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the reason this horrible man is so horrible is actually very complex and nuanced and tragic. you see, it's because of the abuse he suffered at the hands of his even more horrible mother. this will be explored in explicit detail
why is his mother so horrible? well, you see, she's a bitch
i'm ambiently curious about how many of the amc iwtv fans who loved the first two seasons but have been let down by the third are people who came in with little or no attachment to the source material, read the books in between seasons two and three, and had enough time to build up their own adaptational expectations that are now being thrown aside the same way that the first two seasons did.
i do think the racism and sexism are much more apparent than they used to be, and that can be chalked up to changes in the writers room, but tbh i've always thought the show was much less thoughtful about handling sensitive material than its ardent fanbase gave it credit for! like, yeah, i've always raised an eyebrow or two at the choice to adapt louis and claudia and armand as people of color and then subject them to trauma and humiliation and insults and assaults that their book counterparts never experience! that sucks, actually! i think a lot of the dialogue has always been too self congratulatory and self aware, and the fanbase at large has always been too quick to memeify some really appallingly racist/sexist/etc lines, from daniel in particular. this also sucks. and sure, it's only now that the writers feel free to really lean into it because they know the twitter stans will seal clap when they consistently have characters say racist sexist homophobic shit with their whole chest (bottom twink, louisiana fried chicken, vagina past its expiration date, nonbinary pronouns are ridiculous, haha we're so funny and totally don't sound like your desperate boomer uncle) but let's not act like this is coming out of nowhere. the fandom has been hostile to anyone who's tried to speak up about these flaws, including the main subreddit consistently banning poc who try to speak critically about it.
but even with all that aside, it's so strange to me to see folks act like the show is just now starting to deviate from canon in a way that matters, when they've been doing their own thing and inventing their own themes and plot beats and character arcs from the word go. or at the very least since louis burned those tapes in season one.
show!iwtv has a serious "have our cake and eat it too" problem that comes from the showrunners choosing to play up the unreliable narrator aspect of the story far, far past anything that was ever in the books. book!tvl recontextualizes some of book!iwtv, but the actual narrative inconsistencies are very few, and can mostly be attributed to the fact that it was written as a standalone novel, and the sequel came out roughly a decade later.
(also, crucially, she did not really write with the idea of making LESTAT an unreliable narrator. other characters will throw shade at him for making himself look better than he is, but he doesn't actually lie. none of them do. that scene at the end of iwtv that they argue about in totbt is the sole exception that i can think of, and that always seemed to me to be anne rice lampshading her own retcon by throwing louis under the bus. idk.)
the problem is that the show is impossible to criticize or analyze on any level because they can always fall back on this idea that everything (not just emotions, but actual events, emotions, dialogue, etc.) are subjective, and we don't actually know if that's how the scene we're watching played out or what they really said, and maybe next season they'll reveal something that completely recontextualizes every single character's actions and motivations, and it's just frankly exhausting to me as a viewer and as someone who wants to have a discussion about the show and characters, because what if that thing that pissed me off and felt wildly out of character didn't even happen? maybe it's written badly and filmed incomprehensibly on purpose to demonstrate the character's erratic mental state! checkmate!
the audience needs some kind of baseline of reality to check in with now and then is all i'm saying
I can't think of a way to point this out that doesn't sound phenomenally gross, because it is: the IWTV show has made specific and very crass references to Claudia's (physically 14 year old) genitals in all three episodes she's featured in so far. Two of them were spoken by Lestat! I hate it here! 🥲
I just don't get the thirst or the sympathy for tv!Lestat? I haven't seen a single non-asshole action on his part that actually seemed genuine or sincere. Even his trauma dumping is fucked up and manipulative (and of course we never actually get to see how Louis feels about Lestat's sad backstory, which is a massive missed opportunity to develop their relationship).
Maybe it's partly to do with the pacing of the show and its complete disinterest in showing us genuine moments of affection between the two of them, but I just find this take on the character to be so completely vile and condescending and uncharismatic that I'm actively rooting for Louis to murder him. There's not a single redeeming quality to be found in this man. Girl, his hair isn't even curly, he's just an edgelord atheist redditor who throws tantrums when you don't suck his dick hard enough. WHAT IS THE APPEAL?
AMC IWTV PILOT THOUGHTS, mostly critical, mostly unfiltered, bear with me if I phrase something clumsily
Calling the original interview (which they're implying is the original book, somehow, even if it didn't get published in this universe) "a fever dream told to an idiot" makes me want to 1v1 the showrunner. It's so disrespectful that everyone watching with me had a simultaneous "dude, bad look" moment.
The lore changes are honestly baffling. Loved Louis saying "it was my last sunrise" while doing a 10AM interview behind tinted windows. Why get rid of the death sleep! It's such a big thing! (Why do they still sleep in coffins in this, actually? I wonder if they'll explain next episode?)
Stealing the hover bite pseudo-sex from the 94 movie but making it way less hot in spite of the full ass? Also awkward. I liked the thumb bite, that was kinda hot, but the rest of the scene was… like a worse version of another scene in the movie! The one where they share the girl at the play! The blocking was even the same, but their positions were switched. Odd choice to reference it so heavily when they're claiming to be so much more faithful.
The dialogue was… not good. Anytime something was almost subtle, they made sure to have another character say something to undercut it. It doesn't feel like a show that trusts its audience to handle nuance or complexity.
BRO THE SHITBOX SCENE???? Why was that even there! It was so vulgar and crass and unnecessary and I don't know what it added other than showing what Louis has to deal with in his demeaning life, but between that and Lestat killing Lily, I'm pretty unhappy with the brothel material so far. And hearing the N word ten minutes in was jarring. Not sure RJ was more qualified to write this than he was the plantation storyline.
Lestat CONSTANTLY infodumped about his backstory, but not in a way that allowed any other characters to interestingly or meaningfully react to it, which was so frustrating. He told Louis more about his past before making him in this episode than he did during all of Interview, but there was zero emotional weight to it. It felt more like Rolin Jones trying to prove he read the books by throwing in easter eggs. Look! Lestat is mentioning that he composed this song for a violinist he knew! Ignore how nonchalant he sounds while saying it and how totally meaningless that is to Louis, our point of view character! It's there for the audience, but what does it mean to Louis? Textually, nothing. I'm devastated, as someone who's made her hobby trying to write those specific reveals. It was just… there.
And as someone with a PhD in Loustat, their interactions didn't feel authentic to me. Lestat's speech in the cathedral was so weird. He fell for Louis because he saw him threatening Paul with a knife in the street, and he interrupts Paul's funeral to neg Louis for ghosting him after they fucked, which is pretty awful even for Lestat — who should understand grief! He fell for Louis in the book because he was mourning Paul so intensely, and his sensitivity and strong (if hypocritical) moral center intrigued him.
Here, I'm less sure what appealed to Lestat; this is a very very different take on Louis, and it seems more like he was attracted to his capacity for violence and… idk, something about the way he's stifled by social mores? I'm not trying to be dense, I couldn't get a good read on Lestat's motives, in spite of his long-ass monologue. I don't think the extra bonding time deepened their relationship, and I don't know if we gained anything by having Lestat drop the L word right away. Where is my two century slow burn?
Speaking of that: Lestat appears to be the cultured one this time and I hate it? Lestat introduces Louis to opera (while Louis has to pretend to not get it); Lestat owns his own luxury townhouse in the Quarter (the Rue Royale townhouse belonged to Louis in the novel). Where is the conflict with Louis thinking Lestat is an uncultured hick? Where is the angst of Louis thinking Lestat only wanted him for his money if Lestat is a property owner who dropped the L word before he ever turned him? Louis is supposed to be able to hold his intellectualism over Lestat, but this AU seems more like Lestat introducing Louis to that world? I can see why that would appeal to this version of Louis, if that's typically not allowed to a Black man, and I don't want to ignore how his race and time period inform his relationship to culture.
But it feels like they took away so much of the character's gentle, intellectual, introverted nature to give him "more of a spine." He admits in the confession scene that he's run to the bottle and the card tables and etc. his whole life. Paul died the morning AMC Louis was turned, well after Lestat had decided he wanted to make Louis his companion; in the novel Paul's death was the impetus for Louis's moral decline. It's an odd reversal, and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Why did they make his relationship with Paul so much more antagonistic and then make Paul's death so obviously not Louis's fault? Don't get me wrong, I'm not team "Louis did it" by any means, but it feels weird to have Louis PULL A KNIFE ON HIM but the day he dies they just have a nice conversation. He really just walked off the roof because he's cRaZy!
Does this Lestat kill mostly evildoers or not? I know in the books he's inconsistent about it, but this is supposed to be The Real Prince Lestat, so you'd think the writers would have a set idea of what his deal is, ethically speaking. So far his kills have been 1) a lamplighter; 2) a sex worker who Louis paid too much attention to; and 3) two priests. I want to know what he's going to claim he does! Also that exploding head punch was hilariously excessive!
Louis gives his whole monologue about the drumming of Lestat's heart while the music is a glorious swelling string section with absolutely no percussion. I thought that was marvelously bad sound design.
This take on Daniel sucks ass lmao
EDIT: I forgot to mention that between the cathedral scene and the dinner with Paul, Lestat is coming off as way more of an arrogant reddit atheist than he ever did in the books, where to me it seemed like he always had a strange sort of respect for sincere religious belief (as someone who lost his faith himself). idk, I know his thoughts on God fluctuated along with Anne's, but it struck me as out of character to have him so angrily fixated on this whole "religion is a lie" thing that he would trigger himself with it at the dinner table and self-righteously kill two priests.
idk dudes, I really wanted to say something positive, but I didn't enjoy almost any aspect of it. Maybe episode two will be less dour? These are just my initial impressions, maybe time and other perspectives will give me additional food for thought and I'll soften on some of it.
But chat with me if you've seen it! I'm curious to hear from other Loustat fans in particular, since it seems like a lot of us are really into it, and it just... didn't feel like my ship at all except in the most superficial possible way. I'm bummed! I wanted to be wrong, but most of my concerns have so far ended up being well-founded.
So here's a list of some of the major contradictions or weird gaps I noticed in the first two episodes. I'm not being nitpicky or a book purist here -- I'm trying to take this show on its own merits and go along with its own narrative logic and characterization, so let's go.
First of all, Lestat says "I bring death to those deserving" in the church and never elaborates. So far we haven't seen him kill anyone even a little bit evil, though. He killed a random lamplighter, he killed Lily, he almost certainly mind-controlled Paul to his death (it's obviously the subtext! this is my OJ), he killed the two priests who by the way were also Louis's family friends, the first man that they kill seems like a really nice guy, and the tenor's only crime was being slightly off key.
So what does "deserving" mean? Because without anything else to contextualize it, the only thing those people could have done to deserve it was to get between Lestat and Louis.
Notably, Lestat doesn’t lay a finger on the racist businessmen who insult and degrade Louis for six years, and when Louis actually does finally stand up for himself (which Lestat told him he should do! that was his whole vampire pitch! oh my god!) Lestat yells at him and tells him he overreacted. When they "make up," Lestat says that he would have killed the man himself if he had actually brought offense. Only this never actually happens. He never defends Louis himself to anyone at any time. So the one time someone bad is killed on screen, it's by Louis, and he gets in trouble for it.
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Lestat talks to Louis with the Mind Gift when they're seducing the man in the bar, and then a few scenes later he explains that makers and fledglings can't hear each other's thoughts. SO WHICH IS IT? I could explain this away by saying that the transformation wasn't fully complete, but that's not the kind of thing I should have to fix myself as a viewer.
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Modern day Louis takes the little drink from his pet Russian man, who just looks bored and not into it? He’s having a whole conversation in his non-native language while Louis sucks his blood from his neck. So is the vampire bite irresistible or not? It throws the whole premise of how they take their victims right into the trash. And for what? A cheap joke at an awkward situation?
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After Louis's first kill, he says he didn't take to killing easily. But we never actually see him struggling with it at all. In fact, the only other kill we do see is the racist businessman, and it goes just fine and he feels perfectly justified about it. So what does this alleged struggle look like? How does he feel about having to kill every night? We don't know! It's not like this is the central struggle of the character he's based on and the main thing about being a vampire, let's not waste time on boring things like that.
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After Louis doesn't eat his sister's baby, he cries about how he'll never be able to control himself. Except he totally just did control himself, and also we never previously saw him even attempting to control himself, much less failing at it, so it just feels completely out of left field.
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Lestat and Louis fight about the alderman because Lestat thinks it was an overreaction, and too close to home for safety. But when Louis goes to Lestat in distress because he almost impulsively ate his sister's baby right in her living room, Lestat tells him he's being silly and his only actual advice is to cut ties with his family. Then he takes him on the most fucked up degrading powerplay date of all time.
So... he berates Louis for taking victims close to home, and then when Louis is worried because he almost ate his own nephew, Lestat ignores it as if it couldn’t possibly be a real problem to worry about. Is Lestat supposed to look like a completely unhelpful asshole in this version? Does he think Louis has more control than Louis believes he does? If so, why does he think that? Whose version of events is accurate? Is it ambiguous on purpose? Is it just bad writing?
We can’t know, because we don’t get to see what Louis’s experience with killing was really like for these six years to form our own conclusions.
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AND THEN THE MUSICIAN THING. FUCK.
Lestat: “buy the entire saloon band a round of drinks :)”
Lestat: “oh, you have a banjo band in your front yard :)”
Louis voiceover: “Lestat revered music and anyone who had a hand in its creation.”
[less than one minute later]
Lestat : [has a hissy fit and psychologically demolishes and tortures a man for hours for being mildly off key]
WHAT????? You can't tell me the saloon band and the banjos were more talented than an opera singer who no one else even noticed was bad. This is just a weird thing for Louis’s voiceover to tell us literally right before Lestat ruins their date by having an hours-long murder tantrum over one performer being slightly flat. And Louis said that line in literally the exact same scene! If the contradiction is intentional, I don’t know what purpose it serves. It seems more likely to be shoddy script work.
(This is also awful Lestat characterization, but I promised I would take this show as if it were the only canon. I just. I can’t keep it in about this.)
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And why does Lestat have that meltdown when he's killing the tenor? It feels like it’s referencing a vaguely similar scene from the book and movie, but the context for it is entirely different, and it’s not fair to use that as a crutch. All that’s happened is Louis told Lestat he was worried because he almost ate his nephew, and then very mildly complained about Lestat torturing a man for a half an hour, on the date that was supposed to be cheering Louis up after the almost-baby eating.
WHY IS HE SO ANGRY? It's abrupt and out of nowhere and it comes off as completely unhinged, and then Louis just gives in and drinks from the man (which is very much coded as vampire sex) for hours, while his voiceover admits that he was only pretending to enjoy it so that Lestat wouldn't be disappointed. It’s incredibly dark, and it doesn’t make Lestat look complicated or deep or like he’s hiding painful secrets, he just seems depraved and manipulative.
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WHY DID HE GET NAKED BEFORE HE GOT IN THE COFFIN? WHY DID HE MAKE LOUIS GET IN THE COFFIN AT ALL??? There’s no in-universe reason for them to need to be in there -- the room is sunproofed and they can be awake during the day -- so it’s just sexual assault in this version. Rad.
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Most of all, is Louis an unreliable narrator, or is this an honest recounting of events? Because the premise of the show as they advertised it is that this is the “true story,” and Louis is ready to honestly account for things that he couldn’t in the past. So these massive discrepancies between what we’re seeing and what Louis is saying don’t feel intentionally ambiguous, they feel narratively murky.
It doesn’t help that the 1974 book simply can’t be the original interview they’re referring to -- there’s just nothing at all that’s the same between them. In fact, they say they didn’t even get to finish their original interview. Maybe the 70s flashback (I hear it’s in episode six?) will clear up what the original one was like in this universe, but in the meantime, if the show doesn’t tell us what Louis originally omitted or was ambiguous about, the fact that this is a second “more honest” interview means almost nothing at all. Will this framing device pay off eventually?
This show is frustrating to watch. It handholds the audience through the most obvious information like it doesn’t trust that we aren’t stupid, but then doesn’t bother to show critical emotional and narrative beats.
immediate episode two review: oh no. that was unexpectedly genuinely uncomfortable to watch
