What if your mom took you to see the girls you play dolls with from down the street get burned alive. And then you go to Paris and finally find love but then you get assaulted and then your assaulter burns themselves alive in front of you. And then your first love burns themself in front of you. And then you go to Italy with your mom but then she abandons you and so you bury yourself for 80 years only to be pulled out by a sadist who tells you to watch over this statue so you don’t burn to death. And then the statue attacks you randomly one day and now you feel this evil ancient power inside of you that you have no idea what to do with. So you go to America and fall for this hot guy that reminds you of your first love but you keep fucking it up so you give him a daughter but then you fuck that up too and they kill you. So you wallow and then decide to do the revenge thing but then when it’s too late you realize it isn’t what you actually wanted because once again you’re a little boy in France watching a girl burn alive at a trial BUT ITS YOUR DAUGHTER.
i know i sound like a broken record at this point but spending the entire season waiting for lestat’s facade and petty insufferable persona to get dismantled piece by piece to reveal the core of his guilt which should have been the abuse he inflicted on his black family (which could EASILY have coexisted with the conscientization of his own abuse at gabrielle/magnus’ hands) and being left with absolutely nothing is just insane insane INSANE. it’s like whenever things were feeling like they were building up to something real and sincere this show cynically reminds us that we were always stupid for even hoping. To willingly forgo any notion of a compelling narrative arc and any sense of character progression because you’re just that set on bastardising and humbling your former black MC is unfathomable levels of evil.
Remember that even good changes can make us feel depressed, because, as creatures of habit, we're resistant to change. That doesn't mean that it wasn't the right choice.
I mean, in some very interesting Technically Correct ways, they didn't actually die? Now, they're very much no longer alive. But the forces involved are such that they didn't get any of the usual cellular processes of death, they simply went from biology to physics in less time than it takes a signal to travel down your optic nerve.
Everyone keeps going “the Seance is the first time we’re really meeting Claudia. Not Louis’ version of her.”
NO! This is Lestat’s version of her! That’s the point! The cast talked extensively about this. Memory is a monster and Claudia is dead! We will never meet Claudia. She is always filtered through the recollection of another. That’s what death is! That is the tragedy of Claudia! She will never get to tell her own story outside the context of those diaries. Those diaries are the closet we ever get and we the audience are still only getting those as fragments filtered through the journalistic view of Mr. Daniel Molloy.
does anyone remember the amc show interview with the vampire? one of the greatest things television gave us in its era. heartbreaking that it ended after two seasons when those characters were so beautifully crafted. i really wish we could’ve had more.
you know i really wish i just hated this season because lestat was talking like he was on a drag race mini challenge. i wish it wasn’t as serious as flippantly cruel anti-blackness and the fundamental mischaracterization of virtually every character and the complete erasure of any love that may have existed between characters outside of their endgame pairings. i wish it wasn’t because of the erasure of trans identity, the constant punching down, the pointless retconning, the absolution of an abuse, the very obvious vitriol for the first two seasons and everything that the series has cultivated as a result of the first two seasons. i wish it was just the proverbial dangling of keys in front of the audience. i wish it was as simple as i heard “serving cunt has its consequences” turned off my laptop and never watched another episode
You know it's a Gothic Horror show, and you're supposed to feel uncomfortable, right? I do. But do you? Do you, Rolin, and Hannah understand that? Because from where I stand, only the Black characters seem to be trapped in a horror story. The others appear to be in a completely different genre.
The issue isn't that viewers like myself don't want to feel uncomfortable. The issue is that, in this Gothic Horror show, Black characters disproportionately bear the brunt of the violence.
Take this season finale as an example.
At the end of Episode 6, two characters are beheaded. Yet in Episode 7, we are shown the severed head and mutilated body of the black character in explicit details, while the white character's mutilated body is shown only briefly and out of focus, and his severed head is hidden from us.
Louis's arc is presented as a parallel to Lestat's. Both characters are placed in situations where they must confront people they have wronged, or at least people the narrative insists they have wronged, as well as their pasts, relationships, and mistakes. (Personally, I don't believe Louis owes Armand anything, but the narrative clearly wants the audience to think otherwise.🙄🙄🙄)
Yet the way these parallel journeys are depicted are drastically different.
Lestat's reckoning unfolds in beautiful rooms, elegant spaces, and dreamlike settings. He sits comfortably while listening to the grievances of the people in his life. He argues back. He reflects. He moves through beautiful environments, from grand rooms to forests and back again. Even when he is forced to confront painful memories, the experience is framed as introspection. The focus remains on his emotional and psychological journey.
Meanwhile, Louis is placed in what looks like a torture room straight out of a Saw movie. His severed head sits on a table, hooked up to a machine. His body is positioned across from him, forcing him to stare at it. His suffering is not just physical; it is public and humiliating. His torture is broadcast for others to watch and study. His pain becomes both spectacle and data. He is joined by Regina, another Black character, whose torture is used as leverage against him.
The man torturing Louis demands an apology, not for any genuine wrongdoing, but because Louis failed to love him the way he believed he deserved to be loved, and failed to show enough empathy for his trauma. This is the same man who murdered Louis's daughter in a lynching and attempted to murder Louis in that same lynching, and who, only minutes earlier, boasted that he took aesthetic pleasure in making Louis's death visually exhilarating as part of that lynching.
And so the torture continues. Louis is pushed to the brink of death. Regina is slicing her wrist. Eventually, Louis gives in. He apologizes. He accepts responsibility not only for hurting his torturer's feelings but for the torture itself. He tells his torturer that his coldness and denial drove him (the torturer) to these actions (the torture). The torturer receives the apology he wants, ends the torture, heals and frees Regina, and leaves, but not before carving the letter "A" onto Louis's mutilated body.
Meanwhile, Lestat is still moving through beautiful settings, confronting his past, and listening to others condemn him for the failures of his life. His story reaches its climax in the final act, when he is surrounded by the people in his life and the people he has wronged, some of whom are cheering him on. Rather than being subjected to physical degradation, he is given space for self-reflection. The focus remains on his memories, his relationships, his mistakes, the horrors he has committed, and his regrets. He eventually acknowledges some of his mistakes and even apologizes to one of his victims. Instead of fleeing from his past, he chooses to face it. His reckoning culminates in understanding, and the arc ultimately ends with imagery that evokes transcendence, as though he is ascending to heaven.
Both Louis and Lestat are given parallel narrative arcs centered on confronting their pasts, their relationships, and the harm they have caused. Yet the show presents those reckonings through vastly different visual and narrative lenses. Lestat's journey is psychological, reflective, and aesthetically beautiful. Louis's journey is a sustained ordeal of physical and psychological torture, humiliation, and degradation. One character is invited to examine himself; the other is turned into a spectacle of suffering. While Lestat is afforded reflection, Louis is afforded degradation.
And I'm supposed to look at that contrast and just shrug and say, "Well, that's Gothic horror for you"? Really? Take the blinders off. Look at what is being asked of Louis and compare it to what is being asked of Lestat. One is granted introspection, reflection, and, ultimately, transcendence. The other is subjected to torture, humiliation, and spectacle. The genre does not erase that disparity. If anything, it makes it more obvious.
My issue is not the horror. My issue is who is repeatedly asked to embody that horror, whose pain is treated as spectacle, and whose pain is afforded dignity, nuance, and care.
the paul scene really really solidified the fact that rolin has fundamentally misunderstood what is interesting about loustat. absolving lestat of any wrongdoing and going as far as having FUCKING LOUIS’ DEAD BROTHER come in and THANK lestat for “loving louis the way that he needed to be loved”. loustat, and i say this as a firm loustat girlie, is NOT HEALTHY. lestat did not SAVE louis with his love. louis was not saved by his love. they are both CURSED with loving each other.
louis was coerced, manipulated, intentionally isolated by lestat. lestat killed lily, the only person who he confided to, accelerated louis into severing contact with his family (whom he did love), and LOATHED paul from the one instance where he met him, because it was clear he did not approve of them. paul’s death and his stance on lestat was the eerie foreshadowing for how lestat would go on to treat louis throughout season one. i.e., enraged that in spite of all his UNWANTED efforts to receive louis’ unconditional affection, there was deep resentment from louis for stripping of something that he valued as much as his humanity.
and louis was not resentful because it is his nature. he was not cold to him because “it is his father’s way” like paul said. he was cold to him because louis is embittered by the fact that the majority of his suffering would have never happened if he had never met lestat. just as the majority of his greatest euphoria would have never happened if he’d met lestat: claudia entering their life, becoming bold enough to truly define who he is, experiencing a love that he was constantly told was wrong and unholy. but none of that changes the fact that lestat TRAPPED him—louis is constantly battling between these two opposing facts regarding the love of his life, and he learned to utilize resentment and coldness to make lestat feel the same constant turmoil and insecurity that lestat made HIM feel.
louis and lestat do not love each other BECAUSE of what they’ve been through. they love each other IN SPITE of what they’ve been through. they’ve made each other’s lives a living hell, but the love is STILL there and it always has. that’s what makes them interesting. they’ve lost everything for loving each other. yes, as the episode pointed out, lestat was insulted, betrayed, had his throat slit by louis. but what they failed to mention is that louis suffered for loving lestat as well. claudia detests louis in large part because they still love each other. louis lost everyone in his human life. louis is constantly facing threats from LESTAT’S past, his mother, theatre des vampires, whoever else. they’ve damned each other: lestat damns louis, louis damns lestat, and the cycle always continues because they cannot fucking resist each other. it is the love and the hatred, euphoria and abject misery, profound connectedness and the most acute loneliness. they are EVERYTHING to one another. rolin’s incessant need on victimizing lestat is butchering one of the best gothic romances of all time.
The scariest part of the 52 years of stalking isn’t even the stalking. It’s that Armand knows every bad thing Daniel has ever done and he doesn’t care.
Daniel knows he’s an asshole. He’s potentially the most self-aware character. He knows he hurt his ex-wives and his daughters. He understands that they hate him and he frequently validates their decision to do so. He gets it. He’s not hiding from his mistakes. He knows what he’s done. People leave him because anyone sane would. There’s no malice there. He knows who he is.
But here is this beautiful, ancient creature who has lived through some of the most incredible periods of human innovation in modern history, who lived in Renaissance Venice and witnessed Paris return to its former glory after World War 2 , who has been exposed to some of the most important works of art in history, who has had so much time to absorb humanity and all its most impressive creations, and this creature tells him he’s in love with him, some random kid he met half a century ago by chance.
And not just that he’s in love with him. That he was actively in love with him while he was doing all the terrible things. None of it ever mattered. Armand has seen every shade of Daniel’s soul, more than anyone else ever has, and he is in love with him because of it. It is one thing to have your mistakes exposed, it’s another entirely for someone to see them and decide to stay.
Armand has so freely given to Daniel what he has been trying to find for himself for half a millennia. The only thing he has ever wanted: to be truly known and accepted for everything you are, including the unseemly, ugly parts. How utterly and completely terrifying.
