About Armand Branding Louis…
I know a lot of people have strong feelings about the butchery scene. That it is out of character for Armand. That it retcons Loumand in a way that diminishes it. I don’t agree with that, mostly because I don’t think this scene retcons anything.
Neither Armand nor Louis say they never loved each other in that scene. That is not what happened. Take another look at what was said. Armand questions if he ever loved Louis and that questioning is full of so much self-hatred. He’s questioning if he can love at all. He’s definitely questioning if he is worthy of it. And Louis… his confessions of love to Armand have been wrapped up in his denial of his feelings for Lestat. That has always been my interpretation. He’s been saying he loves Armand in a way that feels fake. But is it? He never says he doesn’t/didn’t love Armand. What he says is that Lestat ‘is the love of his life’.
Louis definitely knows he loves Lestat more and that it was cruel to tell Armand he was the love of his life knowing it was not true. It was cruel precisely for the reason he’s able to get through to Armand in that scene - because he understands him. Louis carries a lot shame about the way he exploited people, especially women, in his days as pimp. It is a devastating part of his suicidal monologue in the pilot.
He literally calls himself a slave master (“the big man in the big house”) because of his work as a pimp.
This is Louis’s unexplored shame in his relationship with Armand. It is his one big failing. That he attached himself to a man he knew he was incapable of caring for in the way they needed, and then, after Armand’s betrayal, he weaponized his understanding of Armand to injure him.
Now, to the branding…
I think people are correct to interpret that this is supposed to conjure images of ownership and slavery. That’s the point. In the Loumand dynamic though, Armand is the slave! He literally plays servant in the first season. So on one level, this brand is a slave’s revenge on their master. I know it feels uncomfortable because it’s being done on a black body, but the context matters.
However, I think its more than that.
The brand is a call back to the season 2 scene in the park where Louis sends Dreamstat away in the rain.
The last thing Dreamstat says before he fades - something we now know was Louis’s imagining - was that Lestat had the tailor of his suit:
“…inscribe your initials on the back side of the ticket pocket…Right here… So that your name would always cradle my [heart].”
After Dreamstat fades, Armand sits down on the bench. Louis and Armand are alone in their relationship for the first time. This is also when they initiate their Maitre/Arun dynamic. I think BDSM relationships can be beautiful and healing, but not like this. Not when the power dynamics go undiscussed and are so explicitly exploitative. They both know it is not healthy but they do it anyway because they need each other in this moment and these roles feel familiar.
Now let’s look at the butchery scene again…
When Louis gets to his real apology, what does he say?
Louis uses that cradle imagery again. We don’t know if Armand recognizes it, but we do know that Armand was hurt to learn how present Lestat was for Louis in those early years. This is just the kind of detail he would obsess about.
In Louis’s imagination, his love cradles Lestat’s heart.
In the scene, Armand carves his own initial over Louis’s heart because his love cradles Louis’s.
Its a dark and twisted version of love, but that’s all Armand has to offer.
Lastly, Lestat in his Failures ramblings (and in one of the songs) calls the idea of the pocket initials something an ‘insane’ person would say. It’s a strangely insensitive thing for Lestat to say, considering how desperate he is for clues that Louis loves him.
Meanwhile, Armand wishes Louis was that insane about him.
