Stained Glass Eyes.... Lestat having the light in his blue eyes like summer days....Louis' eyes being church windows as his sister said in season 1.... stained glass being sunlight shining through church windows.......
It's a really, really beautiful song, anons, and it felt like another really effective turning point in the music. I've loved how much the show has played around with this sort of rhythm where Lestat's journey to artistic and emotional authenticity isn't a straight line, that he's always one step forwards, two steps back, that it's Your Biggest Fan before The Loneliness, that it's Plastic Fiends and Big Boss before it's Hit the Lights, that it's Big Bad Wolf before it's Stained Glass Eyes. That the truth of him is below these layers of posturing and showmanship, minimisation and manicness and playfulness, and that honesty and vulnerability isn't the destination, but rather the thing that's always there, beneath everything else. It really comes through both in the writing and Sam's performance, especially in his vocals, and I just - - love it so much.
And I love that idea too that the stained glass eyes is a meeting point between Louis' church window eyes and Lestat's blue sky/summer day eyes! That somehow in her face is Lestat's light pouring out of Louis' features! She's their daughter!! Which feels especially true with Lestat singing her making as her birth and not her turning - she really was never anything else to him but their daughter, and in a season that's emphasised how much those familial roles can fall apart of be perverted, it feels somehow all the more poignant.
I hope the vampire Sam felt something in listening to it and watching Lestat write it too. He did seem affected by it, and it's interesting to consider in the context of how Louis' pulled him in professionally too. It does make me think Louis' kept him at an arms length and that Sam has been relatively shielded from the impact of the trial on both Lestat and Louis. The show can't be keeping him around just for fun, and they've been so pointed about how he's been kept on the hook, so I suspect he probably will come into play with some trial revelations, but who knows how that might shake out at this stage!