I’ve been thinking a lot since episode two of tvl/iwtv s3 about Lestat’s throwaway comment: I know what you’re thinking. He wasn’t there. But this is my hour, and when tertiary figures appear in it, I will be speaking for them. So presumably this applies to all modern-day scenes not featuring Lestat. And the more I think about it, the more it’s annoying me. I did think of holding back on posting this because we still don’t really know how the season will unfold, but the above quote does make it sound like this will apply throughout the season, and it’s bugging me so much, I have to scratch the itch. My reasons for concern under the cut:
So obviously unreliable narration has always been a huge part of the show. First Louis and now Lestat are telling their stories, and their stories are biased and incomplete and unreliable because that’s how people work. But as the story progresses, we start to get a sense of the gaps and inaccuracies. And even if we don’t, how the character tells the story, what they omit and what they distort, is telling us something about the character, about how they see themselves and how they see others.
So far so good. But s3 is doing something quite different and for me, less satisfying.
From now on, the present-day arcs of each non-Lestat character are not being narrated by those characters themselves or presented as third party omniscient. They are being told by Lestat. First problem: by his own admission, he wasn’t there. We’re being asked to accept that we won’t get to see Louis’ arc, or Armand’s, or the progression of the DM relationship as they happened. Instead, we’ll see what Lestat… I dunno, thinks happened? Wishes had happened? Was told happened after the fact? Completely made up? It’s unclear. We have no way of knowing how much he knows about what happened or how honest Lestat is being. Even if he’s trying to be accurate, these scenes are at the very least filtered through Lestat’s personal biases and perceptions of these characters.
But these are not Lestat’s stories to tell. Lestat and Louis relating their own life stories is one thing. Telling their story means depicting other characters too, that’s unavoidable. Lestat is a huge part of Louis’ story, of course he talks about Lestat, and of course what we see is Louis’ subjective version of Lestat. But he’s not taking it on himself to tell you what Lestat was doing and saying when he wasn’t there.
And the other characters in these narratives get a chance to respond. Armand is present for Louis’ narrative and gets to weigh in, Lestat gets a whole season to tell his story. As viewers, we can put these competing narratives side by side and see what they tell us. (Yes, competing narratives. We are not automatically believing Lestat. Sheesh). Of course, Claudia isn’t getting any sort of right to reply, her story is told without her input, her diaries edited and shared without her consent, but then that’s saying something too.
But here, it doesn’t seem like there’s any process for correcting any possible inaccuracies in these narratives. Louis had Daniel interrogating and questioning everything. We don’t yet know how Lestat’s story will unfold, but there’s hints that Lestat is still very much trying to run away from some aspects of his story but will be forced to confront some ugly truths as the season progresses. But how does that work for the third-party scenes with the, ahem, tertiary characters? Are we revisiting these scenes later? Do we see them from a different point of view or does anyone get to comment on how accurate they were? I doubt it, just because of the amount of screen time it would take for yet another round of rewriting and retelling.
So where does that leave us? Does Daniel have a weird connection with Armand or is that something Lestat just made up? Daniel specifically describes it as being like the rapture, which is a very interesting and specific word to use, but did he use that word? And if he didn’t, how will we ever know? Can we draw any meaningful conclusions about Daniel or his relationship with Armand from that scene? I dunno. From now on, the entire narrative is skewed and possibly inaccurate. Not some of it. All of it. But somehow we’re not supposed to care about that.
The unreliable narrator is a powerful storytelling device but it has to be there for a purpose. What, exactly, is the narrative purpose of filtering the complex emotional journeys that I hope Louis and Armand and Daniel are on through Lestat’s perspective? What do we learn from that? What do we gain? Is it telling us anything interesting about Lestat or his relationship to these characters? Or is it just putting yet another narrative layer over the story and making it harder for us to care?
Maybe I’m overthinking it (what are the chances). Maybe I should just take these scenes at face value. Maybe later episodes will reveal some purpose to this, I accept we are only two episodes in. But for now – it’s annoying me. I was already struggling to connect emotionally with the story this season. This, for me, is really not helping.
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