniel is capable of being a love that "cradles"

Word Count - 6.500 (What can I say, I don't know how to shut the fuck up. But, really, this is a warning.)

INTRODUCTION

So, Daniel is one of the hardest characters to like in the show. How is that for an opening statement? Fellow Molloy fans would never refuse him the coveted title of 'asshole', Molloy haters get to feel validated - peace and love on planet Earth!

But, why do I say that? Why is little old Daniel Molloy so hard to like when he is in a TV show full of evil vampires doing Evil Vampire Things™? Exactly for that reason: because before we ever meet vampire Daniel, we get to know him as a human, as an old man with an entire more-or-less regular life behind him. Now, I know this seems antithetical to the title of this post, but just like... trust me. I'm getting there.

While fictional characters are fictional and can be liked or enjoyed no matter what they do, when it comes to the vampires of the show in particular (if we ignore the small though surprisingly loud group of truly strange individuals who continue applying real-life human morals to their actions), most viewers understand that those vampires are indeed not real or human, which makes it particularly easy for us all to jump in glee every time our fave does some fucked up vampire shit without feeling aversion or the need to overcomplicate our enjoyment with an attempt to insert human morals into the conversation.

This is, however, not the case with Daniel. Especially the IWTV version of him: human, sixty-nine years of age, having lived a full life, longer - in fact - than many people get to live, leaving behind - in his imminent death - an illustrious career that has nonetheless long been in decline, very few good deeds to speak of, no loved ones who'd remember him fondly, and most notably, two daughters whose deep and irrevocable hatred of him is the biggest testament to how much he - in scientific terms - fucking sucks.

The thing is, there is tragedy to each of our other main character's human lives. They were either already horrifically tragic in the first place or tragically cut short, none of them getting the chance to live definitive full human lives that we could easily relate to or more conclusively judge through our own human lens. The same cannot be said for Daniel.

Even at his twenty (and, to be clear, this post is not an analysis of Daniel at his twenty - a mistake that, for some reason, many people make while talking about a man almost fifty years that Daniel's senior) but, even at his twenty, Molloy was already not particularly promising in human terms (thank you for the vivid imagery, Armand).

Yet, if he was turned then or even at age thirty, as he was in the books, he would have firmly fit in the camp with the rest of our characters. Where could his human life have taken him? We wouldn't have known. A sixty-nine-year-old human Daniel would have been nothing but a distant hypothetical and his human life would be little to speak of in comparison to his vampire one.

But that is not the case with our Daniel. We know who he is as a human at sixty-nine: jaded, cynical, mean, angry, inappropriate, bigoted, and immoral, chock-full of incredibly human flaws and unpleasantries that hit far closer to home than draining someone of blood or making someone kill themselves with a magic word. Although Molloy remains fictional, he is also human in the first two seasons of the show, which makes our perception of him as a character and of his flaws in particular different to how we see the vampires that surround him and the evil deeds they commit. The discomfort caused by the things that Daniel says and does is more mundane, therefore more familiar, and therefore more uncomfortable. It's a full circle kind of thing. And his misdeeds feel more acute and final because of both his humanity and his age.

Our Daniel has lived that long definitive human life: he is a fully formed and an unlikely-to-change old man, so we judge him and his actions with more finality. And don't get me wrong, I am not saying that one's life ends at sixty-nine: some people live to a hundred, after all, which would be a fair few decades on top, and - even with Parkinson's - there are said to be around fifteen more years in a person after the first signs of the illness before it's lights off. Still, it is clear that Daniel's life at this point is quite stagnant. His best years of journalism are over, with him having to resort to recording one of those cash-grab online courses, and he has utterly destroyed all his personal relationships, now only getting calls from doctors and disinterested colleagues.

All in all, we could certainly say that Daniel is in his sunset years, except he is less 'enjoying peaceful retirement on a resort' and more 'laying in the self-made ruins of his fucked up life'. And Molloy knows this. He acknowledges it. It's half the reason why he agrees to the interview. It's the reason why the viewers perceive him differently to everyone else. But it is also what informs his identity and journey as a fledgling.

CRUCIAL CHARACTER BEATS FOR FLEDGLING DANIEL

Unfortunately, older Daniel's position in the show and against the backdrop of the greater universe of Anne Rice's vampires makes it so he is often not analysed holistically and sincerely by the viewers. Book fans are more receptive to younger Molloy, especially if they are Devil's Minion fans, yet the gap between what DM is in the book or what it might be if past DM is canon in the show and everything that it can be in the present timeline of the show is an always vast and occasionally insurmountable ravine, if one is not ready to let go of their dynamic from the book and see what this new emerging dynamic could be with the very different older Daniel. Besides, older Molloy is never really the point of the story and a lot of his more immediate and coincidentally less likeable traits make people more unwilling to make the necessary effort to examine the few important sincere moments that we do get with him and pay attention to what is, I dare say, the true depth of Daniel Molloy.

>>> JOURNALISM AS THE PILLAR OF DANIEL'S LIFE

Such is Daniel Molloy's self-admitted lifeline, courtesy of Louis de Pointe du Lac.

It is all he has.

Daniel's entire human existence has been a series of mistakes and wounds that he can only blame himself for (well, maybe with some exceptions), but the one thing he has always had is his journalism career. The Pulitzers, the recognition: it's the only thing he is good at. But that's not all.

Those are Armand's words. Armand, who has been following Daniel closely pretty much his entire career. Armand, who knows Daniel intimately, thanks to his extensive and loving stalking over the course of fifty-two years. It is, of course, an astute observation.

For Molloy, journalism isn't just about the acknowledgement of his skills, not just the only thing he did right in his life - it's also his, and forgive me for this cheesy vampire-themed reference - personal brand of heroin. He enjoys nothing more than poking and prodding someone until they finally fall apart, so he could gawk at all of their parts, vulnerable and out in the open, ready to be collected and weaved into a story they never wanted to share.

That is what makes the 'Interview With The Vampire' Daniel's biggest success. A complex and enormous web of lies, constructed by a manipulative vampire with the assistance of mind reading and memory wiping, kept safe by him for seventy years, more-or-less the length of Molloy's entire human lifetime, untangled by Daniel in less than two weeks. We would like a standing fucking ovation, please. Perhaps a third Pulitzer.

But what happens instead, after the book detailing the interview comes out? Daniel is mocked for it, his word now discredited, seemingly forever, as he is considered a mad "Bigfoot chaser", is no longer thought of as a serious journalist.

It sells millions of copies, Daniel even tries to stroke his ego by going on tours, reading bits of it and signing copies for the fans, but all those people are not there for the right fucking reasons! They think it's a fun silly little novel about fictional vampires and not what it actually is: the best journalistic work Daniel has ever done in his life, the work that he lost his life for.

The one thing that makes Molloy worth something and the one thing he enjoys in life most is shattered, practically overnight, when he went above and beyond to achieve the opposite.

>>> LONELINESS AND YEARNING

Daniel is a profoundly lonely character. It's pretty much his own fault, but we are not trying to find fault in him here. We are trying to understand him. So we must understand the loneliness.

We know that, from almost the very beginning, there is something in people that averts them from Daniel. In 1985, he proposes to his pregnant girlfriend and she says "no". They somehow end up married anyway, with either one or two children, and then their relationship pretty inevitably ends in divorce. Daniel gets remarried, possibly has another child, and then gets divorced again. In his own words, he was the one to destroy both marriages. His wives' love is not the only love he lost either - both his daughters hate his guts to the point of never wanting to see him or speak to him, no matter what he does. That is an almost impressive feat: to lose the love of a child so entirely, a love that is usually so freely and generously given.

Yet, Daniel clings onto it all. We see that he still has his daughters' old things in a box in the closet; he tells Louis that he wouldn't want to become a vampire to watch his daughters "divorce and die"; he mentions dying there, in Dubai, after being paid off as an opportunity to "at least leave his daughters some cash" as reparations for him being a shitty father; the memory of his failed proposal to Alice clearly still haunts him like it was yesterday, to the point that he can recall a dress she was wearing and why he loved it so much.

In fact, we keep coming back to Alice over and over again, with even Lestat briefly mentioning her this season, and (Alice/Armand theories aside, although that is its own equally emotional can of worms) the fact that so many of his deepest emotions still revolve around his first wife shows a clear capability for very tender feelings and perhaps even a bit of a romantic side.

These are not memories and people that Molloy is ready to discard (at least not his first wife and his kids, his second wife does feel... less important, or so it seems). He tries calling one of his daughters after becoming a vampire, he is still having the hardest time letting them go, even as he becomes undead and enters a world that separates him further and further away from them. Whatever went wrong in those relationships, Daniel mourns them and wishes things could have gone differently. He yearns for the love he lost.

And there is another thing that must be taken into account to understand the full scope of Daniel's relationship to love and loneliness, a thing that is always central to this show, that it never forgets about, and that has been highlighted with Daniel's character as well.

We know from his excuses as to why he was at a gay bar, from his timid way of asking Louis whether they had sex, from his questions and thoughts about Fake Rashid, from his secretive and even volatile meetings with random guys throughout his entire life - when married and when not - that Molloy is not exactly comfortable with his sexuality and mostly treats it like something to hide or a fix that he needs every once in a while to get it out of his system.

Anyone who has ever felt like this about themselves knows that it contributes to the feeling of loneliness greatly. It does not allow one to experience the full scope of their emotions freely or to share the entirety of themselves with others. It is isolating. In a way, it is also a love that is lost. Or a potential for love, at the very least.

Still, even with all his repression, Daniel is a tapestry of emotions. We see bits of that during the interview.

He can be vulnerable and almost seems small when he shares something real and profound about himself; he lets himself cry; he is all unsure sentences and awkward smiles when he asks if he and Louis had sex; he is still sensitive and regretful about a failed proposal from forty years ago. There is so much to him beyond angry old man or egotistical journalist. And every emotionally exposed moment of his that we see is underlined by a yearning for the loneliness to end.

This does not change in TVL either, although we do unfortunately get even fewer opportunities to see it.

>>> LOSS OF IDENTITY

Daniel is completely and utterly lost as a fledgling. He shares a bit about how he is taking to the gift with Louis:

He apologises for publishing IWTV, but admits he needed it published because he wanted to actually gain something positive out of getting turned into a vampire and he sees no other positives aside from the book, for which his vampiric nature is a sacrifice that brings no joy in and of itself. He picks up bowling and it's not because he found a new hobby - it's because he doesn't fucking know what to do with himself anymore. His return to constant drug use is also a clear attempt at distracting himself from the state of his own life. And, while Daniel denies it when Lestat points it out, he is not wrong when he says that Molloy needs to process his transformational trauma. He is absolutely not coping.

And of course he isn't. He is all alone. Lestat is no help, Louis is mad at him, Armand disappeared. How the fuck is he supposed to figure this vampire shit out all by himself? His life was already lonely before, but now he understands the true meaning of vampire loneliness. It is devastating. Not to mention that, in the midst of all this, he keeps getting those "rapture" moments.

It's scary, all he can feel is Armand, and Armand isn't even there for him. (In the GIF he obviously is, but) look at how terrified Daniel is there and then think about how many times he experienced this all by himself. An orphan, an abandoned fledgling, cursed by his vampire bond with his maker to feel him without being able to be with him.

To make matters worse, Daniel doesn't feel powerful either. He seems to have managed to get the hang of mind-reading somehow, but the cloud gift and the fire gift escape him. He didn't want any of this in the first place and he believes that he got the short end of the stick when it comes to vampire genes. He thinks he is a weak and pathetic vampire, and no one is there to teach him otherwise.

It seems like there is nothing good at all about this new vampire life of his and - even at its best - it is nothing but a sacrifice on the altar of journalism as it relates to human Daniel. Vampire Daniel struggles to find any real meaning or joy in his undead life at all.

THE THREE (AND A HALF) BURNING QUESTIONS

So, to recap: journalism as a lifeline; loneliness and a yearning for it to end; trying to find the self as a vampire and to get the hang of the dark gift. Now, onto the promised questions!

>>> Why does "Dan" hate Lestat so much?

We've already established the reasons why journalism is important to Daniel. It is a matter of respecting his skills and merit as a journalist, along with letting him enjoy tearing someone's soul out: the two things he will never get out of Lestat (in the way that Daniel wants to, anyway).

We start the season off with a whole bunch of disrespect: calling Daniel "Dan" in that I'm-looking-down-on-you way, calling him "the useful idiot" and a "performative journalist", saying the documentary is just "liner notes" to the album, intentionally lying and avoiding answering questions, openly mocking the interview with Louis as something that was easy and did not - in fact - require much skill, etc. etc. The list is endless.

We know that Daniel doesn't appreciate the disrespect. We know it from the very first season.

He did not care for the whole "you are a speck at our feet" vibe even when he was a human. Why would he tolerate it as a vampire? Especially because - in Daniel's eyes - Lestat doesn't have much of a leg to stand on. He keeps stressing Lestat's failures the whole time, even by the end of it all while monologuing to his severed head, because his ego can't take being looked down on by someone who himself is a failure. Especially because Molloy achieved something in his journalism career, while Lestat's music career bombed completely.

So, why then is Daniel even working on this documentary? Unlike Louis in his interview, Lestat clearly doesn't want to share anything with Molloy and he is going to insult him in about a hundred different ways any chance he gets. But this is an opportunity of a lifetime for Daniel. His journalism career was already in decline before IWTV and then the book shattered it completely. Besides, as a vampire, there aren't really that many opportunities to do journalism work anymore. Yet here Lestat is, conveniently flaunting his vampirism for everyone to see. This is an opening for Daniel: not just to continue being a journalist but to prove once and for all that both the documentary and the book that has discredited him as a journalist are true and actually masterworks of journalism. Getting the privilege of finally digging out Lestat's soul and showing it for everyone to see is a fun little bonus on top of it all and it's not like Daniel has never interviewed people who were reluctant to share what he was looking for. What a perfectly challenging set-up!

So, what changes? The EP3 interview happens. The telepathic prank. Daniel realises that he is never going to get anything out of Lestat - not because Lestat is incapable of being vulnerable and unwilling to share, but because he is unwilling to share publicly, with Molloy. And Lestat openly mocks him with this. He gives Daniel everything he wanted: the story, the heart on his sleeve, every detail possible, tears even. This means that Molloy still deserves to call himself a journalist. He did it! He cracked Lestat! On camera this time. With proof.

Daniel Molloy + journalistic merit and enjoyment that comes out of it = 1) he has something; 2) his life has meaning again; 3) being a vampire finally means something; 4) he gains his credibility back; 5) he did not die in vain.

But then? The rug gets pulled and Lestat is metaphorically giggling in the background, having thoroughly humiliated Daniel and having successfully called into question the one thing Daniel has been sure of since he was twenty (thank you Louis): his skills as a journalist.

Now, of course, this is not the absolute end of the world and Molloy can still get something out of the documentary (especially if he gets some killer information from elsewhere - say, his ever-generous maker), but he is kind of known for cracking people open, it is certainly the thing he enjoys most about his job, so it is not the same. Besides, whatever the documentary might be, it certainly does not erase the humiliation and the undermining of Daniel's skills. Which is the first time in fifty years that he has nothing. "A bright reported with a point of view"? Is he? Is he still? Or did the lifeline disappear along with his mortal life?

And, as if all that was not enough, Lestat finishes off with the final nail in the coffin: the possibility of Dubai being another play directed by Armand, with Daniel being the bumbling idiot who thinks he is cracking him open while he is actually a mouthpiece for his script.

Not just destroying the possibility of this new documentary being something of real journalistic value, not just undermining the possibility of ever proving the truth of the book, but doubting the entire Dubai interview. And with it, stealing the merit of the 'Interview With The Vampire' - the one thing that Molloy himself admitted made his death and turning into a vampire feel worth it.

No fucking wonder Daniel hates Lestat.

(I don't know if this parallel was intentional, because Daniel loooooves saying "blow me", but I did find it at least amusing that he says it to both Lestat at the end of season 3 and to that interviewer at the end of season 2 for the same exact reason).

>>> Why are the Devils already being Minioned?

So, Daniel "yearning for the loneliness to end", remember that?

Now imagine: two years he is all alone, a fresh vampire, trying to figure this new life out, and the one true connection he has is Armand. Every day, there is a moment when everyone else disappears and they are the only two people in the whole wide world. It scares the shit out of him, and he thinks Armand is doing it on purpose. That part bothers him. But then it turns out that Armand is not in control of it at all. That he is also experiencing it, just like Daniel. Still scary or, well, "fucked", as Daniel himself puts it, but better. It's not some trick Armand is pulling, it is the way their vampire bond manifests. In a romantic trope that escaped right out of fucking Pride & Prejudice (2005). Perhaps this is that connection that Daniel craves. And, in the words of Louis de Pointe du Lac, it is a connection which cannot be severed.

And so, this is something eternal, life-altering, and natural that Daniel will not be able to escape from. Perhaps more enticingly, it is something Armand will not be able to escape from. Daniel can't be left behind, can't be ignored, when they share an unbreakable bond that makes it so that they are the only two people in the world. Somewhere deep down, Daniel wants this. He can't not want it. He has been lonely for so long, he is even lonelier now as a vampire - it is absolutely fucking unbearable. He needs something to hold onto. Scratch that, he needs someone to hold onto.

Now, Molloy is, of course, not consciously perceiving his maker as the end to his loneliness yet - it's too early for that. Not to mention that he is also still angry at Armand for turning him in the first place and then abandoning him on top of that. But he does get something that clearly addresses his needs right away, something very important: Dubai was not theatre, Lestat was wrong, Daniel did crack Armand. The foundation is back underneath his feat. He still got it. He's still a journalist. Incredible.

And then comes another bombshell. Armand has been stalking him for the past fifty-two years. Not just stalking him, but taking care of him in his worst moments. Cleaning up after his mistakes. Coming back to watch over him, over and over again, no matter what Daniel did. For half a century. Not a short period of time, even for an ancient vampire.

I could not say it better than Eric Bogosian did: it's like he finds out that Armand has been living inside of him this whole time, or like he is a mountain that has so naturally been a part of the landscape of his life that he has not noticed it, only seeing a few trees at the base. This recontextualises his entire last fifty years of existence. It is a lot and he does not have time to process any of it in the moment, there are some scary implications for his very identity in the revelation, but it shouldn't take too long for him to understand the implications of Armand being the only person who has stayed by his side for fifty-two years as well. How that affects the yearning and the loneliness. What to do with Armand's desire to fulfil his maker duties.

And still, that is not everything Armand has to offer! There is also the journalism part again, of course: he continues to respect and fulfil yet another need of Daniel's, giving the scoop on Lestat's life. And then he tells Molloy he can teach him to walk in the Sun.

Yes he did, Danny. Because your blood doesn't suck and you are a beloved fledgling, even if it took your maker a few years to express that.

So, what's my point with all this? When am I going to get to the actual question? Well, I've recapped all the most crucial parts, although I would also like to point out that Armand almost literally offers Molloy Lestat's head on a silver platter - a very thoughtful and timely gift. But okay, here's my point:

Armand is the answer to Daniel's every need and the only one who could lead him towards a life as a vampire that has any sort of meaning and value to it. The Devils are being Minioned because Daniel would remain stuck without Armand.

Now, I definitely have my criticisms of how this was executed (which honestly just boils down to "why the fuck are we stuck in Lestat's unchallenged narrative this whole season" and could be remedied if they at least fill in the gap between EP5 and EP6 in season 4). But the events themselves are necessary.

Daniel steps into season three abandoned and in need of guidance - Armand is the only one who can answer the call. Daniel steps into season three lost as a vampire - Armand is the only one who can torpedo him towards vampiric greatness. Daniel steps into season three deeply lonely - Armand is the only one who's always been by his side. Daniel steps into season three yearning for a love that has escaped him his entire life - Armand is the only one who loves him. Daniel steps into season three, a bisexual man who has never allowed himself a relationship with another man beyond a dirty secret and a nasty hook-up - Armand is a man who loves him and will offer him companionship if he wants it. Daniel steps inside season three a discredited journalist, further undermined by Lestat in the first half of the season - even that Armand is capable of helping with. "The tan of 'whatever you want, sweetheart'" indeed. And not just the tan.

Not to mention that, while I haven't delved into the possibility of past DM in this post because it is simply too much of a hypothetical right now, if Armand and Daniel did have a relationship in the past, if Daniel's profound loneliness comes from the hole left by Armand after their break up, then Daniel can certainly never move forward without Armand coming back to him and patching that hole up.

But, regardless of whether past DM happened or not, vampire Daniel would be nothing without Armand. A lost fledgling, incapable of anything, doing nothing, further beaten down by Lestat's self-important hand, discarded and abandoned. Daniel needs a lifeline, the same way he needed one when he was a human, and that lifeline is Armand. Could only be Armand. He can't just be a bright reporter with a point of view anymore, no matter how much he tries to cling onto it, especially because Armand's constant presence in his life makes Molloy question whether everything he achieved came with some assistance from the shadows, naturally undermining it at least a bit. But Daniel needs something to hold onto. Something concrete, something he can be sure of, the same way he was compelled to be sure of his journalistic merit. And what is more sure than something, someone he has had for the past fifty-two years?

Now, don't get me wrong, I am not trying to reduce Daniel's character to just DM. This is the situation now, while he is a lost fledgling, in desperate need of assistance and guidance, wishing for his needs that couldn't be met when he was a human to finally be met. As we move forward, as Daniel becomes a stronger vampire, as he no longer feels loneliness pierce his life, as he experiences love in a different way to how he experienced it before (both in the sense that his self is accepted, in all its ugliness, and in the queer sense), as he gets new perspectives and opportunities, Armand's place in Daniel's life will change and so might his lifeline.

But at least for now? If human Daniel's lifeline was being a journalist, vampire Daniel's lifeline is being the Devil's Minion.

>>> Can Daniel be "a love that cradles"?

I understand why this question comes up. I started this post by perusing through all the ugliest parts of Daniel because I understand that is where the question comes from. He was this angry, jaded old man in IWTV, he spends most of his time in TVL as a vampire still angry, and then we get this beautifully precise line about what Armand needs from companionship and love (thank you again, Louis).

The juxtaposition is quite jarring.

But what have we learned here, among my endless musings about Molloy's character?

Well, for one, we can now hopefully agree that the anger was valid. At least from Daniel's perspective. He wasn't just angry for the sake of being angry or because he's angry all the time and incapable of other emotions. He was turned against his will, he was abandoned as a fledgling, his singular purpose in life has been undermined and is being constantly mocked by Lestat, and he is utterly fucking lost as to what his new vampire life can and should even look like. Most of these issues have been or are slowly being addressed (mostly off screen :/ but you know), others will be addressed or will simply have to move over to make space for new experiences and emotions that there is definitely already some space for now. And we saw that he is capable of having those emotions. Like I said in "LONELINESS AND YEARNING", there was a tapestry of them to human Daniel and I don't think it's lost just because he is a vampire now, and - although we only got to see tiny glimpses of it - we see it in TVL too.

I believe a part of why the idea of Daniel "cradling" can be so hard to imagine for some, though, is because everything we know of his capability to love is covered by a shadow of his failures as a husband and a parent, which - among other things - hits very close to home for a lot of viewers, especially in the sense of relating to Molloy's daughters (shout out to all my fellow children of shitty fathers), which kind of makes it hard to imagine Daniel as loving in that way. It doesn't help that the word "cradle" itself is associated with children either.

All that being said, we know very little of the reason why Molloy's daughters went completely no contact and why they hate him so much. There is that one quick line where Daniel says "I fucked up two daughters", but that's literally it and that's his perspective on it. We know they hate him, we've heard of them expressing their hatred many times, but we don't know where that hatred comes from. I have an idea though. I believe it's because he's a bad person. Which is actually a good thing for us.

The very fact that many viewers dislike him, especially now that they have realised all the ugly parts of him shown in IWTV were not a provocation or a strategy but real parts of his true self; the "splinter of coldness" that is already present when Molloy is just twenty; the potential implications of the 1990 story with the student; the fact that Alice did not trust him and rejected his proposal at first: we have endless proof of people not typically liking Daniel very much, as a person.

In fact, the proposal to Alice in particular makes me believe that the issue with Molloy has never been that he is incapable of being loving and has always been about him being a piece of shit. (Again, operating under the assumption that the proposal was indeed to Alice, which I am now more inclined to believe, because the biggest question of how Armand knew what Alice thought in the moment can now be explained by him stalking Daniel in Paris at the time, witnessing the failed proposal, and reading Alice's mind to find out why she said "no" to his fascinating boy. To be clear, this does not mean I am denying the possibility of past DM or even fully addressing the Alice/Armand theory, I am just talking about this specific moment.) And so, thinking of the proposal as real, sure, the rejection itself could have been because Alice didn't feel truly loved or cared for by Daniel and not necessarily because she knew deep down that he was not a good person. But what of her changing her mind? Them getting married after all, possibly having a second child together? What is more likely: that she decided to change her answer to "yes" despite the fact that he was incapable of making her feel loved or because she turned a blind eye to the alarm bells going off in her head about something being profoundly wrong with him as he did make her feel loved? I would bet on the latter. The same thing goes for Daniel managing to get married a second time.

Now, turning back to the kids, I think it is crucial that they both hate him as much as they do. Each child typically has a different relationship with their parents, even if they are all negative or all positive. Yet we have two daughters, certainly of different age, parented by Daniel at different stages of his life, potentially from different marriages and with different mothers, yet hating him in the same exact uncompromising and irreversible way.

I believe everything points to the fact that there is something practically inherent to Daniel that brings up feelings of aversion in people around him.

It was not the way he expressed love, it was not his capability or lack thereof for being sweet or affectionate or indeed cradling, it was a fundamental issue with the self that no one could quite get over. The black hole staring back at them.

Most obviously this means that, since Daniel is a vampire now, finally outside of the bounds of human morality that he could never quite fit into, and Armand doesn't mind the splinter of coldness, what ruined Daniel's relationships in the past isn't a deal breaker anymore and won't affect his current / potential future relationship with his maker. But it also means that we have no evidence to suggest that he is not able to be loving in the way we need him to be to "cradle" our dear Armand.

In fact, I think we have some evidence that he is capable of it. The Daniel that was anxious to get a specific table in a cafe in Paris to propose to his girlfriend; the Daniel that had particular feelings about holding her hand, still clinging onto the memory decades later; the Daniel that managed to convince her to marry him despite her reservations; the Daniel that got married a second time; the Daniel that wanted to be at his daughter's graduation; the Daniel that respected her wishes to not be there when she told him to fuck off; the Daniel who sobbed about it after; the Daniel whose first thought after he "died" was to call one of his daughters: all of that is still our Daniel. And I do believe that Daniel could absolutely "cradle".

Now, his capability for it will not be immediately apparent. It has certainly not come out in his relationship with Armand yet. But why wouldn't it? Eventually. I've outlined how Armand is and could be everything that Daniel needs, at least right now - all that's left is for Daniel to fall in love with him (or fall back in love with him or remember that he is in love with him or accept the fact that he is in love with him - depends on who you ask). But when he does? He will be able to give Armand what he needs too. After all, who wouldn't want to cradle their lifeline?

>>> So, what's next?

Ideally? An actual fucking look into what's been happening to Daniel (and Armand) since the end of season 2. On screen. How he got turned, how they spent the few months between EP5 and EP6 together, what are the actual precise details of their relationship development, what they are like together. All of it. As much as I insist that the Devils needed to be Minioned this season and as much as I must relent to the fact that yes, if we are listening to Lestat telling the story in a room all by himself, any more DM details would not have made sense, I need those details to make their way onto my screen next season for this to actually work. And they have to fuck on screen too. For Assad and Eric's sake, if no one else's, because they cannot stop talking about it.

(If you have read until the end, thank you. This took me multiple days to write and I feel a little insane about it. You may share any thoughts or opinions if you wish, just please don't tell me to kill myself - I'm fragile.)

#iwtv #tvl #spoilers #love this #daniel is the worst and he is my favorite <3

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it's good content, tara