If you look at my posts on here and on Bluesky about Season 3 over the last several weeks, you can see I tried to go into this season with an open mind. I had a wonderful time at the TVL concert I was lucky enough to attend. I was loving the music. The trailers, the teaser clips. I was sold.
After the first episode screening, I thought, “That was a lot, but it’s meant to be jarring!” I actually liked it better watching it a second time, when it dropped for everyone else.
A few episodes in, I reasoned, “Okay. We will see some character development in here somewhere. Some unfolding of the past from Lestat's POV.” Outside of very short glimpses into Lestat’s past, we didn’t get that.
Midway through the season, I thought, “This will be the turning point. There will be a reckoning.” Instead, I found myself having watched 6 episodes of largely…nothing happening at all. No conversation felt real or lived-in. All the characters felt totally devoid of anything that made them compelling previously, including Lestat, who I found myself not really caring about in either direction. Lestat. In the show called The Vampire Lestat. It all felt so hollow. But there were glimpses of the show I loved, like it was on the precipice of achieving its former emotional and artistic impact for me.
So then I thought, “This is intentional. Lestat is telling the story like a play. It’s a bit long-winded, and I have issues with the pacing, but the finale will put the season at large into context. Plus, this season is meant to be one of two parts.”
When the credits began rolling on Ep 7, my first instinct was to cry, and I was reminded of the similar reaction I had to the rushed ending of Our Flag Means Death a few years back. After the initial shock, I was able to process with some friends, pinpoint the things I didn’t like, and consider HBO’s influence on those things. It took me a bit, but I made peace with it, even if I didn't love the season as a whole.
Something felt different about this. And I figured out why, I think. It starts out pretty personal, but I think it speaks to the season’s larger issues.
I am open to changing my opinion. I am open to discussion. I am open to watching the season again, maybe finding more to like in it. But for now, this is where I'm at.
Two summers ago when Season 2 was airing, my soul cat was dying. I had him for 5 years. He was my best friend. The perfect companion. Everyone loved him, but most of all me. In the weeks between the season premiere and the finale, I was taking him to chemo treatments I couldn’t afford, crying a lot, and of course, tuning into IWTV each week. He watched television with me all time, beside me on the couch, tapping his tail. He joined me for a lot of the season, as sick as he was. It was our routine.
On June 15th, I said goodbye to him. The S2 finale aired on June 30th. And the groundedness of Louis’ grief, the reveal of the trial, the dress on the wall, the rainy NOLA reunion…it not only concluded one of the best series of TV I had ever seen, but it also provided me a mouthpiece for my own grief. I’d been watching the show since Season 1, but the beauty and horror and pain and forgiveness this season offered just lit something up in me.
Then Season 3 happened. A lopsidedly layered narrative sandwich with self-referential filling. As I’ve said before, the season plays up shock value—right through the end, as it turns out. Lestat does not interrogate his own perspective. Daniel doesn’t challenge it. Lestat comes to terms with the abuse he experienced at the hands of his mother at the very end of the season, but up until that point we are fed rushed flashbacks (Magnus and Akasha being the exception), throwaway lines indicating time passing/key character interactions (Armandaniel, anyone?), and … many, many scenes of incestuous abuse.
A season meant to come off deliberately disjointed and avoidant just comes off as bad writing with the intent not even to absolve their main character, but show him as entirely passive in his own life. The season could have focused on how he became what he became, and why we should care.
"At least I tried!" Lestat says. Did he? If Part 2 of this season (of which we have no confirmation yet) is meant for him to realize he could've tried harder, that he was an active participant in the misery and abuse of those he loved, that's great, but we shouldn't have spent seven episodes denying it, culminating in a finale that ... still denies it, up until the last scenes. It's stale. What have we been working for this whole season, then?
And with years between seasons these days, how can any sort of buzz for finding out what "happens next" be sustained if nothing really happened in the first place?
It feels as though they decided “Gabriella is why Lestat is the way he is. How fucked up! How edgy!” and stopped there. What happened to the Lestat of the end of Season 2, for whom we considered redemption was possible despite his depravity? What happened to "I did it to hurt him, and it hurt him ... I will always be sorry for what I did to you"? Isn’t the whole point of these characters’ immortality that they can try to be redeemed? Why was a book Louis didn’t even write the catalyst for taking all that back?
Seasons 1 and 2 showed me these characters were all terrible people, and yet like humans, they could be wracked by guilt, or consumed with rage, or suffer boredom, or, god, grieve despite having power and forever and also being at least partly responsible for their own grief and misery. These monsters were absurdly human. I couldn’t look away. Especially from Louis who, with all his faults and selfishness, was still a whole, fleshed-out character. At the end of Season 2, Lestat was painted this way as well. Full characters who meet each other in the middle, as fucked up as that middle is, as clear as both their parts were in the unraveling of their daughter's life.
In my opinion, the writers chose to mock those of us who found something real to latch onto in the first two seasons. Moments fans loved, made art for, and discussed at length were laughed at by the writers in a paltry attempt at doing it through the characters.
You appreciated the gothic horror and romance of Louis' turning scene? Here's Lestat ridiculing it, and their love, for essentially the whole season, with some rushed sprinkles of genuine feeling for Louis tacked onto the end of the season. You felt for Armand and the nuance of the abuse he endured and inflicted? Here's a cartoon villain forcing a heavy-handed apology out of the man he abused. You adored how much all these characters hated and loved each other, as Anne Rice so often wove into her storytelling (even at its most chaotic)? Well, that's on you, because apparently some of them never even loved each other, while others have paired off to find love offscreen we don't even see develop.
I am biased as a huge fan of the show’s version of LDPDL and of Jacob, but I find Louis’ story this season—not even necessarily his characterization, but his story—to be the strongest example of this.
It’s not my place to speak fully to the antiblackness of this season; I direct you to Black fans of the series who have spent energy writing thorough analyses. However, you would have to be willfully obtuse to deny the vitriol for Louis in particular this season. (Some points others have made include: Of course Claudia should hate Louis--but what was the narrative need for her spirit to comment on his hair? Of course Armand feels wronged by Louis--but what was the narrative need to depict him physically torturing Louis specifically, as opposed to others who have wronged him, and branding him with his initial? Of course Daniel is an asshole--but what was the narrative need for him to use “Louisiana fried chicken” to refer to the person who essentially ensured he kept working as a reporter when he was young and alone? At this point, it feels intentional. Hateful.)
More broadly, this season began and ended with Louis feeling the need—or being forced—to apologize. His entire storyline this season, which was promised to be new and exciting, was meant to punish him. Punish him for grieving, shoving him into a lazy Armand the Mastermind plotline (which does a disservice to both characters).
I believe his dynamic with Regina on its own is realistic, and his demand that Claudia recognize what he did to Bruce to avenge her is in-character. The first two seasons do not make Louis out to be a perfect victim, which is part of the nuance I love about the show.
But this season goes beyond having this character take responsibility. The narrative affords Louis no empathy. You can argue the same can be said about Lestat in the first two seasons, but I’d say you’re wrong. Lestat was awful. But the audience always felt Louis’ love for him as he hated him. And so we loved him as we hated him.
Who was in Louis’ corner this season? Who loved Louis? There is no real narrative reason for him to be tortured to this extent, especially in comparison to the other main characters. I watched a character I love experience mostly pain and suffering for an entire season for no real reason other than, per the writers, that the audience loves him and apparently needs to see him being taken down a peg. To what end?
I am drawn to a note Jacob left for his hair stylist this season. “You made him look like somebody loves him.”
TL;DR: I felt no love for Louis this season. Broadly, I felt no love for any character in the writing of this season. And sure, Lestat clearly hates himself, so we see everything through that lens. That makes sense.
But I felt very little love in this season at all from the creatives. For the story they wrote for two seasons. For the characters they built. For fans that loved what those creatives built.
I think the most love and care we saw was reflected in the music, which was wonderfully produced. But we spent too much time on it in the grand scheme, and the show suffered for it.
So at this point, I’m not even the most disappointed this season failed as an adaptation of a book I enjoyed (which I went back to read as an adult because of the first two seasons, mind you).
I’m not even the most disappointed that characters I found myself relating to were reduced to caricatures.
As someone who was lost in 2024, and found that a show about monsters—of all things—reached out and pulled them above water, I am most disappointed that I was made to feel stupid for loving the first two seasons as much as I did. I feel mocked for my grief and for IWTV helping me through it.
I feel mocked for my sincerity, punished for the earnestness with which I engaged with this material.
I feel mocked for caring about the characters that were set up for two seasons and then promptly either reduced to single-word traits (i.e., Louis the pimp) or dumbed down (i.e., a … largely uncurious Daniel).
Even with the first two seasons filtered through a specific POV and fogged-up memories, there was a realness to the storytelling, an encouragement to engage earnestly with the material.
Nothing about this season felt real. My refrain all season was, "Show me something real." If this whole season was meant to set us up for eventually seeing that next season, there wasn't a strong enough indication of that for me. There were easter eggs galore, some of which fans are still unpacking, and that's all well and good. But seven episodes of easter eggs and memes? What happened here?
I think about a show that historically made every minute count, and put effort into making me care. I let the tale seduce me, and this ...? Is what I got?
In the end, to me, this season reads like the writers hate their fans.
With shows like OFMD, flaws and all, I never felt that way. The closest to this level of rage I've ever felt for a TV writing team was with Sherlock, which even more overtly and relentlessly poked fun at its fanbase both in and out of the show universe. That show was made in the 2010s. I thought we'd moved on.
Make a very, very loose adaptation of a beloved book--sure. Do something experimental with the narration--great! Add on some songs--fab. I love a musical.
All of this. You took the thoughts right out of my head and laid it out plain and simple. This season was not just “for the fans that didn’t like the first two seasons,” this was mockery, and butchering of the characters, a disembowling of the creative and emotional force behind this series, and a blatant pandering to a subset of people who like their leads shallow and two-dimensional. No matter how you spin the explanation, this season should have been scrapped in the writers room during the initial outlining stages. It’s more than a disappointment and that debasing if the show that came prior and the source material was intentional.
Does anyone else have an list of 10-15 untouchable thoughts that if you let yourself remeber or think about them for even a second it’s excruciating or is this a me thing
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