Okay can we talk about the BOTCHED retcon of the train scene and why it doesn't work NARRATIVELY??
Yeah, so, here's what happened in s1:
Claudia is meeting with Louis in the park. She tells him she can't stand this anymore, she's going to leave, and she wants Louis to come with her. (Louis's direct POV)
Louis says he can't, wishes her well, and then sits on the park bench for the rest of the night seriously contemplating suicide. (Louis's direct POV)
Claudia disappears from the park, telling him she intended to leave that very night (Louis's POV)
Antoinette, who was already turned into a vampire, heard everything and reported back to Lestat (this is not known at this time, but is revealed later!!)
Claudia gets on the train and the train is leaving. (Claudia's diary)
Lestat finds her, scares the shit out of her, threatens to kill her, using the visceral reminder of her own rape to really drive home how dangerous and serious he is (Claudia's diary)
Louis finally decides not to kill himself, and comes back home. Upon returning to the house, he walks in to see a smug Lestat talking about how good it is that Claudia didn't decide to leave them after all because of the war in Europe (he's really laying it on thick). Claudia, in her traveling clothes, with her packed bags clearly on the floor, looks at Louis and Louis looks at her in a way that makes it clear to both of them this is not Claudia's choice, it is Lestat's doing (Louis's POV!! Not Claudia's diary!!)
Claudia figures out that Louis did not tell Lestat she was leaving, so the only way Lestat would know is if someone had been overhearing her and Louis originally talking in the park, and concludes that Antoinette is spying on them for Lestat (Only revealed later)
The tension in the house gets icier and more openly hostile. Claudia and Lestat are making little pretense at being a family again, Claudia is secretly using the mind gift that Lestat cannot hear, convincing Louis that they are trapped, and that they have to kill Lestat or they'll never be free of him. The implication is, again, that SHE WANTED TO LEAVE AND LESTAT REFUSED TO LET HER, AND KILLING HIM IS HER ONLY OPTION NOW (Again!! Louis's POV, NOT THE DIARY!!)
However, Claudia's plan to kill Lestat is both a genuine plan, and an intentional misdirect, because she knows that her and Louis's secret talks/plans are being spied on, likely by a now-vampiric Antoinette (not revealed until later)
As they scheme, and Claudia's schemes include an intentional misdirect, the unholy family pretend to set up their family "escape" from New Orleans via the Mardi Gras celebration/blowout massacre (Louis's POV, potentially corroborated by later entries in Claudia's diary)
Both factions have developed their own plans at this point: Claudia to get Antoinette to reveal herself/to kill Lestat by misdirection. Lestat to foil what he thinks is Claudia's plan, have Antoinette kill Claudia, and then he and Louis and Antoinette will sail off into the sunset together (Louis's POV, presumably corroborated by Claudia's diaries, and including the details of both schemes).
The night of the massacre comes, the showdown happens, Claudia's plan wins and Lestat loses, BECAUSE CLAUDIA KNEW THE WHOLE TIME THAT THEY WERE BEING SPIED ON. AND USED THAT TO HER ADVANTAGE. A thing she WOULD NOT HAVE KNOWN IF LESTAT HAD NOT WAYLAID HER ON THE TRAIN, WHEN SHE WAS TRYING TO LEAVE IN THE FIRST PLACE.
The problem with trying to retcon the "rape" thing (besides the fact that the writers seem to have forgotten that Lestat USED a gross reference to Claudia's rape to unbalance and threaten her, but did NOT actually directly threaten to rape her himself), is that...?
In the order of operations we have been given, there's not really any other space for anything other than Lestat having done SOMETHING very fucked up and frightening to Claudia to make her return to New Orleans, when she was already leaving. Because she does return, packed bags and traveling clothes and all.
Additionally, the only reason we are ever told/shown Claudia suspected Antoinette's vampiric turning, to the point where she actively included it into her plans to kill Lestat, is BECAUSE Lestat showing up to get her on the train clues her into the fact that someone must've been spying on them.
In order to accept that Lestat didn't actually threaten Claudia in some dangerous and impressive way, whatever he may or may not have said being largely irrelevant, we have to then question the entirety of what happened (and what we're shown DIRECTLY THROUGH LOUIS'S OWN POV, not Claudia's diary!). About why the schemes against Lestat began developing in the first place (Claudia felt she could not leave or Lestat would kill her. Because he said he would. Which does not feel out of character, since... yknow. He had Antoinette spying on her. And then tries to make Antoinette MURDER HER. Again, this does not need to be explained through the diary, this is straight up Louis's own memories of the fight between him & Claudia vs Lestat & Antoinette.)
There is simply no need for this retcon at all, and retconning it makes the chronological timeline of the whole last few episodes of the show make no sense.
They're clearly doing this to try to exonerate Lestat.
But it's so stupid! Because it would make way more sense to simply say that Claudia's death made Lestat face some uncomfortable truths about the way he treated her and saw her, and about the way he treated Louis by extension.
God, they don't even have to mention the big scary R-word (racism) or the big other scary R-word (rape). If they either don't want to or if they were being hamstrung by the network.
It's even weirder to try to exonerate him now through retconning now, in this season. Because they've already made a huge point now to set up that
Lestat has weird issues re Gabriella always leaving him, which make him weird about other people he cares about leaving him. Then you can have him acknowledge and unpack that he's done horrible things to people with less power than he has who he nevertheless cares about, whenever he thinks they're going to leave him. And he should not have done that.
And also he minimizes the impact of sexual violence when it comes to other people. Because that's how he's coped with being a victim of sexual violence in his own life: minimization. And he shouldn't have done that either.
Boom, done. Problem solved. He is now your typical, traditional still cartoonishly fun vampire who's still got plenty of other problems to make him fun to watch. AND he has redeemed himself and made the audience even more sympathetic to him by having him acknowledge some of his flaws that he picked up through trauma and them did the old "repeating the cycle" deal onto his own fledglings. Which we all already know, because we watched him do it throughout the entirety of s1.
Is it the best they could do, when honoring the racial components set up in S1, no. Or telling a really rich, realistic story about the politics of sexual violence? Also no.
But it's safe. It's predictable. Fandoms will eat up "cycle of violence" shit. There will be a lot of discourse, probably, but most people who don't want to engage with it will just ignore it, or say it doesn't fit the show, blahblah.
But crucially! At least it's not... whatever the fuck we just got with the Claudia scene. And the million uncalled for and narratively/characteristically irrelevant racial language. And the "Louis is somehow nebulously, equally bad, actually" framing. And the whole "teenage Black girl made up a rape accusation against a white man" thing.
Especially when, as a retcon, it literally solves none of your narrative problems.
And in fact, now has created a whole bunch more!!!!!
