Lovingly, y'all have to get better at and more comfortable with talking about sex work and sex workers if you're going to continue critiquing TVL on that note. Because some of y'all are tip toeing in a way that doesn't acknowledge that the show failed to even show this Louis they're claiming in s3, and also its a little dehumanizing to sex workers, when s1 went out of its way to show us them as living, breathing, real people DOING A JOB. SEX WORK IS LABOR.
Because my issue is that we saw Louis take the racial slur/heat from a John who rightfully got pummeled when he assaulted a sex worker. She's framed as CORRECT for fighting back and stopping that assault btw. We saw Louis and Miss Lily have a very clear understanding, though unspoken, that Louis was gay as the day is long. I believe the first sex worker we see is disabled, not as a bit or joke, and Louis addresses her by name immediately. It's Daniel implying harm and ill intent on Louis' part in those early scenes. But later in IWTV, we hear the way wealthy white men talk about their brothels and it's not at all warm or familiar...
I didn't see Louis coercing them or selling them against their will. And yes, there is always some level of ethical issue in sex work, especially as it's criminalized and relies on authorities turning a blind eye which also means they can manipulate sex workers and their whole house all the want. But from what the show itself gave us, Louis is practical and protective of the sex workers under his care. His only violence is making an example of Paul because he HAS TO. I think the show could've explored how Louis can compartmentalize anyone in his life into a calculated business asset, a means to an end, and I do think it's possible that his guilt with the pastor was genuine. But the SHOW chose not to do that.
Season 1 and 2 also establish that Daniel did sex work to fuel his addictions and perhaps an affinity for self harm. But it's then Daniel who refers to Armand as a rentboy. Armand, I *think* is the only person who says sex worker, but even then, it's unclear if Louis' using terms like "girls" or "hookers" when recalling the time period is supposed to be a derogatory habit or just part of the recollection, as that is what they'd be called.
I don't think Louis is a saint. I don't NEED or WANT Louis to be a Saint and if they'd fucking bothered actually adapting Lestat, that makes it all the more beautiful that to Lestat he IS sainted, not to mention the parallels or Lestat leaving a monastery and falling in love with/running away to Paris to be with Nicki versus Louis' desperate and self flagellating confession being interrupted by Lestat telling him he could have a life bigger than this religion and the limits of his race (which obv the show could've explored that not being 100% true as being gay & a biracial couple does still limit them despite their vampiric power). But if the show thought they were showing me a nightmare cold and cruel pimp, a master exploitation who dehumanized anyone at any time, they're outta their fucking minds.
Louis' father ran a sugar plantation and/or mill into ruin. Louis took the money he could selling it off to white business men who most definitely didn't want to help lift up a Black man. And we see how those men try to rip him off at the poker game (which also pisses Lestat off, so it's wiiiiiild the leaps and bounds they took from thoughtless French man to like... idk, Iggy Klan or Third Reich Bowie). Louis' call to being a pimp wasn't about owning women. It was the only avenue he had left to keep his family living the way they did. A white person falling from upper to kindle class is one thing. An entire Black family falling from the upper class in the Jim Crow south? There isn't a middle; There's only rock bottom. Did exploitation and violation lead the women who worked in his brothel there? Probably. But that's not unique to sex work. That's an issue of capitalism, of labor, and the additional challenges of being an unkept woman. I'm not gonna assume their Black boss who smoothes it over when they fight back is the worst thing that ever happened to them. And that's what the show has asked us to do all season.
And if the show wanted to get into how Louis' lashing out at those white businessmen likely harmed those women, it could've done that! But it didn't!
while iâm yapping today. armandâs motivations this season hold no damn water when held up to the books or the previous seasons of this show. is he violent? yes! is he cruel? yes! is he an evil mastermind and machiavellian schemer always ten steps ahead while plotting vengeance? no! what!
armand is desperate. armand wants to be in a cult, whether it be two people (him and his companion) or huge. armand doesnât want to lead a cult. armand wants companionship, total devotion, and to be wholly loved by those he falls in love with. armand is controlling and manipulative on a scale that does not extend to willing, enthusiastic cult leadership. he picks people he wants to love him, and if they donât, he tries to make that happen by any means necessary. armand is impulsive and shortsighted, blinded by his ideals of devotion and worship, and terrified of abandonment
armand in season two reacted impulsively and in shame when he stuck by louisâ side after the trial. louis assumed armand saved him and armand was too afraid and insecure to correct him. armand tripped into the perfect excuse and ran with it for 70 years out of desperation. he gaslit louis for decades in a relationship they were both clearly miserable in because heâs the fucking poster child of the sunk cost fallacy. armand doesnât let go of anything until heâs FORCED to
santiago was the major schemer in putting the play together and armandâs cowardice and insecurity compelled him to participate and direct it. armand was VERY much responsible for his actions there- he played a major role in orchestrating the lynching of louis and claudia, but he wasnât the sole scheming manipulator of that plot. he didnât trust louis enough to abandon the coven for him, made his choice when santiago organized a mutiny, and those actions were fueled by his insecurity and desperation
armand is dangerous when heâs afraid. armand will do anything to latch onto others and feel loved when he thinks heâs backed into a corner. heâs a monster who is desperate for love. not a machiavellian schemer. not a mastermind. vengeance and petty cruelty have never been the driving factors of armandâs worst behavior; his misguided understanding of love is always at the core of the worst things he does
in 2x05 he asks louis if louis is miserable inside the prison of empathy armand has built for him
that line understands armand SO well. armand thinks heâs acting out of love. armand thinks heâs constructed a safe harbor for him and louis. armand thinks if he loves louis in the right way, if he can manipulate louis into loving him back, that things simply have to work out, because if they donât, armand will be alone and unmoored. armand has NO CLUE who he is without tying himself to someone else
armand genuinely thinks that heâs acting in louisâ best interest for all of season two. heâs decided that this is their happy ending and he is DESPERATE to maintain it. armand goes down with the ship because he will not fucking accept that itâs sinking. he tries to scoop water out of the hull with his bare hands no matter how hopeless the situation is, because when heâs in a corner, he blinds himself to reality
i was so incredibly impressed and moved by season twoâs depiction of armand. by assad zamanâs clear love for armand and deep understanding of everything that makes armand tick. armand is a monster. heâs a pathetic, clinging monster who at his core is so insecure and so blinded by desperation that he convinces himself he has no other option than to cling on to whoever he thinks will keep him by their side
louis spends all of his time in paris insisting that the devolving status quo is maintainable, that thereâs a balance to find between himself and the coven, that armand can just tell them to fuck off and everything will be okay. louis doesnt budge a fucking inch for armand in paris. and that makes sense for louisâ character! itâs an overcorrection driven by his experiences with lestat; he was burned so badly in new orleans that he puts his fucking foot down and decides that heâs never giving someone that type of in again. he will not be hurt like that again. heâs in control of the relationship this time, heâs the dominant partner, and he gives armand the ultimatum of choosing between him or the coven because joining the coven would NEVER be an option for louis
they were doomed from the start. fresh off of his travels with claudia and the assassination of lestat, louis never wouldâve given armand any ground. he completely ignores and disregards armandâs insistence that what they have isnât maintainable and that something needs to change; louis places all of the onus for that change on armand. and when armand is caught between his coven of centuries and a man he wants to love who has never budged an inch for him, he picks the coven. he goes with the safer option. because armand would never take the risk of abandoning miserable stability for a potentially happier scenario that requires him to leave his comfort zone
maitre in the bedroom, maitre when itâs convenient. armand needs control. armand pretends at submission and enjoys playing the role occasionally, but armand is a control FREAK. he couldnât control louis. he couldnât predict louis would actually stay with him or keep armand by his side because louis spent their entire relationship withholding. so armand picks the coven, and then, when he canât pick the coven anymore, he takes the in and stays with louis
the armand of season three is not the armand of seasons one and two. yes, armand is cruel. yes, armand is a monster. but the nuances of why he does what he does have vanished by 3x07. itâs as if the writers saw the fanbaseâs ecstatic response to 2x05 and the only lesson they took from it was that we like armand being evil and violent, and that armand being evil and violent in any capacity is true to the character without ever considering the reasons heâs driven to violence. what a fucking disappointment
What gets me is that, before whatever this turned out to be, I did think Louisâ arc was going to be about more self reflection.
With Regina, and knowing the seance would be coming up, I wondered if Louisâ arc was going to be him realizing how enmeshed with Claudia he still was. That, due to the hardships they encountered in their lives, but also because of Louisâ desperation to use her as an outlet from his own, heâd woven their identities together seamlessly. And that his journey this season would be realizing that he and her are not actually one person and cannot be one person. That they are individuals.
And I had thought the Regina storyline was going to be a really good way for him to realize this. That he would get caught up in playing pretend, something would happen that would make him desperate to talk to the real Claudia (maybe Regina fumbles one too many lines, maybe he doesnât listen to Lestat and worsens his psychosis, etc.) leading to the seance, and thatâs when Claudia would curse him out.
Getting on him for seeming to replace her like an actual doll. That even now he has no idea who he is, no sense of self or self worth, and is still using her as a crutch decades after her death. I didnât even think Lestat needed to be present for the seance because I couldnât see it doing anything for his arc, which it did not. (I think his development wrt Claudia would need to unfold in a different way, but them cursing each other out wouldnât be it.)
Just that, somewhere along the way, Louis would realize that he was not only hurting himself but also destroying his own memories of Claudia by still being unable to view them as their own people. That this would be the final hurdle for his âcompanion for myself nowâ journey. For him to actually realize he hasnât had a âselfâ in a very long time, beyond Lestat and Armand, but in his relationship with Claudia too.
So if there was any journey to be had about Louis âapologizingâ, it wouldâve made the most sense for it to be towards Claudia. First as a poor attempt to Regina, then to the ambiguous ghost Claudia. The former who wouldnât be able to actually judge or accept the apology, and the latter who wouldnât wanna hear it and wouldnât grant him forgiveness anyway.
And this being something heâd have to sit with and accept, without trying to kill himself and repeat 1x06 or 2x05. That him dying would do nothing for Claudia, nor is she happy with the way heâs lived, that if he finally wanted to do right by both of them, he needed to figure this shit out for himself.
And it couldâve resolved with him doing for Regina what he didnât for Claudia. Helping her in a way only he could (saving Claudia from the fire - paying off Reginaâs debts and then some), but in a way that would actually keep her agency and individuality in tact (taking Claudia to the hospital - walking away and not contacting Regina again.)
This still would not bring him closure, because Regina is not Claudia and there is no righting the wrongs already done. Claudia is dead. But it would show Louis learning from his mistakes and not planning to repeat them. What was done to Claudia shouldnât ever happen again. The Claudia-Regina storyline really didnât need to be tied to Armand at all.
Louis disentangling he and Claudiaâs enmeshment and realizing the harm their emotional incest has brought both of them but most especially Claudia, wouldâve been a PERFECT parallel to Lestat and Gabriellaâs own arc. Louis as the parent understanding the harm heâs caused, and Lestat as the child understanding the harm done to him. And this being the final/first stepping stone to Louis actually finding personhood and Lestat actually understanding that âbeing vampiresâ doesnât mean squat.
It just drives me crazy because if there was anyone Louis was going to be made desperate to apologize to, Claudia shouldâve been at the very top of the list.
This is a discussion of louis, Armands and Claudias dynamic (in regards to race) after that fuckass show ending.
It has become abundantly clear that not only have they stripped away any semblance of nuance or understanding of racial politics. In hindsight, it has also become clear that this was an issue ever since s.2.
S.1 understood that making Louis black would change the dynamics, politics etc. It took that in stride and incorporated it in every way. S.2 properly introduces Armand. Let it be known, this dynamic had fuel to last multiple seasons, if understood properly could've been so interesting. The politics of racism between POC characters is something less explored and if given the space and nuance could've been extremely interesting. The dilemma of Armand simultaneously being A POC CSA victim (from a white supremacist btw) while actively abusing Louis and using his power over him COULD HAVE BEEN INTERESTING.
But I dont think the writers have ever taken Armands race into account, in the same way that Louis' race is only being taken into account when they want to (frankly) demean, hurt and abuse him. Armand should by all means become even more complex an nuanced, how does his race play into his self victimisation. How does he submit and purposefully demean himself to white characters but use whatever semblance of power he has as an ancient vampire, and use it over Louis. His internalised racism could've been something interesting to explore.
But no, we get active racial abuse against Louis where he is the blandest most boring 1D villain to ever exist. Im not against Armand being evil and racist himself (POC characters are allowed to be complex and it is realistic to explore this), HOWEVER this is not that.
This, and in the same vein of making Claudia anti-black, and calling Louis a slave while talking about how she "respects Lestat and always like him more anyway" is not exploring the nuances of racism with POC community.
No, this is the writers team actively choosing to be racist through OTHER POC characters because their cowards. Canonically, Marius, Gabriella etc are racists, by definition white supremacists. Its interwoven to the canon but its suprisingly left out. Instead we get Armand lynching Louis, once again without a single considering to how his race, his story and his personality plays into this.
They won't make the white characters do it, they'll put in on Claudia and Armand, because they will exist as scape goats to say "oh but POC characters are allowed to be evil". Sure but when your just writing a story that brutalises Louis to a level to which is unheard of in the book, im not going to give you the grace of assuming your trying to write a story about the inter racism of POC people, especially from your all white writers room.
Now thinking more about episode 7 of the TVL, there is one very huge sinister aspect to all this people aren't discussing enough.
Hannah/Rolin Jones seem to have specifically/intentionally weaponized anti-black racism with Louis's character to intentionally equate Armand's character to being a racist/nazi stand in. I have the feeling they saw a certain YouTuber with a lot of subscribers review the first two seasons of IWTV and refer to Lestat as the white devil and criticize the power dynamics and racial dynamics between him and Louis, and were so irate they wanted to absolve Lestat by any means, which meant now purposefully shifting all the racism to Armand. They have blatantly played into anti Southeast Asian racism/Islamophobia to accomplish all this.
In what world do we seriously sit here and think Armand is the same as a nazi? When he was sold into slavery, forced to acclimate to various western European cultures, historically would've been bought by someone like Marius to be a slave/servant, and then we hear Armand himself say he was "leant out" to Marius's business friends aka sexually trafficked. The 1500s version of Epstein Island. This is the true reality for someone like Armand living in 1500s Venice, he would have been subjected to the most vile racism there is by a Roman man no less, some of the most historically/culturally racist people to have ever existed. As said in season 2, Armand says that he was sent by the Children of Darkness to Paris where French was his fourth and poorest language. Sounds like to me he was deliberately sent here to racially humiliate him and force him to acclimate yet again to a culture that despises people like him. We see Nicki call Armand the g slur with a look of disgust is an example of this.
With all this context in mind, they now want to convince us that Armand is the racist one? Someone who underwent the most vile racism ever. If you want to take a look at the level of racism in Europe around this time, late 1700s, I recommend reading Wuthering Heights. A well-known character, Heathcliff, endures some of the most disgusting racism I have ever read. And he is heavily coded to be Romani/Indian, possibly Southeast Asian, it is never specified but there are many hints.
In episode four of the TVL, the episode opening includes an Elon Musk bobblehead, which is never referenced again. Are we supposed to think Lestat is an Elon Musk stan? Or was someone working on set trying to show their support for Elon Musk?! The man that did a nazi salute amongst his many, many crimes.
But we're supposed to be distracted by Armand's cartoon villainy and "experiments." It's like they want us to come to conclusion he's a racist nazi, but no the writing is just horrendous. The writing has an obvious agenda, and we should not fall for what they're trying to do.
What bothers me the most about Armand's arc this season is his characterization as a premeditated schemer. It turns him into the cunning, one-note villain the writers and cast kept insisting he wasn't. The concept of him demanding an apology from Louis and genuinely believing Louis owed him one is fine. Although that wasn't their dynamic in the books, the change does bother me because why transplant that dynamic onto Loumand when Lesmand is right there to explore and deepen? Plus, Armand has already done enough to Louis, and the optics of the situation do matter, especially if you're going to have Louis give him a sincere moment of connection and frame it as earned and somewhat heartwarming.
But if you were going to do that, I think a much better approach would've been to have Armand come to Louis with his own apology while expecting one in return, only to become angry and violent on impulse when Louis refused to give it to him. It would've made the point about how dangerous, delusional, unstable, and sadistic he can be without betraying the characterization the show had already established.
Because almost every time Armand has done something violent or harmful, it's been impulsive. San Francisco was driven by emotional weariness, anger, and impulse. His lie about the extent of his participation in the trial, and about saving Louis, was a spur-of-the-moment decision when he saw an opportunity and seized it, not something he'd been planning beforehand. The only thing he planned carefully over a long period of time was the trial, and even then it wasn't his idea in the first place. Someone else came up with it, and he went along with it.
A person who is constantly in survival mode, who stays on sinking boats because they're too afraid that if they jump and swim they'll never find land, only an endless sea that will drown them, just isn't someone who takes initiative as a master planner. They aren't the kind of person who orchestrates something as complex as the entire Regina scheme or constructs an elaborate torture scenario. They'd improvise it instead, just like they did in San Francisco.
Up until this season, the show consistently characterized Armand as someone whose manipulation and violence were primarily reactive, adaptive, opportunistic, and rooted in survival. This season shifts him toward a more proactive, long-term scheming role, and to me that feels like a meaningful change in characterization rather than a natural extension of what came before. I also think it's a less interesting and less psychologically complex version of the character.
i had to come back to put together a few things i keep thinking about:
they already associated armand with islam via him praying as fake rashid
they conflated armand with assad, a british bangladeshi muslim (as far as i know), by referring to him as a french bengali in the show when that had nothing to do with what we previously knew about the character
armand is assisted in torturing louis by fareed, presumably supposed to be muslim
louis is beheaded and armand is using livestreaming - reminiscent of videos used of hostages beheaded by terrorist groups in west asia
armand is wearing a metal bangle reminiscent of the one sikhs wear
armand is wearing a vaguely military-looking shirt even though this is very unlike his normal taste
all this is saying to me that theyre just jumbling together anything that says to them brown person terrorist muslim torturer insane fanatic
then theres the big boss song
lyrics about armand perpetrating executions (never mind he got taught that in rome - if hes doing eugenics they are in fact catholic tinged eugenics) and stating its his decision alone who dies (ignoring the involvement of white characters)
big SS on the cd cover blatantly associating him with nazis
daniel calls him dr mengele - a nazi who tortured ppl by experimenting on them
armand and fareed desecrate a kosher space by spilling human blood in the butchers shop
so its not exactly a coherent framing but i think its still a framing
then theres the fact that his csa history, after being the subject of mockery, is now brought up seriously, at long last, in this context! what is that telling us? especially since so much focus has been given to lestat over an abuse story they made up from whole cloth.
but lestat was abused by a woman. armand, we are constantly told, was a catamite. hes a twink bottom. he was a limp, passive ragdoll for sale. his daddy groomed him into a little bitch. hes emasculated, a beige pillow, his sexual performance is so-so, hes desperate and needy, hes a pussy and a betaboi. in short, hes too gay, not lestats ideal of a masculine bisexual man. like this is some kind of corruption of character, being the receptive partner in anal sex
what the fuck are they doing here. hes a nazi, and also a brown terrorist, and also a 'passive' homosexual. what the actual fuck are they doing. they chose his indian background for him and have done nothing with it except racism.
anyway im off again. as soon as the conversations started being more about 'how dare armand be cruel to louis' instead of 'how dare the writers do this to the characters and the viewers' it felt like we slipped off the track you know?
this show, once, seemed like it wanted to be conscious of race and sexuality and the intersections of different identities and now look at what its doing. jesus fucking christ. its antiblackness and islamophobia, anti asian and queerphobic and homophobic sentiment all rolled together, like it was designed to pit different segments of the audience against each other. a known far right tactic against the left! the only question is whether anyone drove this deliberately or whether they fell into it through prejudice and ignorance of their own blind spots. one thing is clearly deliberate though - they knew in the past theyd told us armand perpetrated the trial out of fear and insecurity, and people still hated him. in tvl they told us he wasnt just willing but having a good time. they made the brown abuse survivor a happy, gleeful torturer of black people.
don't know where the idea that armand is somehow getting prioritized over Louis this season when he only has 15ish minutes of screen time. If they were actually trying to capitalize on the armand fans they wouldn't have left Assad out of all the promo or given him probably what amounts to maybe 50 pages of script total.
Can we put aside the stupid fandom shit and unite in the fact that both of these characters were done catastrophically dirty by the writing?
armand attacking a random human who is trying to fight back: you cannot hurt me because i am invincible -> you cannot hurt me because i am already hurt -> i donât even care that youâre hurting me because i feel good anyway -> actually iâm so glad that youâre hurting me because the hurt itself feels good
there is a deep vein running throughout this show that dictates there can't be any solidarity, mutual love or even the most basic cordial relationship between two non-white characters, each black+brown character must love only their respective white partners
So much happened in 3x06 that Louisâ nuke of also being a victim of incestual abuse almost slipped past me. Are we suppose to pretend that Louis getting paid by a family member to sexually assault him doesnât recontextualize literally everything? His view on sexual violence? Why he went into the sex work industry and started running brothels in the first place?
Did none of the other Du Lacs know about this? Was he told not to tell anyone? Or, worse, did his parents know and he was still told not to tell anyone to uphold the illusion of an upstanding family? Does this have any bearing on why he used to be so reserved and tight lipped about his vulnerabilities? Does this add another layer as to why he used to recoil from his own sexuality, beyond the political landscape and his religious upbringing?
Does this play a role in his desperation to be seen as a good son and good brother and overall good family man, after being a victim of incest? And getting paid for it? What effect did this have on the way he views profit and exploitation? On the way he views himself? On the way he bases so much of his identity & self worth on his ties to other people?
Screaming from the rooftops that Louis was paid to be sexually abused by a family member! Was this a single event? Did this happen several times? How old was he??
the fact that the writers thought they could convince the general audience (or even just fans that don't actively hate Louis--which again, what audience did they think they were cultivating?) that Louis somehow deserved any of that is level of shared delusion I frankly cannot comprehend.
Genuinely feels like they keep bringing up Armand's childhood sexual abuse/slavery to directly contrast it with Lestat in a way that's like "look at our sweet boy lestat who goes through so much and yet is still loving and precious and independent unlike gross yucky gremlin Armand who has the same trauma but is EVIL and MEAN and DESPERATE and UNLOVABLE" :/ idk it really rubs we the wrong way tbh
the other problem with lestat's hateful backlash to louis in tvl and the lack of any kind of proper contrition arc for what he's done to louis and claudia is that even if the show does have him regretting what he's done and apologizing to louis again in s4 or later, after s3 it's just gonna feel like another phase in the cycle of abuse- "lestat the vulnerable becomes lestat the irritable becomes lestat the controlling". lestat was seemingly contrite in s2ep7 when he apologized to louis for dropping him, lestat was seemingly torn up in s2ep8 when he expressed heartbreak at louis hurting himself, but all of those moments are rendered meaningless (or at least only reflecting a kind of fleeting self-pity more than any real change or confrontation with his actions) since we've seen in tvl that lestat is perfectly willing to embark on a planned, multi-month darvo tour where he insults louis repeatedly and makes fun of his suicide attempt in his lyrics (bye any ounce of sincerity in the reunion scene) and bitterly nitpicks minutiae like his hair length while refusing to accept what he's done to his family...and then he and louis are on good terms again without any substantial change or growth on lestat's part. and no "he didn't really mean it, he was just lashing out bc he felt hurt and thought louis didn't love him" doesn't rationalize a multi-month darvo tour when "he felt slighted and was acting emotionally" is the crux of so many abusers' behavior. even if lestat was acting impulsively, that's not an excuse, but writing music, organizing a tour and performing those songs where he mocks his own abuse victim for speaking out requires a kind of planning and intent that makes it clear he wasn't being impulsive. it's a calculated move when you're doing it for that long and that consistently. if there had been some real emotional payoff in s3ep7 i could've said the execution was off but i could respect their commitment to exploring the psychology of an abuser in denial, but there's no payoff- it's clear they thought lestat's behavior on tour was just lestat being bitter and zany and cunty and didn't intend or expect the audience to see any weight behind it.
and with these same anti-survivor writers at the helm, even if they did attempt to show lestat apologizing to louis in s4 or beyond, the audience will have no reason to believe or trust that this apology is more sincere or reflects a more permanent change than the apology in s1ep6 or s2ep7 or his tears for claudia in s2ep8 given all of that fell by the wayside as soon as lestat felt "wronged". (and no, he wasn't wronged by louis when it came to the book, as louis isn't responsible for something that was published against his consent and it's not wrong for abuse survivors to talk about their experiences in a biography. the idea that the book is something louis had to apologize for or that the book justifies lestat mocking his own victims publicly, for months- they can't "oh lestat is a creature of impulse" their way outta that one- in itself exposes a kind of anti-survivor thinking, and we have no reason to believe this team of writers, with their unserious attempts at "comic relief" about incestuous abuse, complete disregard for louis and claudia as victims and voyeuristic, gratuitous framing of racialized black suffering think otherwise.)
claudia (back when there were some black writers with input on her writing and back when she could express herself in her own voice- not the way they depicted her in s3 as a mouthpiece for ooc antiblackness filtered exclusively though her white father's pov and written by nonblack writers) was 100% right and remains validated 80 years after her murder. the unintentional message of s3 is that louis and lestat haven't changed and lestat will always be a mercurial abuser who swings between hurting louis and performative self-serving apologies that lead to no real change, and louis will always take him back despite his cruelty. except even in s1-s2 when lestat was fully a narrative antagonist i believed he loved louis, that we were seeing the nuanced portrait of how love and abuse can exist within the same relationships and love doesn't "cancel out" abuse, but now lestat's love feels like an informed attribute that they have to bring a hallucination of paul onscreen to tell us about since it sure as hell isn't demonstrated in lestat's behavior for the vast majority of s3- the way lestat acts in the front half of the season, followed by complete lack of contrition for either what he did in nola/paris or what he did on tour, makes their reunion feel unearned, rushed and insincere. and beyond the antiblackness and anti-survivor rhetoric, the writers have just gotten lazy- loustat is scripted this season as if the writers thought could take for granted that the entire audience is already invested in them, that everyone already wants them back together, and they don't need to put in the work to get viewers onboard with their relationship and get people invested again. and to be fair, this isn't a problem unique to loustat this season- all romantic relationships in tvl get the "tell, not show" treatment and all their important development beats take place offscreen, which makes me think the s1-s2 writers they fired were pulling the weight of most of the romance writing (just like the black writers they fired were clearly pulling the weight of louis and claudia being framed with any compassion whatsoever).
the only thing remotely compelling thing left about loustat's romance is sam and jacob's chemistry, and it's telling that all moments of genuine intimacy and desire between them this season were unscripted and added by the actors (the comforting hug on the sidewalk, louis savoring lestat's blood in the beer etc). the problem isn't that loustat is a bad or "toxic" romance, the problem is that loustat is a badly-written and unearned romance. and as of the end of tvl the actors are its only saving grace.
If this is what we were supposed to take away from a character like Louis why would anyone love/like him? It begs the question what are Louisâ redeeming qualities? Why do these men continue to stay with him and obsess over him?
Original post
Iâve been trying to wrap my head around this. Ultimately, I think this is all a response.
I still think Season 1 was fine. I think they knew the story they wanted to tell and approached it with open minds and excitement to adapt it. But then AMC gave them the green light to expand Louisâ arc across two seasons. Surprising but okay! And so, at least in my opinion, they did create S1 out of genuine creativity and love for the material.
But then it released and seeing how popular Loustat was, seeing people actually really like, some even love Jacobâs Louis, it made them approach S2 differently. Nobody behind the scenes was expecting for Loucob to be as loved as he is, whether people like him for himself or like him as an extension of Loustat. Even Jacob seemed to be surprised, having initially viewed his arc as a stepping stone before theyâd dive into Lestat later. His shock & confusion in interviews after S2 but before they started shooting S3 was clear. He was surprised to still be brought on for in-depth interviews at all.
I wouldnât call it lightning in a bottle. That would mean intent. Itâs more like they were drinking beers in the backyard just shooting the shit before lightning freaked everybody out by zapping past the lid. While of course they didnât plan to tell a lackluster story, I think the richness of Louisâ character was a complete accident. I think they all thought it could be perceived as good, not as fucking great.
And this is why Season 2 started us down the path of being controversial among the fanbase. And by âcontroversialâ I genuinely mean âdebatedâ, because people have very different opinions of it. The S2 reunion scene is heavily debated (primarily in Louis spaces) with half saying they hated it and the other half enjoying it. You have half the fanbase happy with Lestatâs apology during the trial, and half saying Santiago was right and that Lestat was too hard on himself.
Season 1 was clearer on how things were to be interpreted. While thereâs definitely argument for how fans/crowds/mobs take ideas and run with them regardless of intent, nothing in Season 1 garnered as many different interpretations as the content in Season 2. I think this is because this is when the team behind the show started, seemingly, disagreeing with each other.
This is how you get âwait what was Louisâ apology to Lestat in the finale about? Was that Louis coming to terms with himself, or was that the show engaging in victim blaming?â And everyone has different POVs on it. Itâs clear now, that the ambiguity behind the scene, behind quite a few scenes in S2, is because the writers themselves couldnât agree on what they wanted them to mean.
But with all the people theyâve let go for Season 3, and the new ones they hired on, itâs obvious which side remained on-staff and the kinds of likeminded people they got to take the othersâ place.
So now, in Season 3, there is no debate. There is no âhm I can see this interpretation but I can also see this interpretationâŚ.â Thereâs no ambiguity. This side of the team, the side that viewed Louisâ apology in S2 as Louis apologizing for âabusingâ Lestat, that seemed to view Louisâ charred, crumbling body apologizing to Armand as deserved punishment instead of horrific abuse, are the ones that have stayed and taken over the show.
And we KNOW debates started happening in the Season 2 writerâs room given the recent interview where Rolin briefly mentioned it, such as whether Louis asked Armand to erase his memories or if he never did. Certain things in Season 2 are controversial among fans, because the writers themselves started disagreeing on characterizations and important story beats.
So with this portion of the team let go vs the ones that were called back + those newly hired to replace the former, this is how we got Season 3. A season that is not as ambiguous as Season 2 where the writers were fist fighting when they put pen to paper. We are back to the single vision of Season 1.
Except this vision wasnât born from heartfelt creativity and love for the material. Itâs out of agreed upon resentment and shared biases. You even have the production designers of all crew members throwing in âI always liked Lestat moreâ unprompted when their job has NOTHING to do with character preference. Season 3 is the way it is, because these are the people who originally wanted Louisâ arc to only be compiled into a single season, and were irritated when fans kept wanting more. Whether they wanted more of Loucob or simply wanted more of Loustat as a duo.
And Rolinâs âwe wrote from the gutâ or âthe idâ and all of his sayings that they wrote instinctively lays it out that this whole mess is emotional retaliation. The writing behind Season 3 is a temper tantrum.
Not just as retaliation to Louis, but to everyone. Assadâs Armand shot through the ROOF and instantly became one of the most popular characters in S2. Iâd even argue is Thee second most popular after Lestat (Iâd say Daniel is the second most popular among casual viewers whereas among non-casual viewers, itâs Armand.) With DM shooting to the stars as the most popular ship among non-casual viewers. (And DM does beat out Loustat in terms of popularity when looking at the dedicated fanbase.)
But once again, this seems to have pissed That Sideâ˘ď¸ of the creative team off after Season 2âs release. With none of them expecting Assadâs Armand to be as beloved or for DM to be as highly desired as they are. And you can see this frustration in all of Armand & DMâs âdevelopmentâ in Season 3.
Why Armand had less than 15 minutes total of screentime across episodes 1-6 before reducing into a maniacal villain in 3x07. Why DMâs eagerly anticipated relationship happened completely off screen, and both characters butchered so it would be intentionally unsatisfying once revealed. (And the excuse that theyâre a minor / secondary relationship so they were never going to be as focused on doesnât make sense when looking at Claudeleine. Who was still emotionally moving and well paced even in the midst of the Loumand-Dreamstat-Loustat triangle.)
The âmetaâ that they kept talking about in pre-S3 interviews isnât that the writers just kept the fanbase in mind while making it, itâs that the entirety of Season 3 is a response to the fans themselves. Itâs less about the actual characters that were written in Seasons 1 & 2, and comes off more as one long Twitter thread titled âMy IWTV Hot Takesâ
Because you also canât say any of this was for Lestat. Itâs very reminiscent to Season 2, when Lestat point blank says âI hurt Louis because I wanted to hurt himâ and a portion of the fanbase shoved a pacifier in his mouth to shut him up and for years afterwards kept saying âNo he didnât mean it.â Even Samstat was reduced from a character into a figurehead.
Loucob became a punching bag, Claudlainey and Assadâs Armand were weaponized against Loucob while simultaneously reduced to punching bags too, and the writers put Samstat on the same idealized pedestal that the characters Magnus, Marius, and Gabriella are supposed to be condemned for, treating him as a concept rather than a person.
Sorry, my response turned into something else lol. But âWhy would the writers write Louis this way? Why would anyone like him?â My personal opinion after really trying to understand what on earth has happened, is that no, they likely were not writing like this since S1. The season just doesnât make sense from that POV. Everything weâre seeing right now is reactionary.
Season 1 was a story created out of actual interest, Season 2 was when the boat started to rock, and Season 3 isnât a season at all. Itâs a cokerant thread on Twitter. Itâs a callout post on Tumblr. A 72-part TikTok story. Itâs little more than the writersâ tantrum because fans werenât playing with their dolls the way they wanted us to.
in a better written season finale Armand would learn about Marius being alive and never coming to rescue him from his tormentors, would care for the Five Great Laws as he was indoctrinated into staunchly following them for 450 years, would torture LESTAT after he mocked and humiliated him and his trauma publicly, and kept Marius being alive from him, because that is their adversarial relationship from the source material, and a more legitimate and believable reason for Armandâs crash out, would have made Lestat and Louis watch each other in the same room even, would never put his hands on Louis, as âI will not harm youâ is the basis of how he operated the Loumand relationship and how he absolved himself from any blame as he was righteous in his own mind. He always had reasoning. No matter how batshit insane and wrong his conclusions might be, you could see how he would reach that. And the entire torture scene.. is not that.. Yes I wanted the loumand conversation to happen, especially around the pimp/sex slave bdsm relationship they had and the emotional moment we got was beautiful but my god it wouldâve been two of them talking sitting across from each other, not in this context, and they would certainly not say neither of them loved each other when they clearly did and that was the tragedy, that they loved each other and settled in the familiarity when it was toxic as all hell and so so wrong for each other.. âRestâ would not be thrown around like an anime attack mode name, Daniel would not be walking in the fucking sun as if itâs an ability to be taught.. DM would have any kind of engagement, and Alex would have better explanation. 1/3 of the TVL book being about Armand and having TC and fucking random ass guy in Lestatâs conscious than Armand.. ffs. Louis would not be brutalised once again for no fucking reason and âhumbledâ.. Lestat would actually have agency and sympathy.. We would actually get the concert, and Akasha would wake up. We would see the conclusion of 20 open ended through lines and address the fucking elephants stomping around in the room.. genuinely grieving what couldâve been a brilliant season with a brilliant ending but it was just a whole bunch of nothingburger..
