The whole concept of "I tracked your dead daughter's doppelganger with facial recognition software on my iPad" is goofy af but it made tech expert Armand canon so that's W for me.
KATIE: Seeing Paul back again -we'll stay on that now that we're there- oh, it was so heartbreaking but good at the same time. That's something again that a lot of people have talked about because... you're at this like, 'I'm sorry I killed you' soirée of Lestat's or 'I'm sorry that I wronged you' soirée I suppose you could call it. And I've seen people deliberating and debating, 'Well Paul was there, so is he lumped in with everybody else Lestat has killed?' I took it as a like, he'd either been wronged, or that he was popping down from heaven to be like, 'Lestat get your shit together 'cause my brother needs you.'
ALAN: Right. No, it's funny. I have a few thoughts about that. I remember when we were shooting the scene on the roof when Paul goes off the edge back in episode one, it was a question for me as to whether Lestat had gotten into his head and driven him crazy enough to do that, to get him out of the way so he could have full access to Louis, which is a perfectly Lestat kind of thing to do. I remember we all talked about it and we all decided that was not what happened. I think we all felt that was one step too shitty. (Laughs) No, I don't think he killed him, and I don't think he's there as an emissary from the heavens either, because I'm sort of comfortable with the idea that everything we're seeing here is a 'Lestat dying projection' and everything is being provided by him. So for me what that creates is that– this was the only way that Lestat could finally hear and believe that Louis loved him, was to bring this character in. Because you know as much as Lestat had antipathy for Paul, I think he respected him as a kind of innocent sort of right and so I think the only way he could really hear it would be coming from this person. If anybody else said it it wouldn't carry the weight. So I think in my mind the way I saw the scene was that Lestat knows he's dying. It's kind of a final self-kindness that he does, to hear that he was loved and it's probably the last thing he's going to hear before he dies and then to our surprise he's saved, partly because Armand pulled the plug on the whole experiment and it times out nicely. But so to me I don't think you have to go to heaven to explain. But yeah, the nice thing about it is you can believe anything you want, you can believe that Paul's up there in heaven and that list really is seeing eternity with all the silver threads and stuff. But to me I'm comfortable with the idea that everything we experience is some projection of Lestat's mind, which is thematic because one of the huge things is if you can have empathy for others and if you got empathy for yourself then you'll be okay. And that's sort of what was– Louis manages an incredible feat of empathy for Armand, and Lestat manages incredible feat of empathy for himself at the very end. Selfish! but you know, isn't it the ultimate generosity if you can find way to see your own humanity.
Thinking about parallels between Lestat dropping Louie after trying to making him say “I love you” (or “I don’t love you and never will”) and Armand torturing “sorry” out of Louie
They have so much in common (so desperate for kindness they are ready to kill you to get it)
TW: discussions of racism, slavery, the brutalisation of Black bodies, the dehumanisation of Black people, literature embedded within the post documenting the violence done onto enslaved Black people
i think. a really careful and hesitant think. that as the show goes on its becoming more and more clear that armand feels as if he can do whatever he wants to people. he's been alive too long and he's too powerful and i think there's nothing he thinks he can't technically fix which has given him a fucked up idea about consequences .
i think he's losing touch with reality and more and more ; it feels like the things he does is a game to him
(play with a fascinating boy for 52 years! who cares! then turn him into a vampire and he can have the 52 years back!; kill your lovers daughter but it doesn't matter- if you say you didn;t do it that's basically the same as not doing it; cut louis' head off and force an apology out of him but sew it back on and take his memories away of you doing it)
Armand can't seem to see people. as real people.
NOW
i think that. to have a character play with other characters as if they were objects. and have one of the characters being played with be Black (and also be someone truly shaped and impacted by the psychology of slavery); the things Armand does to louis' body should have been treated with a lot more nuance and thought
i don't know what goes on in that writers room and for all i know it's intentional (although I do think white people being the platform to be exploring the long lasting subjugation of Black people and the philosophy now surrounding their bodies and lives is.... look i dont think they should be doing it (not to say that Black people will inherently "get it right" but its their trauma and history to explore)) but it is. a lot. to have a Black character's body be treated in ways which are so evocative of the torture enslaved Black people faced-
(From: Toussaint Louverture : A Black Jacobin in the Age of Revolutions.)
-and i understand why a lot of people were so uncomfortable/upset/outraged about it
TLDR: due to the history of slavery and the politics surrounding Black bodies and violence done onto them, to have a character 'play with' a Black body in such a violent manner is an extremely political and loaded choice which needs to be done with care and im uncertain it was done with the care and thought it deserves OR do i think the people behind TVL have the right to be making such choices
An Alan Taylor Director’s cut of episode 7 would go crazy because his description sounds so much better suited in every way.
Half the horror of the episode is in how jarring it all feels. We go from this fairly romantic episode to this, and that could be really effective if it felt earned but it didn’t. It’s horrific in the wrong way.
The way he talks about holding on Assad’s face makes so much more sense. I feel like the entire thing about Armand is seeing him doing horrendous things and still being able to find a romance to it. The devil with an angel’s face and all of that. The how he should be filmed. Let us see his emotions so he feels real instead of prioritising the pace. For Armand to be accurate, he needs to be filmed like the camera operator is in love with him. He’s supposed to be enchanting. That’s why there’s such a powerful juxtaposition between his looks and his actions.
It doesn’t lessen the horror, nor does it fix the season, but it better allows your audience to find the beauty in it. There have been parallels drawn between this episode and Hannibal and Hannibal is filmed and edited in a deeply romantic way. That’s why it’s such a pleasing visual experience despite the abject horror on screen.
And this is Lestat’s perspective so even better. Show us Lestat cannot help but be drawn to Armand through how he is filmed. Show us how beautiful and terrible he finds him. Full Director interview here.
Y'know, when we all saw this frame the first time, a common read was that this was him feeling defeated. Bleeding, cornered, Louis looking down on him and commanding him like it was out of the question Armand would obey. But we should have clocked this was the exact second he started plotting the saw trap. This is not the look of someone who's gonna let you have the last word lol.
Some thoughts on "that" scene in the TVL finale, Loumand, and Armand's psychology
Seeing how controversial it is, here's some thoughts on why I thought it worked quite well. (For context, I'm a show-only fan, so I don't care at all about how any of this lines up with what is or isn't in the books.)
Does it come out of nowhere? Yes. But not in a contrived way. This is the Lestat POV season. And Lestat has no interest in Armand's perspective on anything. He belittles and dismisses him constantly. Louis wanted a clean break with Armand, and Lestat would endorse that, so that's case closed. If Armand disagreed with the notion of it being "clean" and was stewing about it for three years and showed any hint of that, Lestat wasn't going to pick up on it. Lestat didn't see it coming, so neither does the show let us see it coming.
But it makes sense how Armand gets here.
Louis and Armand were together for seventy-seven years. That's an insane run to have while managing this toxicity that only occasionally bubbles to the surface. That doesn't happen with only one of them feeding the relationship, or by accident. That takes effort. Now that it's over, and they've both gravitated back towards their (perhaps) 'true' loves, it's easier to say it was all a farce, some kind of arrangement to suit their temporary needs and nothing more. But they both spent decades seducing each other, enjoying having a home to come back to when they needed one, pushing and pulling but ultimately choosing to commit to each other. And no one made them do this! Either one could have left at any time. Maybe it wasn't true love, or good love, or healthy love. But it was love, of a kind. And Louis tried to slice it right there and end it without another word -- which is part of the coldness and denial he ends up admitting to. He knows very well that Armand isn't someone who takes abandonment well and if he cared to think about it, he'd know that being dismissed and written off is intolerable to Armand. But he doesn't care to think about it. His prerogative? Sure. But one with consequences.
I think there's a lot about himself that Louis does not want to seriously examine, which cutting things off with Armand allows him to try to leave behind. His triple-digit body count in the San Francisco era, the way it was convenient to let Armand clean up his messes, the way he stayed for decades in a relationship while knowing it wasn't truly what he wanted (making Armand part of his self-flagellation this way).
Who knows what put Armand in that first AA meeting, but IMO the precipitating event/inspiration for this whole decapitation scene really is the apology tour. Lestat blows him off because Lestat refuses to engage with vulnerability all season until the Gabriella video slaps him across the face; Daniel blows him off because he's done this dance with his daughters already and knows words don't count, only showing up does. Armand knows Louis will blow him off one way or the other, too, and simply can't stand this. (And he's right! Louis tries so very hard to not engage with him and only threatening Regina is enough to compel him to.) Lestat's been a dead end for a long time already; Armand's stalked Daniel so thoroughly he knows where this reaction comes from and can't really argue. But Louis is too deep a wound (with too deep a history) to accept that from.
So Armand, having had all control stripped from him, hatches a scenario that guarantees him control. It's grotesque and it's theatrical; it's going back to his roots to stage a spectacle. It has to be ugly because Armand's feelings are ugly. I don't think he's expecting to pry gentle words from Louis (Louis doing this goes off-script, hence the audience Armand was fine with witnessing the rest of his laundry-airing abruptly getting shut out). His main goal is to be acknowledged. He contains this capacity for monstrosity, but most of the time keeps it tamped down; he submitted to Louis for decades willingly, but he was always more powerful. Here he very viscerally reminds Louis of both facts. Being hated is good. That means he isn't (the sin of sins) boring. Love him or hate him, but you're not going to walk away and ignore him.
Louis, quite frankly, has always been dismissive of Armand in certain ways. He arrives in Paris, doesn't follow the Laws; even after Armand saves his life, he continues to flaunt the coven. He refuses to own that they're companions. He's very engaged in his self-development in this era, which again, is valid, but creates a constant problem for Armand. Their relationship has the arc of a tragic play: Louis's hubris in spiting the coven should culminate in his death, only his death is averted, and then he and Armand remain trapped in each other's orbit for the next seventy years. Louis is fucked up afterwards, he needs someone to hold on to; Armand is shell-shocked and guilty. He might have resented Louis for everything to do with the coven, but he didn't hate him; he only wanted him dead because that would give him stability back.
(I also think it makes Louis more interesting to point out his own capacities for manipulation and cruelty. Lestat's POV softens him (good old fog of love), but also flattens him a touch. Which, btw, I think is an aspect with all the characters this season -- Lestat's impression of them becomes their overriding flavor. Daniel's abrasiveness, Gabriella's jarring presence, Armand being spun as a pitiful figure, are all played up. That felt deliberate to me. And yeah, the first two seasons do give an impression of being tighter in the writing dept. where everything ties together neatly, but there's a solid textual reason for that. Those seasons are jointly framed by Louis, who has been methodically engaged with his memory; Daniel, who is a journalist looking for a story; and Armand, who was a director. All three were united in building that framework. It suits Lestat, a rocker who can't stand to face his baggage head-on, to have a fractured and stylistic story.)
Anyway, I think it's both painful and necessary for Armand to see that Louis is better/healthier without him, that his own love (playing "the good nurse") just was no good and only bred resentment in both of them. And I think for Louis, admitting/accepting Armand's past interfaces with accepting Lestat's past. Maybe he could not have done it for Armand if he hadn't just done it for Lestat. But for all the betrayal and deception, Armand gave him something, too. I don't think Louis re-encounters Lestat with the right mindset to reset with him without his experiences with Armand -- for better and worse. It's all a cycle.
And as for carving the 'A'… I think that's Armand's way of saying, "Oh, you want to deny we made a mark on each other? Deny this." It'll heal, it's mostly symbolic.
Okay some more Armand thoughts to throw out into the ether:
Just thinking about the fact that book Armand was turned at a young age and how that haunts him and freezes him in this doll like state that makes him furious because he has to remain in the image of what his maker desires rather than becoming the adult he could have been
…and now thinking about tv Armand who grew past that stage and feels like the awkward doll that’s no longer the perfect malleable object of desire but something else. Rotten boy because he’s now a man. What are you to do when you’ve outgrown your purpose? Who are you when you no longer fulfill the the role or object of desire and aesthetic perfection?
Is this why no one has painted him in over 400 years? Was he only desirable when he was a child? This becomes more tragic if we assume Armand begged Marius to turn him at 17 but was denied and knew that he would fall out of Marius’s favor.
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