Bailey Bass as Claudia in "The Ruthless Pursuit of Blood With All a Child's Demanding" // Delainey Hayles as Claudia in "What Can the Damned Really Say to the Damned"
louis and armand-as-rashid doing weird infidelity roleplay has been rotating in my mind lately. louis is flirting with "rashid" and armand is batting his eyelashes going oh no I couldn't possibly... you're my employer... you have a companion ... and louis is all sexily what does that matter and armand is like. record scratch hold on what do you mean it doesn't matter. louis my love would you truly cheat on me with rashid? and louis is so so tired he's like armand it was just roleplay. and armand is like answer the question.
Imagine you're Louis de Pointe du Lac, you've just divorced your second husband and reevaluated all of your life choices, you've spent a cool $10 million on what are essentially your therapy bills, you hop on a 12-hour flight across the world, you return to your hometown, you reunite with your first ex-husband, you process your grief over your daughter a little bit, you're stuck in a hurricane but it's all okay, it was all worth it because you're in a better place now emotionally and can start to move forward
And then, on the vampire-exclusive psychic channel, you hear the voice of your Definitely Still Human buddy Daniel going "hey Louis uh quick update for ya"
This scene is keeping me up at night, why are they checking each other out like that? Especially Daniel? Mate you're interviewing Louis de Pointe du Lac, he's talking to you, why are you looking at his husband instead? with the smallest hint of a smile? why are his eyes going doown I'm tired
god, if you’re there, please grant me the confidence straight up give-no-fucks ballsiness of Daniel Molloy openly flirting with death by teasing two queer vampires about their L-Word-chartworthy interfuckery by playing soap opera music at them and invoking the holy name of Univision, amen 💅
Ok I haven't seen anyone else talking about this yet, but I'm going insane about it so now it's going to be your problem. The question on everyone's mind during IWTV s1 is, "Ok but did you eat the baby, Louis?" and I'm here to tell you that I had an epiphany and I have concluded....
Yes, Louis did eat that baby. Because of Mardi Gras.
I know that sounds crazy, hear me out.
(Contains spoilers for the end of the book series)
First, for those of you who are unfamiliar, one of the most delicious traditions of New Orleans Mardi Gras is the king cake, which is a ring-shaped pastry of sugary, buttery death covered in purple, green, and gold sprinkles. (If you can get your mouth on a good one, it's divine. Mediocre ones are deeply disappointing. This is a case where quality matters. ...I am getting off topic.) Inside the king cake, according to tradition, is hidden a little plastic baby. Whoever gets the slice that has the baby in it is proclaimed the king of that particular Mardi Gras party and is granted certain solemn responsibilities, such as buying the king cake next year. It's not a very large plastic baby (about the size of maybe two jellybeans), so sometimes you find it in your mouth rather than on your plate. So: You eat the baby, you're the king.
Got it? Great.
Episode 1x07 shows us Lestat Very Definitely Eating That (Fake (Plastic??)) Baby, while being King of Mardi Gras, on the Krewe of Raj (which is probably meant to refer to the real-life Krewe of Rex. Rex and Raj both mean king). This is a wild sort of thing to do for no reason (whether Doylist or Watsonian), but New Orleans residents would probably parse this as a gruesome and tasteless perversion of the concept around the king cake tradition. Gruesome and tasteless perversions of ideas are exactly Lestat's type of humor. He knows what he's doing: He's making a Weird Statement about the legitimacy of his "reign".
Still with me? Ok. Here we go, last step.
The penultimate and antepenultimate books of the series are Prince Lestat and Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis, in which Lestat is Democratically Elected (read: strongarmed/browbeaten/guilt-tripped by a jury of his peers) prince of the vampires. He mopes around about this because he doesn't want the job, but ultimately pulls himself together and makes big wet puppy eyes at Louis like, "plz plz plz mon cher plz come be royal consort, i literally cannot cope with this situation unless I have you with me" until Louis agrees to come be royal consort.
Now, the strangely intense and INTENTIONAL ambiguity of "did Louis eat the baby?" in 1x02 -- that is, the way that there is conspicuously no answer as to whether he did or not -- could just be a cool opportunity to make us think about vampires doing shocking, irredeemable things, such as the consumption of infants. But in parallel with 1x07 and the fact that this is New Orleans and Lestat's baby-eating incident was explicitly rooted in Mardi Gras traditions... it strikes me as foreshadowing. It strikes me as a clever little wink of secret jokes by the Unreliable Narration Show which has already established that it loves playing games with the audience and intentionally leaving little hints that pay off later in a BIG way.
It's New Orleans. It's Mardi Gras. The king eats the baby, and Loustat's destined endgame is Royal Power Couple.
Louis ate the baby. One hundo percent, he ate that baby. Five bucks says we find out the truth right around the time Lestat is crying and wailing and begging Louis to run the vampire government with him.
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