My thoughts on the TVL finale as a book fan...warnings for discussions of racism, incest, and sexual violence. Don't read if you don't want show spoilers!
• Lestat's character arc this season is great! I like the exploration of his trauma and his fractured handling of it. But while I enjoyed the weird and uncanny dinner table scene, it mostly reiterated what we already knew and wasn't weird enough for me to go as long as it did. I especially liked Damien Atkins’ performance as Magnus, but again, this went on for too long.
• Louis—they didn't let him do anything, and the main part was um... :/ well, except for one part that I liked.
• Armand—Firstly, loved the hair tied back look. Zaman’s acting and ability to shift through many emotions was great. Assad Zaman is the standout of this episode, and I got teary-eyed when Louis actually acknowledged what he went through. The acting from them both was on another level. Although, the people who told me that Armand and Devil's Minion get ample focus this season and in the finale owe me money. 🧍🧍🧍🧍🧍🧍
This is the core of Armand in the books; he does monstrous things and has lived so long that he struggles to socialize. He becomes obsessed with modern technology and affectionately makes Daniel horrifying concoctions based on color (think making a strawberry and red meat mix because they're both red) in blenders because he really loves blenders and doesn't really remember human food. He also really loves microwaves. Ultimately, he just wants someone who loves him as he is, and Daniel does; in one chapter, he falls in love with the Devil with his stalking and his weirdo obsession with blenders.
Main thoughts: In this finale, while I enjoyed some aspect of Armand's book Frankenstein antics being shown, and I like that Loumand got a focus in this moment—rather than Armand’s dynamic with Lestat—and Armand was allowed to be both his cruel self but vulnerable and sympathetic, I don't really like yet another iteration of seeing two Black characters being tormented. What was the point of doing this to Louis? (At least Regina lived. I would have been pissed if she was killed, especially of course given the fate of Claudia but also Miss Lily, the sex worker in the very first episode of the show.)
I think I have had enough of this aspect of the show. Is it meant to be a callback to the trial, which was a lynching? Louis has been self-effacing for the entire season, and I have liked the exploration of his grief, but I don't like the words used toward him like “Louisiana-fried chicken” and “nappy-headed.” I understand that these are meant to be uncomfortable, but they make me grimace in a way that is more than “I can't handle uncomfortable topics.” I have watched brutal murders, sexual violence, and incest without saying, “Stop portraying this because this is wrong.” It gives me an ick that I don't get from the other uncomfortable topics explored in this show. The racially charged pejoratives add nothing, especially when race is not being explored as deeply as it was in season one. This is not an exploration of the characters being from the Jim Crow era or whatever the hell Daniel's problem is. Let's move past this and get to the “I own the night” Louis. I also don't like the bottom twink comments toward Armand; besides just not being true about the character, he is a South Asian man who has faced sexual abuse since before he was a teenager, so let's not. (Also, the writing in this season has a self-consciousness to it where...Daniel would not say twink. It feels very Gen X trying to speak young millennial/Gen Z through our old Irish-American Boomer. He just would not say that. He would likely call Armand the f-slur, to which Armand can say “takes one to know one.” He's an old grumpy man.)
That said, I do find beauty in characters who do revolting things, but we still see their capacity to love and be loved, and despite my strong distaste for most of the scene, I thought the final conversation between Louis and Armand conveyed this well and was amazingly acted between Jacob and Assad. Louis as a character is someone I really enjoyed; I hate Louis in the books because he is a tiresome and sanctimonious “oh no, I can't be a vampire and kill people because that's wrong!” plantation owner. Louis in the show I like because he is not exonerated of doing wrong and exploiting others while trying to frame everything he does as morally complicated or righteous, and he's allowed at times to be selfish and judgmental, but he also has a lot of heart and love, and I don't really understand people who dislike him in the show at all. Even when he does things that frustrate me (and I mean, all the characters can be annoying; I mean, Lestat is my #1 in the books, but he is also, you know, Lestat), my heart also breaks for him, and I want him to have peace.
(I could go on a rant about how, and I guess I am—despite all the horrible things Armand does, it is out of character for him to specifically do what he's done to Louis and Lestat. Armand does hurt Lestat and force a kiss on him while he's comatose; Armand in his POV book The Vampire Armand says about blood-drinking, "Nice to drink his blood, to take him against his will. There is no such fun on Earth like the raping of an equal." He is someone who is victimized but also loves controlling others and using the Great Laws to do it. I seem to recall him pushing Lestat off a building. But like Lestat would never quite literally beat the shit out of Louis like he did in 1x05, I don't feel like it is in character for Armand to do what he's done to Louis and Lestat. He is more into the mind games with them. But, I realize the show versions of the characters are often “blunter” and more literal in interpretation to emphasize that their bad actions are bad. To be honest, this is not new. I think the writers have struggles that many writers do where they do things like offhandedly mentioning Louis seduces and murders 100+ men while in San Francisco, which is rape because it's rape to seduce someone with the intention of killing them (I was very alarmed by this reveal), but because the victims are nameless, this is not really brought up or is handwaved that vampires are killers with consent issues, and Louis was having a horrible time in his grief—whereas we agonize over Gabrielle’s incestuous abuse of Lestat, so she is viewed as a uniquely terrible person. And she is bad and a monster, yes, and we should sympathize with Lestat over the sexual abuse he endures from her and Magnus. But there is a dissonance here over who is a real monster or survive and who is deserving of complexity and sympathy that admittedly I don't really know how to fix. It's a messy subject with an ensemble cast of traumatized characters, and characters who are both victims and victimizers. A part of me says, well, of course, we sympathize with the named POV characters we spend time with and tend to ignore the background actions that happen to characters we don't know, but it is something I thought I would mention.)
I think that season 4 NEEDS to elaborate on both Armand’s character and Lestat x Armand because this is a dynamic crucial in the past and present, and I'm baffled by the lack of Armand and the diminishing of his importance to Lestat. Armand is crucial in the book flashback in Paris. It did read to me as very “Lestat protests too much” when he insists that he does not care about Armand. Lestat and Armand’s relationship is crucial going forward to later books. Armand was the only person Lestat had as a mentor after Magnus killed himself. Lestat was alone in Paris, and his relationship with Nicki was complicated and on the rocks before he was turned. Lesmand is an unhealthy dynamic, but it is so focal to TVL.
In the books, Armand is a seventeen-year-old Ukrainian boy turned and trafficked by Marius. It's changed in the finale that he was twelve years old when first trafficked; I was unsure if this was specifically by Marius or something that happened before Marius “saved” him, but it wouldn't shock me because Marius did want to marry a ten-year-old in the books. Also, I really just fucking hate Marius. I'm sorry. I really cannot contain it. He is my biggest opp because no one gets me into more fights with fans than him. Not a single character, perhaps out of all fictional characters, has caused me more frustration and distress as others clamor to try to make me understand his character. I understand that when I bring him up, we get into a discussion about the immorality and atrocities of all the vampires in a Gothic horror series. Which is very true. They are all monsters who transgress and hurt others. But attempting to marry a ten-year-old because he was impressed by her intellect? Grooming and abusing Armand? Being an annoying mansplainer pontificating about how cool and rational he is because he's Roman? “You can excuse murder?” Yes. If the character is funny enough. Unfortunately, I must admit to being a hypocrite, and being a groomer AND annoying are what push Marius over the edge for me. The bar for me is “don’t try to marry a ten-year-old.”
Still, Armand is a monster. Armand tortures and Frankensteins a vampire, Claudia, who is stuck in a five-year-old’s body. Armand tortures Nicki by cutting off both his hands and imprisoning him with his violin when he won't behave. However, what is interesting about the show is that Armand is softened in parts. Well, not entirely; the trial that he orchestrates, styled horrifically like a lynching, is an entirely show made invention. Claudia and Madeleine don't get a trial, and Louis is not kidnapped; Louis finds them gone and searches and finds them killed by sunlight and proceeds to go on a revenge spree. I think they thought the trial would be a more climactic penultimate episode and that it would be both anti-climactic and a disservice to Claudia to have her die off-screen without saying her piece against Louis and Lestat in her speech. I cannot help but wonder if a lot of the violence Armand inflicts on Louis and Claudia is thought to be tempered by the fact that he is not white, but I don't think this is the case and agree with calls of more Black writers on the show going forward, for this and reasons mentioned above.
I understand that there are writers of color still on the show, and some of the issues I have with the writing occurred in previous seasons. In this season, Ryan Kattner is both a writer and actor as a member of the band. No doubt his experiences in an indie rock band assisted with the writing. And Anusree Roy, an accomplished playwright, probably gave me my favorite episode in this season (episode 3; she is also listed as one of the story writers for the finale). But I think many of my issues here would be alleviated with a more diverse writers room, specifically Black scriptwriters. I must admit my privilege of ignorance of many things, and that there are certain things about the show I would not know how to approach; I am not one of the weirdos who thought Claudia's “purity” (?????) was ruined by casting her as Black, but I was leery of making the one character whose entire point is that she suffers and is destined to die and repeatedly has reminders that she should not be alive, a Black woman, and also sapphic in a series admittedly disinterested in sapphic relationships. I fear the implication becomes that Claudia, as a Black sapphic woman, was always fated to be tortured and killed. She is meant to die and be mourned by her parents. She sees it everywhere, like when she is in Romania and watches Daciana throw herself in the fire as Magnus and Nicki did. Everything is telling her: You should not be alive, and you will die. The only hope is that she dies loved by Madeleine—but we learn that they are separated in death.
In IWTV, Claudia is a representation of the daughter, Michele or ”Mouse,” whom Anne Rice and her husband Stan lost to leukemia after she was diagnosed at age 4. Contrary to popular talk, Anne Rice says that she did not consciously make Claudia her daughter Michele, although she did make Louis based on herself and Lestat based on Stan, hence why he was originally named Lestan. Anne Rice intended on Claudia to live and essentially run away with a group of vampire boys like the Lost Boys in Peter Pan, but she was unhappy with this and only found catharsis and satisfaction with the story’s conclusion when she wrote Claudia's death, and this helped her in her grief. Louis, in the book a white slave owner, finds Claudia, a five-year-old white girl, dying and saves her, and she becomes a vampire who matures mentally but is tormented by always looking like a little girl who cannot even cut her hair because it will always look like it did when she died and came back.
Claudia asks us the question: If you could save your child from death with something like vampirism, where she would be a little girl forever, would this be better for her than letting her go? The book says, “No.” A terribly sad but understandable conclusion for a parent to make while retrospecting on her little girl's death by cancer. We can also see it as a rumination on a child who is never allowed to grow and experience true adulthood, as Michele Rice was never allowed to experience much at all. But while I am hoping they are aiming for a happy conclusion with Claudia’s ghost and her separation from Madeleine, the “fated to die and be grieved by her parents” aspect hits differently to me when making her a Black woman. I love how Claudia’s personality was portrayed. I don't have a problem with her being depicted as manipulative and cruel; that is just Claudia. She’s a remorseless serial killer, and I love that about her. She is meant to be unsettling. She is so like Lestat, but while Lestat lives to change and try to redeem himself, and he followed Anne Rice through her return to Catholicism, Claudia never gets the chance despite her fiery spirit.
But the fixation on her suffering as something innate to her character I think just hits differently with her as a Black woman versus her being white in the books. It just does, and it always has, but I was always very “save my peace” because ultimately I love Bailey Bass and Delainey Hayles as Claudia. What would I have them do? And again, so many fans were so weird about her being Black as “defiling” the character and Anne Rice's memory in a way that can only be called racist.
Also, doomed sapphic vampires are nothing new to me after watching all those Seventies and Eighties movies that follow the idea, not dissimilar to Carmilla, of the vampire being killed to save the virgin or both of them being dying if the ingenue is “corrupted” by “evil lesbian” seduction. While I enjoy these films, and some like The Blood-Spattered Bride explore women’s desires under Franco’s fascism, we certainly cannot call most of them feminist or sympathetic to lesbians. But while the The Vampire Chronicles has interesting female characters, it is not a series especially interested in sapphic relationships compared to the homoeroticism between men, and the treatment of canon characters of color like Merrick leaves much to be desired (they at least avoided doing to her what happens in the books), so this treatment of the only main sapphic relationship in the show, where Claudia is left alone and miserable, is distressing. Yes, intentionally so, but I am looking at the big picture. Does this mean I would have preferred no romance between Claudia and Madeleine? I liked it quite a lot in season 2, so I don't know. I don't really know the fix, except that I want them to give Claudia peace, although I appreciated that, like in the book Merrick, she got an opportunity to express her anger and grief.
The Vampire Chronicles to me is much like A Song of Ice and Fire or Fire & Blood in scope and entangled themes and narratives where I can certainly point out the problems with the TV adaptations, but if you asked me to rewrite them or adapt them—hell no! No thanks! Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but I think some stories are not adaptable to TV in their entirety in an entirely satisfying way. GRRM wrote his messy dark fantasy series because he was tired of working on TV and dealing with those limitations, whereas in a book he could envision anything like undead that have a language like crackling ice; he could imagine Petyr Baelish in a vivid purple doublet as Lord of the Vale while in the show he wears...not that lol. We see the limitations in scope and budget for even big companies like HBO, and AMC is not HBO-tier in terms of their budget.
Still, back to Armand, some aspects of Armand are softened in Lestat’s portrayal. In the book, Armand cuts off both of Nicki's hands because Nicki is unstable and violates their laws. This is changed to Nicki himself cutting off one of his own hands in an act of self-harm, and Armand, from Lestat’s POV, is shown as sympathetic toward Nicki and disconcerted at Gabrielle’s amusement. This is an interesting choice to me, but it's not elaborated upon. What does Armand think here? What gives him pause rather than seeing Nicki as a rule-breaking nuisance? I tend to try to give the benefit of the doubt, especially with the limitations of TV with so few episodes every other year and the poor treatment and pay of scriptwriters I'm general, so it is perhaps that this is a setup to be elaborated upon. My optimistic assumption is that because this is a part 1 like season 1 was a part one, they are backloading a lot of character stuff in season 4, similar to how we didn't get a San Francisco flashback until the middle of season 2. If we got San Francisco in season 1, it would have made no sense, but it feels a little different in season 3 because all the characters are familiar to us now, so I'm wonderful why there is a holdup and wheel-spinning when we no longer have 22-episode TV like Back In My Day. TVL the book is 80% Lestat flashback, only keeps the rockstar stuff to the beginning and end because Anne Rice seemed disinterested in that outside of the novelty of a vampire rockstar, and doesn't have a clean midpoint like IWTV does, so this season is balancing that plus introducing QOTD and lore from later books. TVL as a book is a parallel to IWTV where it has a framing device (Lestat as the modern Eighties rockstar) with 80% his backstory to, as he states, correct what he thinks is an unfair record, while IWTV the book is a bit of the interview and 80% the backstory. However, I can understand perhaps why they were wary of this format. That said, given that nothing really happens with Lestat’s music until the end, when his concert wakes Akasha, and she arrives at the concert to immolate almost every vampire there, I think that contributes to the feeling of wheels spinning—stretched thin for seven episodes, but too little episodes given to go further. I imagine this is likely why they pulled the Louis arc from Merrick.
I think we sorely need more Armand. While in IWTV the book, he only shows up in the second half, he is a major character throughout the entire series. More Devil's Minion on-screen; I haven't felt that it was rushed because it has been so seeded into the story that I actually felt like it was being so painfully slowburn that they were spinning their wheels, and I was getting tired of the reminders when it is all but ready to be canon. Rushed? What more is there to develop or insinuate between them in the “they are not together, but maybe they are” part of this chapter in their relationship? The issue here is that they are just one (great) chapter in Queen of the Damned, whereas this is a long established dynamic. I just need them to go ahead and solidify things already.
Again, a part of me goes, well, TVL is focused on Lestat’s POV, so of course we don’t get much of Armand and Daniel, but I think this needs to be remedied and fast, especially now that they have covered the core of Lestat’s traumas and regrets. (Albeit choppily, although the diegetic excuse, which I can buy, is Lestat’s fractured mind. I care less about the wolfkiller scene, though besides the mention in the song “Your Biggest Fan,” I think they missed that this was an important aspect of Magnus’ obsession with him besides a weird white supremacist fixation on having his continued bloodline be carried by a blonde, blue-eyed white man. Magnus wanted Lestat because he saw him as the wolfkiller.) They should elaborate upon his interactions with Armand especially. I know I have already mentioned it, but it is non-negotiable to me.
I think maybe I heard that they plan to show Daniel’s turning on the plane. My vision is that like we had the San Francisco episode, and like they have an entire chapter to themselves in QOTD, we get perhaps a mid-season hour of just them and their story leading up to and during QOTD. Hell, Daniel doesn’t even have a name in the first book! He’s just “the boy.”
Ultimately, like season 1, which I had some narrative issues with (but it is probably still my favorite season and finished more cleanly; I also disliked the pacing of the start of season 2 and felt it lingered too much on the theater kid stuff and Claudia’s humiliation at the hands of the troupe—I get it, they do theater, they force Claudia to be a little girl, let's develop some characters; it was really Delainey Hayles, Jacob Anderson, and Assad Zaman and the second half that strengthened the season for me and then also strengthened season 1 with the successful setup and payoff), this is a part 1 of 2, where the story is half-finished and unresolved. There are certain relationships with Armand in particular that I see as important to the narrative that I hope are expanded upon in season 4. Given how crucial these relationships are in the books in both the past and present, I think it is a mistake to understate them.
I also am disappointed they didn't let Daniel use Lestat's head for a bowling ball...that lyric about his head rolling around, Daniel at the bowling alley, and nothing for it?
Overall, believe it or not, I enjoyed this season. A lot that I enjoyed in the previous seasons is present here. I love that I get to see a musical adaptation of a vampire series I love. About five of these songs have made my Spotify “most listened to” list. I like the exploration of sexual trauma and guilt and Lestat’s shame and panic. I like clever little details like Armand depicting Lestat as the Harlequin and Lestat really being Lelio, that shift of Lestat as the trickster seducer to the errant protagonist. But I will need to see season 4 and how it addresses some of my character questions and concerns. My hope is that we get a full course after the appetizer, and that AMC gets the message and actually gives their flagship show money.
1. I'm assuming that Lestat, given his disdain for the Samuel Beckett stand-in, was coerced into being a part of the trial in season 2. I find it odd that this isn't immediately addressed. Maybe it was addressed in the finale with the reveal that Lestat saved Louis, so it is implied that this was Lestat breaking through Armand's control, and therefore Louis doesn't blame him or interrogate him? Feels important to clarify if Louis and Lestat get back together.
2. The closer we get to QOTD, the more the story "opens up” beyond Louis and Lestat. I wonder what they will do with Akasha? Mekare and Maharet? Jesse? Raglan, who I assume is a replacement for David Talbot, whom Louis has killed?
