1) he’s in AA in Ohio. Why he’s there, unclear. He meets Alex and inducts him into his cult following. He goes by Arun, which feels significant, but don’t worry- it never comes up again.

2) he finds Daniel and attempts to apologise to him. Why he chose now, unclear. Maybe he just wants help stopping the great conversion, but as we see later on, this is not actually really what he cares about.

3) he finds Lestat and apologises to HIM but is unsuccessful. He warns him about the great conversion, and then attends his show, allowing himself to be briefly humiliated.

4) no babe, you’re a great journalist, i was distracted by you!! he accidentally lets slip that he loves Daniel. End scene.

5) he tells Daniel about Lestat and Gabriella, and also offers to teach Dan to walk in the sun.

6) Alex, his follower, tells his brother Larry he needs to rest. Armand then repeats this to Larry, causing him to kill himself. Why? I genuinely don’t know anymore.

7) Him and Daniel make a revenge porn youtube video about Lestat fucking his mom.

8) Him and Daniel behead Lestat and Louis while Alex watches (again, who knows why he’s there or what his role is?)

9) Armand puts Louis’ severed head on a pike, demands an apology, tortures him with the help of Fareed, reveals Regina has been a plant all along, and only stops when Louis disarms him with real honest compassion. Suddenly our assumptions that he cares about stopping the great conversion are wrong. He only wants- for some fucking reason- Louis to apologise to him. He doesn’t hurt Lestat, the actual conceivable adversary.

And that’s literally it. It feels like they were aiming for three different narratives and ended up just mixing them all together. Does he want to stop the great conversion? conceivably, but ep 7 reveals his ‘evil plan’ was to get a simple apology from Louis, so clearly it’s not his main prerogative. Is he starting a cult, children of darkness style? I guess, but why Larry and why Alex? Larry’s death had seemingly no impact on anyone but his brother who was already loyal. And the apology. Why in the world would Armand want an apology? At no point does anyone actually address the fucked up pimp/sex slave dynamic, not even Daniel points it out, so wanting an apology for something he seemed more or less unaware of doesn’t make sense. We see from season 2 of IWTV that he’s fully aware their relationship is doomed, knows it is his own fault, and that guilt is eating him alive. He’s never been a schemer, a maker of big mastermind evil plans. he just allows people to blow up his life when he gets sick of the situations he’s in so he can play the victim. Hiring Regina to- what, talk to Louis a few times? Feels aimless and out of character.

And devils minions- in the books, Armand’s redemption- develops off screen with zero answers about how it happened, without natural progression, simply so Daniel can be his evil sidekick.

This season Armand was merely a plot device used to keep us watching to see what he’d do next, only to end the next episode on the same Armand cliffhanger. Seeing his arc written out like this really shows me how incredibly aimless his writing was. Don’t get me wrong, “you were twelve, twelve! scared, poor boy, Arun.” was a beautiful moment but it shouldn’t have been tortured out of Louis like that. It felt unearned. I’m altogether very unhappy with the writing.

the trial came after 6 episodes dedicated to exploring the dynamics between louis, claudia, armand and the coven in paris.

the loumand saw trap came after 6 episodes that had absolutely nothing to do with loumand apart from them briefly appearing on screen together at the very beginning of episode 1.

Season 1 left a few big questions, like what happened to lestat and claudia? and who is armand? in order to set up/explore these things in season 2, and other than those major things there was very little that didn’t make sense or needed more context in order for the season as a whole to deliver a well rounded, complex story.

The message of TVL:

Read here:

louis was coerced, manipulated, intentionally isolated by lestat. lestat killed lily, the only person who he confided to, accelerated louis into severing contact with his family (whom he did love), and LOATHED paul from the one instance where he met him, because it was clear he did not approve of them. paul’s death and his stance on lestat was the eerie foreshadowing for how lestat would go on to treat louis throughout season one. i.e., enraged that in spite of all his UNWANTED efforts to receive louis’ unconditional affection, there was deep resentment from louis for stripping of something that he valued as much as his humanity.

and louis was not resentful because it is his nature. he was not cold to him because “it is his father’s way” like paul said. he was cold to him because louis is embittered by the fact that the majority of his suffering would have never happened if he had never met lestat. just as the majority of his greatest euphoria would have never happened if he’d met lestat: claudia entering their life, becoming bold enough to truly define who he is, experiencing a love that he was constantly told was wrong and unholy. but none of that changes the fact that lestat TRAPPED him—louis is constantly battling between these two opposing facts regarding the love of his life, and he learned to utilize resentment and coldness to make lestat feel the same constant turmoil and insecurity that lestat made HIM feel.