There's a moment during the hotel hallway fight where Lestat says, "consider this sliding door of Dan."
If you don't know, Sliding Doors is a movie about (I haven't seen it, I just know it from pop culture references) timeline divergence, and how a life can be changed if one moment is different. Similar to the Butterfly Effect.
Lestat is talking about how if Daniel hadn't come to his rescue, and Lestat had been killed, the catastrophe this season is hinting at would never have happened.
But I particularly like this analogy because Daniel has been The Sliding Door of this whole series since season one. Because while there have been time period changes in the adaptation, the barebones structure of the story remains the same: Lestat goes to New Orleans, Lestat meets Louis, they make Claudia, Louis and Claudia run away to Europe where they meet Armand, Claudia is killed by Armand and his coven. Time placement may be different, but the linear movement of everything is the same. The first major divergence (to me) is when Daniel DOESNT write the book in the 1970s. There is no second interview in the Vampire Chronicles books. There is no Daniel walking out of Divisadero Street and living a relatively normal human life. Armand and Louis leaving with Daniel's tapes so he cannot remember and cannot write the book is to me the "sliding doors" moment that creates two paths: the books' path and the show's path.




















