I spent this whole time deliberately holding back my frustration with this season. I kept telling myself not to judge too early: only half the season was out, it was too soon to make final conclusions, surely things would even out later. But now we’re already 5 episodes into a 7-episode season, and I think it’s time to admit the obvious: it’s very unlikely that the last two episodes will suddenly pull off such a stunning reversal that all my frustration will just disappear.
The first and second seasons of Interview with the Vampire mean so much to me. And it’s not even because Louis’s book is my favorite in the series - it really isn’t. Louis was never my favorite character in the books. But the writing, and what Jacob Anderson did with him, completely made me fall in love with this version of the character. There was emotional tension there, there was internal logic, there was this sense that you were watching a living person. Well, technically, a living vampire.
And now I look at this, and I have one question: why make such a point of carrying that book around everywhere if, in the end, all that remains of it are fragments, isolated objects, scattered references, but not its actual essence? The recognizable details are still there, but everything that made those details matter has been washed out completely.
Where is my Gabrielle? Where is the woman who finally breaks out of the hateful, imposed role of mother and wife, sheds everything that kept her trapped for decades, puts on her khaki suit, and goes off to live the life that had been denied to her for so long? Where is that sharp, liberating, almost unsettling freedom?
And where, finally, are the golden years of Nickistat? It’s as if they never existed. They weren’t shortened, reinterpreted, or viewed through a different lens - they were simply cut out of the very fabric of the story. And that is not just some decorative piece of lore or a bonus for people who have read the source material. It’s part of the character’s emotional framework, part of his memory, his pain, his tenderness, his guilt - everything without which so many of his later choices carry much less weight.
And I am still deeply irritated by the way the show now handles its material: enormous parts of the worldbuilding, complicated character dynamics, important emotional and plot developments are just summarized for us in a couple of lines instead of actually being allowed to unfold on screen. Instead of showing us how these things work, how they are lived through, how they break or transform the characters, we get a dry summary. And that is especially frustrating because this show used to know how to show things. It used to know how to build tension, how to let relationships breathe, how to make the world feel layered not through exposition, but through scene, intonation, gesture, silence.
And this isn’t even the full list of my complaints. These are only the things that hit me first - and hit the hardest.
I think what gets to me most is not even the fact of the changes themselves, but the feeling of inner emptiness they leave behind. When you know how rich, strange, painful, and beautiful this material can be, watching such a hollowed-out version of it is especially hard. And yes, that is exactly why viewers who haven’t read the books probably don’t even understand why this makes me want to bash my head against the wall. To them, this is just another questionable writing decision. To me, it feels like vital parts were ripped out of the story, and then everyone pretended nothing important had been lost.
