also the unreliable nature of lestat's narration is just so much more confusing and obscured. with louis he is one guy telling his recollection of events, supplemented by claudia's diary entries for stuff he wasn't present for. everything is a firsthand account and the number of canonical mistakes he makes in his recounting of events (as in, things that daniel questions and that are later amended) can be counted on like. one hand. they're clearly signposted and then the stuff that isn't signposted makes for a fun game of - who do i think louis is? what version of himself is he trying to present to daniel in this scene? it only enriches your understanding of the story and louis's trauma and subjectivity.
but lestat's narration, as far as i can tell, is composed of a combination of his songs, the documentary, and The Failures. which is already difficult, because we've got (respectively) the most hyperbolic, narrativised, performative version of events (see: your biggest fan, the music video-esque scene of magnus stalking lestat, him writing from the perspective of magnus and textually asserting that magnus loved him); you've got the version of events where he's just fucking with molloy, avoiding the question, obscuring any sincere emotion he might have, and never committing anything real to camera; and then you've got the dominant narration of lestat by himself talking retrospectively and remorsefully after the events of queen of the damned. which we the audience have not yet seen and have no context for unless we've read the books.
like i've been assuming that the visits to the past we see are mostly honest. but in fact everything that we have seen this season, barring the auction scene at the beginning of ep1, is maybe tainted by lestat's bias. he spells this out for us in the danlou restaurant scene - he doesn't know for sure this is how the conversation went, or whether this is where it occurred - this is just how he imagines it. and there is stuff to be read there - he presents louis as hurt and daniel as an asshole, and he presents daniel as a desperate loner and louis as much more cool-headed.
but it means there's literally no reprieve from that subjectivity. s1&2 at least had the dubai scenes to ground the subjectivity of the past. but s3 is so drenched in lestat's perspective there's no room for anything else to breathe. it's just sass, quip, meme reference, celebrity reference, quip, slightly cringy gen z slang useage, quip.
i'm sure it's intended to be this way. but it makes me so unbelievably disconnected from the story at this point, because the front lestat is putting up basically never falters (save for a few key scenes, like with magnus in the car).
idk. if i'm reading this right i do understand what they're going for. it's just tiring. if i take things at face value, almost everything comes across really shallow. if i go the subjectivity route, the truth of literally everything gets called into question and it begins to fall apart. and there's also the reality that inferring depth, reading between the lines rather than being shown it, makes me feel like an idiot just trying to cope. lestat sees himself as a grand figure who is iconic and in control and unquestioning of his own mistakes, regrets, abuses, victimhood. and i really struggle to convince myself that there's any point digging past that bias for the ~real~ story of lestat.
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