honestly, i think what trips people up about iwtv/tvl is that the show just isn't interested in the logic of punishment. all these characters have suffered, have caused suffering, are suffering. none of it is fair. to try and point out who is good or bad, or to cast all of them as evil, is frankly, missing the whole point.
if anything, the arguments presented by iwtv and tvl are that nobody comes to violence on their own. hurt people, the show argues, hurt people. and perhaps most difficult to accept in a society like ours: harming other people can be, itself, traumatic.
this is a story about cycles of trauma and abuse, and it posits that breaking out of it is a choice a person has to make, for one. and two, that someone's ability to make that choice depends on the tools they have at their disposal (for example: louis and lestat finally realizing they gotta work on themselves AND understanding that they lacked a lot of the tools to arrive at that conclusion because of the time they were born in). yes, there's systemic shit, but individuals also have power within themselves to Choose to Stop, to be and do better.
worth noting, though, that the show isn't arguing for a can't we all just get along vision of breaking the cycle. sometimes you have to carry the fact you caused harm that won't be neatly resolved (like, say, daniel and his daughters). some bridges are burned (perhaps) forever, but that also doesn't mean the people that were hurt are caught up in their own pain. you don't need to forgive to move on, nor do you need to be forgiven to move on.
yet, i don't think the show is arguing against the possibility of reconciliation, either. the argument seems to be that there can be no reconciliation without acknowledgement that people have a right to self-determination. and perhaps the way to get there is through compassion.
ultimately, compassion seems to be precisely what the show asks of the viewer and the characters both. it does so by eliciting sympathy through interiority. that is, by exposing the private selves of these characters. through that exposition, the show invites the viewer to reflect on what suffering does to people as well as what it leads people to do.
iwtv is a thought experiment, in a way, and the narrative really opens up once you allow yourself to engage in it.
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