When I saw someone on stage approaching Lestat I thought it'd be Louis but no it was Paul - so much more heartbreaking. I loved their little moment and how the birds communicated with Paul <3
Lestat transcribing bird songs and Paul speaking with birds...
I'm so glad, anon! And gosh, the beat with Paul destroyed me. Just the layers there in terms of Paul as a type of guardian angel, the way that that concept had already been threaded through the Clarence Odbody moment with the passport (Clarence Odbody being the guardian angel in It's a Wonderful Life), the way they talked about Louis meaning - to me - it doesn't matter if any of this is real.
Lestat knows that Louis hung Paul's portrait. He knows that relationship means something to Louis, who's his family, with Claudia. The one he made, maybe the only he one needs, wants, as everything with Gabriella buckles. Louis' his anchor, and in many ways, Paul's Louis', and all of that is rendered something complicated, which we see in that beat, but it also just feels so organic to me in a way that I didn't ever expect?
I've said a million times on here that a huge part of the book to me is Lestat's break-up with God, and one of the things I think this episode captured so beautifully is that Lestat abandons religion, but he's still fundamentally a Believer. He believes in his mother, in Armand, in Marius, and here, in the show, he Believes in Paul. No, more than that. He Believes in Louis. The icons Louis has on his wall - Claudia's dress, Paul's portrait - are the stained glass windows of the church that Lestat sits in the pews of as a believer. The love there is holy, just as the hate is, and it's important there that the beat between Paul and Lestat isn't really about Lestat, it is, truly, about Louis. His love defined - defines - both of them. And Lestat believes, in all of it, that Paul loved Louis enough to maybe love him too.