I know, really unpopular take, but I think Daniel Molloy is a whiner.
He was doing okay before he was turned, but all his fledgling-vampire interactions have been less than impressive this season because while his investigative journalism or talking cure or milking Louis' trauma to bankroll his career was transgressive before when he was mortal, all the weak-assed fingering he's doing to get into Lestat's mind now is uninspired at best, and self-destructive at its worst, because Daniel should have expected the pushback from Lestat.
Because Lestat is no Louis, and even Louis lashed out at times at Daniel. The reason Louis let Daniel probe him was because he was doing the confessions as a sort of penance to all the people he had failed in his life, primarily, Claudia, and also as a vent for his intense love-hate-guilt-resentmentship with Lestat. So, in a way, Louis allowed the needling.
Lestat asked for Daniel this time, yes, but that was to do a rewrite of his story. So he gets the control, and he decides how much to share and what. Which, also, fair.
But all is fair in love and war, and Daniel kept pushing Lestat, wanting to break him open a bit, and to make him vulnerable, not realizing that Lestat, at least this Lestat, wears his vulnerability like a shield and wields it like a blade that cuts everyone and cuts him, too. So, to not see this coming—to not know that when pushed too far, Lestat will also bare his fangs, very literally, was a kind of a dumb assumption on Daniel's part. He thinks he's a great reporter, well, news flash, that was before his transformative trauma (yes, I'm quoting Lestat here) hit him on the head like a sledgehammer, and took his inhibitions with it. The reason why Daniel was interesting before, was because he had inhibitions about what he was he was witnessing in Louis' narrative, and a healthy dose of fear and self-preservation, which meant that he had to be creative about the needling. But now he's taking a hammer to his subject and trying to bludgeon the truth out of Lestat, which is not a fight he's going to be winning, sadly. I think that's what is bothering me the most about Daniel this season: he lost his finesse, and has just become boring, this time, quoting Gabrielle, because, let's face it: the incestuous vampire mother-son duo have the best lines.
This Daniel feels that Lestat is being mean to him by sharing his most traumatic life story telepathically, and not sharing it on camera, while being completely oblivious to the fact that Lestat actually told him the truth. The older Daniel would have celebrated his win. But this one just whines.
Getting mad about it is one thing, but to not see it coming is kind of dumb. The older Daniel Molloy would have anticipated it, because he thought all the odds were stacked against him all the time, and he acted despite them, not in spite of them. But this Daniel... yeah, sorry to say it like this, is kind of pathetic, but I guess that's how they wanted to write him here. So no matter how they manage to save this faux pas by just pushing him onto Armand in the next episode, I've already said my piece. Because they took an interesting, compelling character, and made him boring. That's a character assassination (pun intended) right there, and truly a sad waste of Daniel's talents.
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