”I hope your favorite tv show gets cancelled” is trite. cliche, even. “I hope your favorite tv show that a dear friend got you into has a finale that absolutely butchers all your favorite characters and is horrifyingly racist” is a worse curse. it’s happening to me right now.
You know it's a Gothic Horror show, and you're supposed to feel uncomfortable, right? I do. But do you? Do you, Rolin, and Hannah understand that? Because from where I stand, only the Black characters seem to be trapped in a horror story. The others appear to be in a completely different genre.
The issue isn't that viewers like myself don't want to feel uncomfortable. The issue is that, in this Gothic Horror show, Black characters disproportionately bear the brunt of the violence.
Take this season finale as an example.
At the end of Episode 6, two characters are beheaded. Yet in Episode 7, we are shown the severed head and mutilated body of the black character in explicit details, while the white character's mutilated body is shown only briefly and out of focus, and his severed head is hidden from us.
Louis's arc is presented as a parallel to Lestat's. Both characters are placed in situations where they must confront people they have wronged, or at least people the narrative insists they have wronged, as well as their pasts, relationships, and mistakes. (Personally, I don't believe Louis owes Armand anything, but the narrative clearly wants the audience to think otherwise.🙄🙄🙄)
Yet the way these parallel journeys are depicted are drastically different.
Lestat's reckoning unfolds in beautiful rooms, elegant spaces, and dreamlike settings. He sits comfortably while listening to the grievances of the people in his life. He argues back. He reflects. He moves through beautiful environments, from grand rooms to forests and back again. Even when he is forced to confront painful memories, the experience is framed as introspection. The focus remains on his emotional and psychological journey.
Meanwhile, Louis is placed in what looks like a torture room straight out of a Saw movie. His severed head sits on a table, hooked up to a machine. His body is positioned across from him, forcing him to stare at it. His suffering is not just physical; it is public and humiliating. His torture is broadcast for others to watch and study. His pain becomes both spectacle and data. He is joined by Regina, another Black character, whose torture is used as leverage against him.
The man torturing Louis demands an apology, not for any genuine wrongdoing, but because Louis failed to love him the way he believed he deserved to be loved, and failed to show enough empathy for his trauma. This is the same man who murdered Louis's daughter in a lynching and attempted to murder Louis in that same lynching, and who, only minutes earlier, boasted that he took aesthetic pleasure in making Louis's death visually exhilarating as part of that lynching.
And so the torture continues. Louis is pushed to the brink of death. Regina is slicing her wrist. Eventually, Louis gives in. He apologizes. He accepts responsibility not only for hurting his torturer's feelings but for the torture itself. He tells his torturer that his coldness and denial drove him (the torturer) to these actions (the torture). The torturer receives the apology he wants, ends the torture, heals and frees Regina, and leaves, but not before carving the letter "A" onto Louis's mutilated body.
Meanwhile, Lestat is still moving through beautiful settings, confronting his past, and listening to others condemn him for the failures of his life. His story reaches its climax in the final act, when he is surrounded by the people in his life and the people he has wronged, some of whom are cheering him on. Rather than being subjected to physical degradation, he is given space for self-reflection. The focus remains on his memories, his relationships, his mistakes, the horrors he has committed, and his regrets. He eventually acknowledges some of his mistakes and even apologizes to one of his victims. Instead of fleeing from his past, he chooses to face it. His reckoning culminates in understanding, and the arc ultimately ends with imagery that evokes transcendence, as though he is ascending to heaven.
Both Louis and Lestat are given parallel narrative arcs centered on confronting their pasts, their relationships, and the harm they have caused. Yet the show presents those reckonings through vastly different visual and narrative lenses. Lestat's journey is psychological, reflective, and aesthetically beautiful. Louis's journey is a sustained ordeal of physical and psychological torture, humiliation, and degradation. One character is invited to examine himself; the other is turned into a spectacle of suffering. While Lestat is afforded reflection, Louis is afforded degradation.
And I'm supposed to look at that contrast and just shrug and say, "Well, that's Gothic horror for you"? Really? Take the blinders off. Look at what is being asked of Louis and compare it to what is being asked of Lestat. One is granted introspection, reflection, and, ultimately, transcendence. The other is subjected to torture, humiliation, and spectacle. The genre does not erase that disparity. If anything, it makes it more obvious.
My issue is not the horror. My issue is who is repeatedly asked to embody that horror, whose pain is treated as spectacle, and whose pain is afforded dignity, nuance, and care.
Most of this brutalization just did not exist in the og tvc books and they decided in the show where they racebent louis and claudia to be black to have all the gratuitous violence put onto them, to the point of louis getting lynched twice in two seasons, meanwhile literally no white characters got that same treatment at all, even violent thing that happens to a white character except for the pilot episode with the priests happens off screen. We dont even see Bruce the RAPIST get torn up and branded the way louis gets torn up,branded, and put on a pike like the runaway slaves he talked about in s1e3, right after hes called a slave 3 times in 1 episode like wow. Its either black characters like Regina and Louis and Claudia get straight up tortured or theyre completely written off or only used to make a white character look better like Lemuel, Dee and somehow Paul and Louis. And its the fact that producers like Rolin Jones and Hannah Moscovitch thought this was a good use of their black characters like above all it just feels contemptuous and extremely racist. I need that whole writers room giving apologies at sdcc
“Armand is cartoonishly evil because that’s how Lestat sees him.”
Not my Lestat. Not the original Lestat. Lestat literally thinks that the sun shines out of Armand’s ass more than anyone else and that he is the 8th wonder of the world. That’s his sleeping beauty, his beautiful devil, his Botticelli angel.
Lovingly, y'all have to get better at and more comfortable with talking about sex work and sex workers if you're going to continue critiquing TVL on that note. Because some of y'all are tip toeing in a way that doesn't acknowledge that the show failed to even show this Louis they're claiming in s3, and also its a little dehumanizing to sex workers, when s1 went out of its way to show us them as living, breathing, real people DOING A JOB. SEX WORK IS LABOR.
Because my issue is that we saw Louis take the racial slur/heat from a John who rightfully got pummeled when he assaulted a sex worker. She's framed as CORRECT for fighting back and stopping that assault btw. We saw Louis and Miss Lily have a very clear understanding, though unspoken, that Louis was gay as the day is long. I believe the first sex worker we see is disabled, not as a bit or joke, and Louis addresses her by name immediately. It's Daniel implying harm and ill intent on Louis' part in those early scenes. But later in IWTV, we hear the way wealthy white men talk about their brothels and it's not at all warm or familiar...
I didn't see Louis coercing them or selling them against their will. And yes, there is always some level of ethical issue in sex work, especially as it's criminalized and relies on authorities turning a blind eye which also means they can manipulate sex workers and their whole house all the want. But from what the show itself gave us, Louis is practical and protective of the sex workers under his care. His only violence is making an example of Paul because he HAS TO. I think the show could've explored how Louis can compartmentalize anyone in his life into a calculated business asset, a means to an end, and I do think it's possible that his guilt with the pastor was genuine. But the SHOW chose not to do that.
Season 1 and 2 also establish that Daniel did sex work to fuel his addictions and perhaps an affinity for self harm. But it's then Daniel who refers to Armand as a rentboy. Armand, I *think* is the only person who says sex worker, but even then, it's unclear if Louis' using terms like "girls" or "hookers" when recalling the time period is supposed to be a derogatory habit or just part of the recollection, as that is what they'd be called.
I don't think Louis is a saint. I don't NEED or WANT Louis to be a Saint and if they'd fucking bothered actually adapting Lestat, that makes it all the more beautiful that to Lestat he IS sainted, not to mention the parallels or Lestat leaving a monastery and falling in love with/running away to Paris to be with Nicki versus Louis' desperate and self flagellating confession being interrupted by Lestat telling him he could have a life bigger than this religion and the limits of his race (which obv the show could've explored that not being 100% true as being gay & a biracial couple does still limit them despite their vampiric power). But if the show thought they were showing me a nightmare cold and cruel pimp, a master exploitation who dehumanized anyone at any time, they're outta their fucking minds.
Louis' father ran a sugar plantation and/or mill into ruin. Louis took the money he could selling it off to white business men who most definitely didn't want to help lift up a Black man. And we see how those men try to rip him off at the poker game (which also pisses Lestat off, so it's wiiiiiild the leaps and bounds they took from thoughtless French man to like... idk, Iggy Klan or Third Reich Bowie). Louis' call to being a pimp wasn't about owning women. It was the only avenue he had left to keep his family living the way they did. A white person falling from upper to kindle class is one thing. An entire Black family falling from the upper class in the Jim Crow south? There isn't a middle; There's only rock bottom. Did exploitation and violation lead the women who worked in his brothel there? Probably. But that's not unique to sex work. That's an issue of capitalism, of labor, and the additional challenges of being an unkept woman. I'm not gonna assume their Black boss who smoothes it over when they fight back is the worst thing that ever happened to them. And that's what the show has asked us to do all season.
And if the show wanted to get into how Louis' lashing out at those white businessmen likely harmed those women, it could've done that! But it didn't!
Aside from the more serious complaints I've had with this season and I've already complained endlessly about (the misogyny, racism - esp antiblackness -, etc), I have one other complaint that annoys me terribly:
They are dead set on monogamy. And it's hurting the characters' relationships.
I always kind of imagined that this would happen to a certain point, but this season really amplified it by 100%. I can tell they want loustat and devil's minion to be The Couples™, so they want no possible ambiguity that they could love anyone else.
Nickistat is okay, because Nicolas is dead. But lesmand? Oh, well, they MAYBE fucked around a little in the past, but really Armand is just unilaterally obsessed with Lestat, and Lestat only really dislikes him, and takes joy in mocking and humiliating him. Doesn't give a single fuck about him - "apathy", as they called it in the After Dark episode after E6. Loumand? You thought their relationship just deteriorated over time? No, turns out they NEVER loved each other! Yeah, Armand only was with him because it was the only thing left for him - being with a man he took "aesthetic pleasure" in torturing back then and, apparently, in the present as well, and willing to just let die both times -, and Louis was only with Armand as a cope that he couldn't be with Lestat, and really everything that he did with Armand was really about Lestat. A way to get back at him.
It's like they want to burn every bridge between characters that in the book cannon do love each other deeply, because they want to be sure we can only picture The Couples™ together and nothing else (and I'm going to refrain from speaking in detail about how shit DM's development has been this season, with most of it happening off-screen and all, and I'll also not mention how we barely got any physical affection or even a kiss - bare minimum - between any of these couples for a whole season, but it is all pretty funny). There can't be even an INKLING of possibility that maybe there was love between anyone else, or, god forbid, still is.
I didn't expect them to follow the book route, really, with everyone sort of loving each other very deeply and going back and forth between each other, because at the end of the day this is TV and I know that many people would flip at this approach. Not palatable, I guess. But taking such profound and nuanced relationships and flattening them completely for the sake of keeping the main ships intact is really annoying.
(The way they went about lesmand in particular is very upsetting to me, because the love-hate thing they have going on in so important for the both of them in the books, and it's so clear, so it's really sad to see what they made them into the show - a past fling at best, vaguely referred to as "ex" in one scene.)
(But also, there could be something to be said about how they make sure that these relationships between characters of color and white characters work, so for that they felt had to destroy the only relationship that was had between two characters of color in a way that doesn't even happen in the books. Yes, they were miserable together post-trial, but Armand just gave Louis space and left when he realized it was beyond saving. I guess he did try to hide that he left Claudia to die, even if if Louis secretly knew, so I can see where they got the manipulation from. But the gratuitous violence that was inflicted on Louis? That was 100% the show. There is a main character Armand tortures in the books, and that's Lestat, and with the humiliation he put him through in the show it would make some sense, but oh well. Interesting choice, to not say something else...)
I also feel like the books' general love could also say something about how vampires exist outside of the norms of society in so many ways, but I don't think the show is going for that. Still, maybe they could have embraced it as part of the queerness. Or they could have at least given these relationships the care they deserved to feel like there's something keeping these characters coming back to each other that isn't just circumstance. But maybe they will only be around each other because of circumstance, who knows.
I just really don't like this because the relationships are so lovely to me in the books. The show has made them so shallow in comparison, I feel like.
people focusing on the writers feeding them with “transfem lestat” while ignoring the vehement antiblackness they're putting the black gay man through kinda perfectly encapsulates the priorities of white queer fandom
So the IWTV IP was always going to devolve into white supremacy because that's what Rolin Jones meant when he said he can't wait to adapt TVL. They took two years to meticulously craft the butchering of black characters both literally and figuratively on our screens. Your local white showrunner in an all white writer's room, writing the scenes where the black vampire gets his head cut off, and then branded by the brown vampire, all the while your white, blonde haired, blue eyed vampire who was given the gift for vampirism to preserve his Aryan features gets to be just a tortured soul- the narrative also works overtime to retcon all of the abuse he inflicted. The KKK members of this fandom must be so happy, peering from under there white hoods lol. The innocence and fragility of whiteness has been preserved and the value of white tears has been reaffirmed. Gothic horror not in so much that questions the established patterns of power structures in society, but in the way a TV series will eat its own tail to preserve and cater to white supremacy. Bravo! I hope you all cough blood.
all this explicit body horror only being reserved for black bodies in this show on top of the racially charged language and the bastardization of the black characters idk anymore man
It feels like Rolin is writing fanfic for this season but forgot to tag it, so I'm helping him out
The Vampire Lestat | Alternate Universe - No Logic | Anti-Louis de Pointe du Lac | Anti-Armand | Justice for Lestat | No beta we die like Claudia | Author is high while writing this | Author regrets NOTHING | Character Assassination as Plot Device | One true love because monogamy is the best | Mention of racial slurs | Offensive language towards a CSA victim | But author SWEARS it was with good intentions
I see people arguing that the slave remarks in Episode 6 of The Vampire Lestat were a callback to the slave remarks in Episode 6 of Season 1 of Interview with the Vampire. If that's true, then it is the perfect example of why black writers were needed in the room. And I mean black writers specifically, not just "people of color." The contrast between how the two episodes handled the subject shows that.
Before I get into that comparison, I want to make something clear. I didn't like the introduction of a slave-master narrative into the unholy family dynamic. The racial implications made me uncomfortable. However, discomfort and offense are not the same thing. While I found it unsettling, I did not find it racist or anti-Black, and that's the key distinction.
In Episode 6 of Season 1, there are two instances where Claudia uses the word "slave". The first time, she is referring to both herself and Louis. She is essentially saying that they are under Lestat's control, trapped in Rue Royale, prisoners of Lestat, his slaves. In that context, "slave" is being used to describe their lack of freedom and autonomy. The second time, she refers not only to herself and Louis, but also to Lestat. She draws a parallel between their situation and Lestat's situation with Magnus. Just as Claudia and Louis are trapped under Lestat's control, Lestat was once under Magnus's control. He was Magnus's slave, and he ultimately killed him rather than continue living that way (we know that's not what happened but that's what Claudia believed). In both instances, the word "slave" is tied to a circumstance, not an identity. It is being used to describe a power dynamic: control, imprisonment, coercion, and domination. You could replace the word "slave" with "prisoner" and the point would remain intact. More importantly, the narrative makes a deliberate effort not to tie slavery to Louis and Claudia's race. Applying the same language to Lestat is what makes that distinction clear. The point is not, "Louis and Claudia are slaves because they are black." The point is, "Louis and Claudia are slaves because they are trapped under Lestat's control," just as Lestat was trapped under Magnus's. Now, viewers can absolutely be uncomfortable with the racial implications of using that metaphor in the first place. I certainly was. But I don't think anyone can honestly argue that the use of the word slave in this scenario was racist.
The writers managed to create discomfort, arguably one of their goals without resorting to anti-Black rhetoric. That's exactly the kind of nuance the black creatives involved in season 1 brought to the story.
Now compare that to Episode 6 of The Vampire Lestat. Claudia calls Louis a slave and then goes further, suggesting that slavery is part of who he is. She implies it is in his DNA as demonstrated by her saying that "slave" is etched into his ribs. Add the "nappy-headed" remark on top of it, and the conversation is no longer about a power dynamic. It becomes an attack on Louis's identity as a black person.
That is the fundamental difference. In Season 1, slavery was used as a metaphor for control. In The Vampire Lestat, slavery is framed as something intrinsic to Louis himself. The word is no longer describing his circumstances; it is describing who he supposedly is. The narrative shifts from "you are being treated like a slave" to "being a slave is part of your nature."
Those are not remotely the same thing. You cannot write a scene in which a Black character tells another Black character that slavery is essentially woven into his DNA, pair it with a racialized insult like "nappy-headed," and then act surprised when viewers, particularly black viewers find it offensive. So if those remarks were intended to be a callback to Season 1 Episode 6, then the callback was an utter failure.
What made the Season 1 dialogue worked was that it treated slavery as a condition imposed on people. What makes the Vampire Lestat dialogue offensive is that it treats slavery as something inherent to Louis. One is about oppression; the other flirts with the idea that oppression is an innate trait. That is not a minor difference. It is the entire issue. And if you genuinely cannot see the difference between using slavery as a metaphor for imprisonment and using slavery as a marker of a black character's identity, then I really don't know what to tell you.
The contrast between the two episodes is precisely why having black writers in the room matter. Season 1 showed that you can explore themes of domination, control, and power between black and white characters, while navigating the racial implications with nuance. The Vampire Lestat Episode 6 shows what happens when that nuance is absent.
im honestly still not over this like a room full of nonblack people wrote claudia calling louis nappy-headed and telling him that etched in his ribs was the proof that he's a slave. something so horrifically anti-black because of its implications that louis being a slave is genetic and interwoven with his dna. that's literally a white supremacist talking point. they had claudia, a black person with a white lover, mock louis for being a black person with a white lover, and say that lestat was her actual blood relative after rejecting his blood in s2, acknowledging that it wasn't good enough for madeleine.
rolin truly said this and believed it to be true, and that should be enough for everyone to know what kind of person he is:
they had claudia refer to her life as not only bleak, but specifically bleak and black. a character who was never ashamed of her blackness. they had her say that she hates louis more than her rapist, abuser, and the people that orchestrated her lynching and burned her lover alive. they completely destroyed her character and killed two birds with one stone, butchering who claudia always was/how she saw louis and lestat, and throwing in more insults and hate at louis while mostly ignoring lestat.
and making it so that claudia is suffering endlessly, even in death, felt like another purposeful story choice. not to make claudia's character even more heartbreaking, either. it was pointless no matter how you look at it. this just felt like yet another way to torture a black character, and a black character that has been repeatedly exploited all season for everyone else's feelings. furthermore, summoning claudia had no effect on louis and lestat at all, as they were immediately over it by the next scene.
none of the heavy storybeats can have any emotional impact because both us and the characters are never given time to absorb them. they're just checking boxes with these heavy moments and moving onto the next scene. and all of this is, again, so we can absolve lestat of his wrongdoings and ensure no blame falls on him. his trauma is the only important thing in the show and the only thing worth discussing/unpacking. it's just antiblack, misogynistic writing again and again every week and rehashing it feels pointless but i can't help myself.
aside from the blatant racism and misogynoir, i also get the impression that these writers are just trying to get their quoteable, hashtag-able, gif-worthy scenes each episode. who needs a cohesive plot when you can have lestat say "serving cunt has its consequences" or give the viewers an iconic shot of their favorite ship that feels entirely unearned—one of my examples of this being the fact that devils minion feels like they just put together a bunch of shots that they thought people would love, without actually telling a story with these two characters. everything we learn of their history and relationship is given to us through exposition. and because assad is such a fantastic actor, he's making these scraps into something interesting.
the showrunners are no longer pretending to be subtle with their sloppy writing, poor pacing, and hatred towards louis and claudia. they're just writing the racism right into the script and think that, because a black character says it, they're free from all criticism. and a majority of their nonblack fans are jumping to defend them by saying that claudia's rage is justified and if you claim otherwise (even if you're not saying that) then you can't accept black characters being cruel and/or evil. which isn't true at all.
claudia's rage is entirely justified, her berating the two people that were supposed to love her and put her first but instead used both her life and death for their own gain is not the issue here. she could've been as cruel as she wanted—but having her say a slew of horribly racist things to louis and direct most of her ire towards him as opposed to lestat or the both of them equally was nothing more than these antiblack writers once again degrading louis for their own enjoyment because they hate his character and know they can get away with dragging him through the mud. especially if they hide behind another black character.
even the decapitation at the end felt like a quick moment of shock to the viewer that turned comical immediately after. the abysmal pacing of this show makes it so that loustat being beheaded has no actual weight because we know they're fine and we're given no opportunity to sit with this moment. there are no stakes and there was no real buildup to it. nor to armand and daniel coming up with this plan and suddenly working together the way they are. in fact after the dust settled, id say the scene was borderline cartoonishly evil.
these writers will never face the backlash that they deserve for this joke of a season. not only does this show not deserve to be renewed, but i sincerely hope that jacob, delainey and assad are (aside from being able to talk about it privately in some way) one day able to publicly talk about the racist/misogynistic bullshit that they had to endure this season all in the name of propping up a white character and furthering a bullshit narrative.
The showrunners chose to make Louis and Claudia black and experience life in the Jim crow era. They chose to do the full race swap in season 1, not just making the characters but also the story black. They chose to racialize the violence that both Louis and Claudia face throughout the first season. No one was forcing their hands and they got praised for the stuff they did in the first two seasons, for bringing in the added nuance of systemic racism. So why should I as an audience member of colour give them any grace when they choose to write dialogues containing numerous racialized and gendered micro aggressions not just towards Louis or Claudia but also towards minor characters like Dee or Lemuel who weren't supposed to exist as they are (black) in the show?? Why is Daniel (a white man) who is supposed to be a Pulitzer prize winning investigative journalist who was lecturing Louis on his own story about the racism he faced referring to him as a "bucket of Louisiana fried chicken"?? Why is Armand textually belittled for being a CSA victim while Lestat is endlessly provided with grace and understanding in the text of the show for his victimhood?? Who thought it was alright to adapt a scene from the books involving white characters talking about parental betrayal and insert racially charged dialogues (that too old school racist shit not even the n word) when it was unnecessary to preserve the nuance of the scene?? Why is this show denying the racialized nature of domestic violence that they chose to portray in S1 ??? (Lestat getting mildly annoyed that Louis didn't enjoy going to the operas in nola when he had to act as Lestat's servant to be allowed in tf??) Why is Gabriella like that??
I cannot help but look at this season of the show as a sign of the times tbh. IWTV aired during a very liberal era of entertainment and now that fascism and white supremacy are on the rise everywhere white entertainers have become comfortable enough to fall back into old habits. Never thought this show in particular would have this problem when I watched the first season but it is what it is I guess
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