Warning: The following contains spoilers for The Vampire Lestat through episode seven as well as what came before in the TV show and the books. Read at your own risk.

Intro

Watching episode seven of AMC’s The Vampire Lestat, The Failures, is interesting. It’s a season finale when they very clearly went into this with a plan for this to be a two season story. At the same time nothing in this world is guaranteed so one presumes it was written with some level of wanting to at least button it up some before the end. Just in case.

As I sit here having watched the episode I’m kind of left with… eh? It happened. Not the worst episode of this season by any means (still looking at you, Detroit) but not a great episode either.

Don’t get me wrong, it had moments I very much liked. I’m a Louis/Lestat shipper, I have zero shame about being catered to. But - eh?

I may as well get into it.

The Good and Just There of The Vampire Lestat: The Failures

First up, I realize this is entirely a me thing but I do want to commend that this is an episode that’s made with the goal of saving money as much as possible. We’re reusing already shot clips (some new versions of the same scenes we’ve seen before because hey! Unreliable narrators! Fresh way to present known information! Got it in the can, may as well use it!), already created costumes, already created sets. It is genuinely very very clever and I personally live for that kind of shit.

That being said, you do need to still do something with this. I talked about that last week with Montreal: it’s okay to just have the characters sit and talk if you’re using that to do something with the characters.

Lestat of course comes out great here. As he should since it’s his show on every possible level. And as a fan I loved how this very much highlighted his Brat Prince tendencies far better than we’ve seen so far. You’re going to put me in front of a tribunal to judge my life? I reject the premise. Then I’ll give you my own conclusion. And my conclusion is that I rock (heh) and hey at least I fucking tried something.

Which does get me into the sigh I have over how Rolin Jones consistently fails to understand metaphor and symbolism. Case in point, Lestat as a loser who stayed home until he was 30 does not work for Lestat’s story. Never mind for the books! I’m fine leaving the books on the shelf and saying this is a totally new story that shares the words “vampire” and “Lestat” and that’s it.

But in this story we’re given seasons of a man who we are told is captivating and charismatic and makes people gravitate towards him and that does not work with a guy who is an unmotivated failure to launch.

And what gets me is the books do the work for you! I’ve seen people online make arguments about “Well how can you tell the story except this way?” and… there’s novels! Best sellers even! You are under zero obligation to follow them but you can’t say there’s no proven roadmap of how to get from A to B when there’s billions of words in Lestat’s own voice letting you know how that happened.

To be honest they kept hitting the thing about not leaving home until he was 30 that at this point I’m assuming that’s from Rolin’s own life. I don’t know the man’s biography but what a weird god damn thing to introduce to Lestat of all people. Louis you could’ve had that story with easily! Again! In the books! Granted because he was at that point the head of his family so he had to be there but still!

And as long as I’m ranting here I will again bang the drum of why would you take the story of a feminist character like Gabrielle who was a classic story of a woman trapped by the demands placed upon women by society with the twist that becoming a vampire was the thing that set her free and go yeah no she’s the horrible and abusive one that fucked Lestat up. Not his dad and brothers, who canonically beat the shit out of him all the time and especially when he tried repeatedly to escape the house.

I’ve seen interviews with Rolin where he cites Gabrielle being withdrawn like that clearly shows how evil she was. Bitch, she was abused in that house too! She tried to help Lestat as much as possible with her limited resources! I just - ARGH.

The only thing that comforts me is that, as we’ve previously established, Rolin really does not know what the fuck he’s doing when he writes a story in terms of layers of meaning. Like he’s so deficient in this area that - well, as another version of Lestat would say, sometimes it’s so easy you almost feel sorry for them. May as well make fun of a toddler for not understanding the golden ratio as they smear apple sauce across the table.

Anyway, not to retread old ground here. I did genuinely like Lestat’s part. I liked that it was an exploration of his character and it actually did something with his character. He had to defend his life and he rejected the premise but still came to some conclusions about himself that had him keep going. Very Lestat, loved it.

And again I’m not gonna deny that the straight up Louis/Lestat of it all didn’t appeal to me. I’m a cheap whore, I own it.

But what helped the Lestat scenes wasn’t just that he’s our protagonist and Sam Reid can serve Brat Prince when you let him, but also that he had other characters to bounce off of. You can see the contrast of this in the Louis and Armand scenes when poor Assad Zaman was given a version of Armand who - look, I get that the guy ran a theater for centuries but he’s also a mastermind. Trust when I say my boy knows better than to start monologuing his evil plans. He’s a master manipulator, not a master of boring people to death.

And it’s not Assad’s fault! We know he can make a scene positively crackle when he’s given someone to play off of. See also any scene of him and Eric Bogosian this season. And Jacob Anderson genuinely did a great job emoting the shit out of all his lines while having to pretend to be a head on a table. But for the most part poor Assad was left literally sitting there running through the list of things that were this season’s “twist” because as we all know the best way to reveal anything in a visual medium is telling instead of showing.

Contrast that with the reveal that the Talamasca was more involved which worked much better for me. Reason being we saw the Talamasca all the way back in season one and only got bits and pieces of them but enough to leave us with questions of hmm, why are they doing this? What’s the interest here? I didn’t watch the Talamasca show so I have no idea if some of the answers could’ve been found there, but what was nice is, for many reasons, I didn’t have to. Raglan’s reveal felt like a natural progression of information about background characters who are slowly slipping into the spotlight. Armand’s reveals about Regina, on the other hand, felt like somebody said “Oh shit, we’re at the finale already. Guess we should explain it.”

Now look: I’ll freely admit maybe I missed something that hinted at this. If I did let me know and I’ll happily mea culpa. But compare “Armand secretly found a girl who looked like Claudia after holding worldwide casting attempts and was behind fucking with Louis’ head about this in this specific way of which EXACTLY ZERO HINTS ARE GIVEN IN ANY WAY” with even what we got with Alex, which is hey: Alex met Armand in his group, Alex mentioned knowing a guy who was like a god, hey maybe the characters themselves should’ve made better note of that dangling thread because woo boy did it bite them on the ass. One’s a setup with a payoff, the other’s just there.

Put another way: If any of us rewatch the season are we going to go oooo! There’s that foreshadowing! about Regina or are we only going to see Armand’s influence because we were told about it? Again, I’d love this to be chalked up to my bad eyesight but I don’t think that’s the case.

Likewise Lestat waking up in his tour bus also felt “Um… shit. We don’t know how to write or show that so we’re just going to skip it.” Here at least I’ll allow for how this is the unreliable narrator show and Lestat’s flat out saying “Would you believe?” implies this isn’t the real version. But in terms of audience impact it would’ve been better seeing Lestat and/or Louis being more proactive about their own rescues.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved Louis having his body write out “Fuck you” and Lestat challenging his judges. But the climax in both cases happens offscreen. Raglan saving Lestat isn’t even a payoff for anything Lestat’s done. Him coming in at the bowling alley would’ve worked better for me if this was a result of Lestat doing something to get Raglan on his side specifically at any time during the season. (Or heck, have Raglan say part of why they’re helping Lestat is because Louis did them a solid earlier in the season. Because the show can go on without Lestat, if that’s the goal the Talamasca is working towards.)

So yeah. Like I say, it’s an episode. It happened. It’s not one I’d say people not only can but should skip while Detroit is firmly in the no seriously you can save this hour of your life pile. It’s perfectly fine for what it is. I just feel like a season finale should have more oomph?

We do… sort of? Have a cliffhanger? But we opened the season with being told something bad happened so really this was just a reminder of it. Mind you I’m a book reader so I know what happened. Maybe for people who are TV only the visuals are helpful to give a better idea. I also don’t think it would’ve been the worst idea to include some shots of Louis, Armand, and Raglan at the auction again just to help remind the audience where they stand after everything? Armand with his eye patch and all that? If the point is to have the audience going “Oh yeah, what did happen?” But that’s just me.

On AMC’s The Vampire Lestat and Problematic Racial Issues

There’s one last thing I want to touch on that’s not really appropriate for Lagniappe so I’ll throw it here. There are those who talked about last week’s episode as a poor handling of race. Now y’all know I have zero problems calling out poor handling of race on this show because WOO BOY. However, in this particular case the issues were Claudia’s language as she was talking to Louis and Lestat.

For things like that, this is where I have to say I am as pale as Lestat himself and it is not my place to make the judgement call. I’ll happily talk about how the show handles race in terms of history because I did actually study that. For language? Oh no. I’ll shut up and let others who actually are Black speak about that.

I don’t want to ignore that it happens though. Both last week with some of Claudia’s word choices and this week with Louis’. And not for nothing but both episodes were written by Hannah Moscovitch who as far as I’m aware is as lily white as I am. So in terms of the “come collect your people” of this I would very much say if you are white woo boy is it not your place to be putting any variation of the n-word in a character’s mouth.

I’m also going to point out that Hannah wrote some of the more problematic episodes in previous seasons (let’s root for the pedophile Nazi sympathizer while ignoring every single racial implication surrounding Claudia’s handling by the vampires at the theater, everybody!), she was co-writer on Detroit which included the transphobic pronoun “joke,” and this episode which included being ableist about people with autism for some fucking reason. So… look, babe, your name’s on the credits when these moments happened. Maybe examine both your issues as well as who you think the audience for this show is.

Anyway, yeah. I didn’t to come off like I was ignoring it. Just trying to be respectful that it’s not my place to say. But, yanno, not Rolin or Hannah’s either. Get more BIPOC behind the camera of this show, people. Been saying that for years now.

Lagniappe

As always, things that don’t fit anywhere else:

• I realized this week that this show establishing that Lestat had a stutter must mean that thing is all over fanfic right now. Woof. All I’ll say is never go full Gambit, kids.
• Regina taking too long to slice her wrist made me wonder if she was faking being under Armand’s control. I can also see the argument that Armand allowed her to go slow in the hopes it would push Louis to act, so I’m not saying this is a plot hole or anything. Just if the reveal comes later I’ll feel proud for noticing.
• I don’t want to undersell the good job Assad did having to talk to himself all that time. The writing wasn’t great but he acted the shit out of it. Frankly the poor writing highlights just what a good acting job he was doing, so kudos.
• Paul showing up at the end there does imply that Lestat had a hand in his death. Mind you, he did say the audience was people he killed or significantly impacted (Marius was there, after all) so it’s not necessarily a complete confirmation. But I do think Lestat having a hand in Paul’s death and then repeatedly lying about it later is in character for him so I’m fine for it either way.
• Once again I waver on how much of book stuff to talk about in terms of does it help understanding the show or does it get in the way? Plus is it spoilers for what the show might do later? So I’m gonna offer some tidbits but try to stay vague.
• To wit: I appreciated what Raglan said was one of his interests in all this.
• In terms of things that are more explanation than possible spoilers: There’s a thing with VampChron vampires that when you’re turned you basically only have so much juice to make other vampires with. Your first fledging is going to be your strongest, then it’s diminishing returns from there. (Case in point: Lestat was Magnus’s only child, which was part of why Lestat came out of the gate more powerful than most vampires period, let alone a baby vamp merely days old). So when Lestat’s being judged on things like what he did with the blood, that’s what that’s about. They’re saying he wasted his ability to make other vamps by picking poor candidates, such as Nicky who was mentally unwell.
• The diminishing returns of your baby vamps can be mitigated by you becoming more powerful yourself. Typically with age (Magnus, again, was pretty old so that’s another reason why Lestat started out powerful) and also by drinking from more powerful vampires. Like, oh, a guy who’s a few thousand years old like Marius? Aaaaaaaaaaaand, ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh, I dunnooooooooo…. Akasha? Maybe you’ve heard she’s got some blood that might mean something if it’s in you?
• So yeah, that’s what Armand was talking about with Louis being lucky in his ability to survive being beheaded this long. The timeline on Lestat’s kids was Gabriella, Nicky, small powerup from Marius, then huge powerup from Akasha, then Lestat made Louis.
• This is slightly different in the books but close enough that for our purposes it doesn’t matter. Not unless you want me talking your ear off all night.
• Possibly also worth nothing that AMC’s vampires are much more… biological? Than their book counterparts? There’s no eating, no drinking anything but blood, no sex (both lack of desire and lack of body parts that do anything sexual), no smoking, they don’t breathe, they don’t have heartbeats, and they don’t go to the bathroom. So some of the details on vamps surviving without their heads is a little fuzzy, but as I say for our purposes the timeline of who Lestat makes and when works.
• A good “show don’t tell” moment is also that earlier in the season we see Louis behead a much weaker vampire and sad vamp is immediately fucked as far as trying to communicate via anything but telepathy. So if you remember that you’re also getting a nice understated lesson in how powerful Louis both is and could be if he stopped trying to be a wuss about his powers.
• “They watch.” - I feel a need to point out the Talamasca, whose motto is “We watch and we are always there” predated Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Watchers by a lot.
• Having been out of VampChron fandom as long as I have I was surprised to find out that Armand/Daniel is a still very popular ship. It absolutely was back in ye olde days. You basically had Louis/Lestat, Armand/Daniel, and Armand/Marius as the big ships. But this is also back when there were only a handful of books to go on, so proportionately those ships took up more room. Armand/Daniel in particular didn’t get as much attention as the series went on. So interesting for me to come back and see how passionate fandom is about them.
• That being said, yeah y’all were totally screwed by the tell don’t show of this reveal as well. “Uhhh, Armand was totally in love with Daniel the whole time! And the vast majority of evidence of that happened off camera!” So my sympathy.
• Again I have no shame so I’m thrilled that a TV series with Jacob as the first lead means we’re getting tons more Louis and by extension Louis/Lestat though. In the books Louis/Lestat is very much a thing, but it’s more Lestat fucks off and does his own thing (and other people) and then floats back to Louis by the end of the novel to be like oh yeah you still matter to me. Which I suppose could still happen with this show but it already happened in The Vampire Lestat the book and we avoided that this season so hope springs eternal?
• Related to that, The Vampire Lestat and The Queen of the Damned are kind of a two part story. So the show’s just mirroring that in terms of ending on something of a cliffhanger and not showing the full details of what happened.
• Doesn’t mean we couldn’t have lost a few thousand scenes of them in the tour bus in favor of actual plot but yanno. What are ya donna do?
• I’ve seen folks float the theory that Claudia escaped the seance and will take over Regina’s body. I have no particular dog in that hunt so just throwing it out there as food for thought for anyone who wants it.
• Not gonna lie, I was thrilled we didn’t get a new song. I’m sorry, I appreciate the effort, but sweet Jesus way too much time was spent on Lestat gyrating and singing songs that only occasionally were supposed to be good. Like I said at the start, the bar for using in universe music to tell the story without being a flat out musical is high and…. bless their hearts but AMC’s TVL did not clear it. A tiny bit unfair given the competition but at the same time you have an editor for a reason. One verse, two tops, then save the rest for YouTube extras.
• I do want to acknowledge that once you hire Jennifer Ehle to play Lestat’s mother you absolutely want to use her as much as possible. Likewise upping the amount of screentime female characters get in the early books in particular is good, since woo boy early VampChron is a sausage fest. But you did not need to turn Gabrielle into the manipulative, child abusing, child grooming, whatever the fuck Gabriella was in order to do that. Gabrielle as a caring mother who did her best gives you the same story of Lestat’s pain when she left him after Paris because literally that’s the story you’re basing this show on. Likewise not to get into spoilers but she does get involved with Lestat’s big concert (in the book there’s only the one) but in a totally bad ass way. Which maybe she still will if we end up seeing more of the concert next season but just - ugh. UGH.
• Also not for nothing but Lestat could’ve pointed out that if Gabrielle showing him the witches being burned was meant to make him leave and he didn’t… sounds like she was the failure. But honestly I still don’t get why we had to make it sound like Lestat never wanted to leave home while keeping two key points in his life when he tried that very thing.
• (The monastery and the acting troupe, for the record.)
• Huh, I wonder if the composition of the witches had anything in it that might prove significant? Just musing aloud here, don’t mind me.
• As far as I’m aware Enzo isn’t a reference to anything in the books. Given how much he was highlighted compared to other effective NPCs in that scene my spidey sense is tingling and saying this is Rolin or Hannah’s fanfic insert.
• One of the layers that’s missing by not including more stuff from the books (again, god forbid we cut a verse from a song or a minute from the bus scenes) is Lestat’s laughing fits. Even as a mortal he had moments when things just hit him the right way and he’d start laughing uncontrollably (again, we love a bipolar king). Him cracking up during the dinner scene is a thousand percent a reference to those.
• I did peek at some reactions before publishing this and saw some folks didn’t care for the repetition of Lestat and Louis on the bench with the fingers touching because it was repetitive. But I was actually okay with it because it represented a small moment that’s giving Lestat a reason to go on every time he slips. It goes back to my refrain of how I don’t mind anything as long as it’s moving characters forward. This moved them forward. That it was his love for Louis and the hope of being loved by him in return that did it was a bonus for me but it just as easily could’ve been a repeated moment of something Claudia or Gabriella or even TC said if it served the same function.
• “Armends” - ha!
• “I still wish you were a woman.” “Me too sometimes.” - ha!
• Other things you might notice if you paid attention during the season: Lestat at the end there is handling sunlight a lot better than when he tried recording that note.

And yeah. There we go! Season one of AMC’s The Vampire Lestat in the can. They’re going to be in Hall H at SDCC about a week from now as of me posting this so a next season is pretty much a guarantee.

On the whole I liked it. I very much liked that the show moved away from trying to do anything but be a vampire soap opera. Over the top immortal drama queens who can’t be trusted to tell each other or the audience the truth is what this show does best.

I hope whatever choices made them waste time on things that didn’t need it (cannot stress the tour bus scenes here enough) don’t happen next season. I’m also… curious? Maybe a little wary? I don’t want to get into spoilers but suffice it to say a key plot driver in Queen of the Damned involves feminist concepts. At this stage of the game we’ve gotten hints from all three seasons that on the one hand they might not deviate from that, but on the other maybe they will. And the handling of Gabrielle makes me extra wary. But we’ll see. I won’t borrow trouble. Let’s actually get there and see how it goes.

Thanks for joining me on the journey! See you next show (whichever show that may be….)