Here’s my thing about the twist at the end of IWTV season 2 (spoilers obvi)
The magic system that IWTV has is for flavour. It’s spice, it’s zest, it’s a lil bit of seasoning that gives the storytelling a fun supernatural kick.
We are not given exact metrics or data for how exactly the Vampire Powers function, just examples of some that can manifest (pyrokinesis/telekinesis/telepathy/flight/mind control/etc) and that Vampire Powers get stronger as they get older. eg. Armand can walk in the sun – but is he immune or just resistant? How old does a vampire have to be before they can take a midday stroll minus immolation? Is there a time limit? An intensity where they could still be injured? Does the effect lessen if they have some shade like an umbrella or a large hat–
IRRELEVANT!!! The Vampire Powers are for SPICE and these kinds of nerdy-ass questions about scope and scale in this magic system does nothing for the characters or the story. You do not need to know the exact range or power of Louis’ Fire Gift in order to cheer and clap when he burns down the theatre. Lestat’s Cloud Gift doesn’t need a follow-up explanation on how high/fast he can fly in order to be devastating when he uses it to do a domestic violence. This isn’t Fullmetal Alchemist, this isn’t Mistborn. This magic system is SPICE, and getting into specifics about the powers and how they work distracts from the wonderful twisty soap opera of the gay vampires doing war crimes to each other.
So my thing about the twist is not that Armand was willing to let Louis die, and it’s not the reveal that Lestat was actually the one who saved Louis.
My thing about the twist is that it relies on a magic system that wasn’t built to support that kind of major end-of-season plot point. And the consequences that the resulting ambiguity has on Claudia, the greatest tragic hero of all time.
Armand has that shit on lock. He’s shown using it extremely competently even before the San Francisco memory-alteration reveal. He’s the only member of the coven who clocks Louis’ recognition at Lestat’s name, he notices the “presence” in Louis’ mind when Louis hallucinates Dreamstat, he knows when Louis is lying to him about Claudia’s involvement in Lestat’s murder, when he tells Louis and Claudia to close their minds before his conversation with Madeline he says “I’ll know it if you haven’t.”. He’s able to knock out the entire coven in one scene, although it’s unclear whether that’s the Mind Gift or a combination of telekinesis and the time stopping(?) thing. Plus of course mind-wiping memory-alteration courtesy of the San Francisco saw trap.
Armand is the oldest vampire in the show so far, we know vampires get more powerful with age, and his previously shown competency with the Mind Gift means that when he says he compelled an audience full of people into banishing Louis, it’s a believable addition to his powerset.
And, consequently, when he says “it took all my strength” we can guess that he’s lying his ass off. Daniel points out Armand saved Louis and not Claudia because he was trying to reveal the reasoning that everybody except Louis already knows. To quote Assad Zaman: Armand doesn’t give a fuck about Claudia.
Lestat on the other hand.
His one and only use of the Mind Gift (besides the generalized telepathy all the vampires share) is when he mindfucks 30ish soldiers out of his townhouse in the 1900s. His ears bleed about it – and we can pretty confidently interpret orifice-bleeding as a kind of catch-all for mind-powers being difficult. And then we don’t mention it again for a season and a half because the magic system is for spice and Louis is more concerned with other shit.
Until Daniel brings it up in his Big Reveal, and this piece of evidence allows for the truth to come out and Armand to be exposed as an opportunistic liar. Scene is played out brilliantly, Louis puts a crater in his wall via his ex-husband, good stuff.
This twist has the consequence of shifting the focus of the story. The central question has changed slightly. Instead of the reveal being who killed Claudia, the narrative focus is now on who saved Louis.
And despite my love of Daniel’s reveal scene, despite my love of the Louis/Lestat reunion scene, “who saved Louis” ends up a weaker thematic question.
Claudia is the whole fucking point. Claudia and the way her fathers failed her. Claudia and the tragedy of her narrative doom. Claudia and the ways she never escaped that child’s body in that burning house, no matter how much she tried.
My thing about the twist is that it takes our previous understandings of Armand and Lestat’s respective power and agency in that scene from this:
Armand: Could’ve Prevented It (Chose Not To)
Lestat: Genuinely Could Not Have Prevented It
Armand: Could’ve Prevented It (Chose Not To)
Lestat: Could’ve Prevented It (Chose Not To)
And then doesn’t interrogate or explain further. There is no one that says to Lestat, “You saved him, but why didn’t you save her?”
And look I can understand I’m meant to extrapolate that Lestat used all his strength to save Louis and therefore didn’t have enough juice to do the same for Claudia (his ears bleed about it and everything)
But they sprinkled so much doubt on Armand’s “it took all my strength” excuse and then immediately showed Lestat as much more powerful with the Mind Gift than previously assumed, and so I’m left with too many unanswered questions.
This is where the narrative puts too much weight on a magic system that wasn’t built to support it. The audience is aware, vaguely, that the older a vampire is the more powerful they are, but we aren’t actually given tangible comparisons between Armand and Lestats respective abilities circa 1949. Lestat is shown or said to have all of Armand’s same abilities by this point, but besides Armand being older, he’s never shown outmatching Lestat in power, and so we never get a real sense of Lestat's limitations.
I should mention that, on its own, this wouldn’t be a flaw. Like I said the magic is here for spice and zest and we don’t need Armand and Lestat to have a wizard battle in order to understand that Armand is probably nebulously more powerful.
But when you hinge a plot point on Lestat’s magical abilities and their limits, I would like to know for certain whether Lestat genuinely couldn’t have prevented Claudia’s death or, like Armand, simply chose not to.
If it’s the latter, it counterintuitively makes Lestat a much less sympathetic character, when (as far as I can tell) the purpose of the twist is to make Lestat more of a heroic figure, since post-reveal there are no further interrogations of Lestat's choices.
And I’ve read wonderful meta on Lestat choosing to let Claudia die and then regretting it forever: if he loved her more she would’ve suffered less, if he loved her less she might not have suffered at all, etc.
But none of this is given any focus in the show because besides Lestat’s single heartbreaking line about Claudia looking to him in her last moments. There is no illumination on whether Lestat’s inaction was due to personal choice or lack of ability. There’s no solid evidence in the show to swing it one way or the other, the magic system is too soft to support a solid conclusion about it.
And. Claudia was sentenced before Louis. So even if Lestat only had the ability to save one of them, he still made the conscious choice to save his strength for Louis.
Which is also not necessarily a flaw. Lestat making the choice to save Louis over Claudia would be an extremely compelling road to go down. My issue is that the show has changed the central question from who killed Claudia to who saved Louis and is now pretending that that road doesn’t exist.
There is no indication that Louis feels any kind of way about Lestat ostensibly choosing him over their daughter. There’s no indication that Lestat had any hesitation about his choice, despite his sadness at her death. I can interpret Sam Reid’s acting choices in the final scene as Lestat not realizing how much Claudia meant to him until she looked at him “like a child looking to her father” but by then it was too late – but that would still be speculative.
Giving Lestat the agency to save Louis and Claudia during the trial both puts too much pressure on a magic system that can’t support it, and puts wind-drag on Louis and Lestats reunion: what should be the emotional climax of the show.
And look to be clear: show good. I’m obsessed with show.
But the structural integrity of the final twist makes me feel like an OSHA inspector in an otherwise competently made building that doesn't have railings on the stairs.
They don't establish enough information wrt the magic system so that Lestat’s sudden ability and subsequent assumed limitations can reasonably track. They don't interrogate the consequences of giving Lestat the choice to save his daughter and then him proceeding to Not Do That.
I don’t think it’s out of character for Armand to choose his coven over Louis considering his habit of clinging to the familiar even if it sucks. I don’t think it’s out of character for Lestat to choose Louis over Claudia considering both Lestat and Louis’ habit of doing exactly that.
But you cannot ask the question “Who killed Claudia? (or, through inaction, allowed Claudia to die)” the entire season and then answer it with “Actually, Lestat saved Louis!”
It shifts the focus, it muddies the theme, it relies too heavily on a magic system that is supposed to be vibes-based and most importantly it treats Claudia like an afterthought when Claudia is literally the entire fucking point.
Claudia isn’t even the main character in her own story, the most tragic of tragic heroes, only someone’s first choice in the moments before her death, and neither she nor the woman she loves can do anything to change their endings. Louis and Lestat’s realization of all the ways they failed her is meant to be the emotional catharsis of the show, but it rings hollow, because the consequence of the final twist serves to render her narratively and metanarratively another round in Louis and Lestat’s stormy romance and un-asking its own central question.
