i can't believe ppl are still debating ep 5....like come on! use your brains for once.
i'm going to start blocking ppl for calling the dv scene 'shock value' or out of character. it's neither of those things and straight up the beginning of that scene comes almost directly from the books.
"And our fragile domestic tranquility erupted with his outrage. He did not have to be loved but he would not be ignored; and once he even flew at her, shouting that he would slap her, and I found myself in the wretched position of fighting him as I'd done years earlier before she'd come to us." (IWTV p. 104)
yeah is the scene in ep 5 more graphic/brutal? sure. but one could argue that louis in the book is playing down the violence in order to maintain the image he's painted of lestat as a weak, stupid failure of a mentor. in opposition to the book, the show has added claudia's account as corroboration of the abuse that they experienced as well as the scale and scope of that abuse. later in the book when claudia proposes that they leave together, louis says this:
"I could hear a vague mingling of sounds now, which meant he had entered the carriage way, that he would soon be on the back stairs. And I thought of what I always felt when I heard him coming, a vague anxiety, a vague need. And then the thought of being free of him forever rushed over me like water I'd forgotten, waves and waves of cool water." (IWTV p. 117)
i don't know about anyone else but this reads to me as an abused spouse hearing their abuser come home. i also think that this vague anxiety and vague need that book louis describes here is etched all over ep 6. the louis of ep 6 is Extremely submissive and placating to lestat in a way he never has been in the previous eps because he's afraid of him. at the beginning of ep 5 itself he straight up tells lestat to shut the fuck up and in the middle he goads lestat by making fun of his intelligence. the contrast is stark and why? because he has been given a fuller picture of the sheer magnitude of lestat's strength and power and knows that it can be turned onto him or claudia. to say that the show doesn't reference the violence after that ep is absolutely ludicrous. claudia references it directly!
this is only one example of several in this ep. the violence was necessary to make the urgency of louis and claudia's need to leave make sense. if lestat wasn't keeping them there with the unspoken threat of repeated violence why would claudia need to scheme and plot to walk out the front door? she did it at the beginning of ep 5, why couldn't she do it again? claudia is older in the show than the book, she's not a 5 year old trying to brave it on her own, the modern conceptualization of the teenager didn't exist, she could reasonably get by. the dv scene was necessary to account for the new context of the characters.
also the slave/master dynamic was not created wholesale by the show writers, that's straight up from the book:
"The vampire made a slave of him, and he would be no more a slave than I would be a slave, and so he killed him. Killed him before he knew what he might know, and then in panic made a slave of you. And you've been his slave." (IWTV p. 120)
they have claudia say this in the show practically verbatim. they didn't add this just to make on the nose points about race, they simply expanded on what already existed in the book. the fact that claudia and louis in the show are black make this sentiment more uncomfortable but it's not any less true. in fact, i think it adds to why claudia refuses to let the situation continue. the transgression becomes more egregious because of the larger implications of white frenchman lording his status over his black creole subordinates (this where lestat's 18th century roots become so interesting as well as his aristocratic heritage. i also think it's interesting that you have lestat = aristocrat; louis = bourgeois; claudia = working class/poor as their economic backgrounds but that's a different post).
if the showrunners were to walk this back i legit would be pissed. it would be such a cheap shot to write such a brutal, narratively cruel scene (i mean this as a compliment) that contextualizes one of the main character's motivation, plot, and worldview (claudia and to an extent louis) and then be like 'jk nevermind, louis was lying! claudia was exaggerating! it wasn't that bad actually!'. like that's just bad writing. it also would be racist. i actually love ep 5, all of it. i've never been to affected by an ep of television in my life and i think it's so brilliantly written. do i think it complicates the loustat relationship? sure but i'm not watching this show because of ships, i'm watching it because it's some of the best crafted television i've seen in years. it's not afraid to piss off fans in favor of a better, more compelling narrative choice and that's why i respect and trust writers more than i do for most other shows.
i also need to emphasize that i love lestat. he's my special boy and has been one of my favorite characters for like 16 years. ep 5 did not diminish that for me, i love how it works in relation to his backstory and how in the books lestat does not break the cycles that terrorized him as a child/young adult. he continues them by putting himself as the perpetrator and isn't that what he does ep 5? the writers get these characters, the actors get these characters. i still think lestat is wildly sympathetic and that's a testament to how strong the writing, directing, and performances on this show are.
anyway, let's all start talking about a different ep, this one has been discoursed to death
