The Gospel Of Armand

Here’s the link for the complete Vampire Chronicles PDF if anyone needs it!

It's complicated because on the one hand I can absolutely see Lestat's version of Daniel being a kind of dialed up version of reality, making him extra rude, extra loud mouthed, and also tacking on him being loudly racist and homophobic too. But if that was the case I think they should have made that more overt in Lestat and Daniel's dynamic, even if it was just a throwaway line from Lestat implying that Daniel is probably a racist or something, just something to lay a trail of breadcrumbs to that. It's annoying because I don't want this show to have to hold my hand and explain it's intentions, but they've kind of dug their own grave with this one.

The problem I have is that the show has kind of lost any grace I might have been willing to give it by being so loud and insistent about this season being something entirely new and trying to separate it from the previous two seasons. If this was Interview With The Vampire Season 3, I might have been a lot more willing to let my trust in the writers from their racial storytelling and sensitivity carry forward into this season, but instead they've axed their Black creatives and hailed this as a separate project, something that can be watched without the first two seasons (I do not agree AT ALL that that is the case either), something that an audience who didn't enjoy the first two seasons can love. And I just have to question who exactly this new audience that they're trying to reach is, because unfortunately the more the season goes on the more it looks like they're trying to bring back a white audience who were alienated by a show which centered around a Black man and his racial identity.

i can believe claudia's ghost would throw slurs at another Black person that she hated. i can believe she would say those specific things to Louis to hurt him! if this happened in s1, i would say "yikes" and move on, trusting that the writers knew what they were doing with it and that it didn't just happen for the sake of it.

not so much seeing it in s3, which has consistently elevated its white characters above its characters of colour, has shown NO awareness of literally anything but the most basic white girl feminism ("justice for antoinette") (which ALSO pushes down the Black characters simultaneously by saying that Louis/Claudia's experience of Antoinette was "shrinking" her lmfao?!), has given no care or depth to the social issues it does depict (incest, sexual abuse, power imbalances) and instead glosses over them or depicts them humorously, has chosen "it's Lestat's story" as an excuse to retcon the narrative of the two Black abuse victims we saw in s1 in favour of exonerating Poor Misrepresented Lestat...

in light of all that, Claudia's entire rant just feels... lazy? like a slap in the face? "I liked Lestat better btw" was particularly dogshit to me. I can imagine her saying that just to hurt Louis, but given everything else about this season, it feels much more like the writers saying "See! Lestat wasn't that bad actually!" and yeah, you can argue that us seeing Lestat's POV does not mean that Louis/Claudia's ISN'T true, but... the narrative is kind of treating it like it is?? Because so far we haven't had Louis go "Actually, no, that's not how I remember it" in response to any of Lestat's "corrections" (partly because they've barely been onscreen together lol. there isn't really the opportunity for it) so it's just like. All we have is what the show is actually showing us. Which so far has been "Lestat wasn't an abuser, Claudia was a liar and Louis was crazy". Sighs.

Idk man. Usually I would say "let the tale seduce you, trust the writers here" but I do not think that 6 episodes in out if 7 they're somehow going to make everything better in retrospect. Yknow??

I think this is actually my least favorite episode of the season. The bad parts of it are so egregious that nothing else works

Like technically this episode is an hour of loustat cocaine except you find out the cocaine is laced with flour, arsenic and shit and it's not even getting you high

Sam and Jacob's acting and chemistry are amazing of course but emotional beats don't hit when the pacing and dialogue and the writing in general suck. Like you know it's bad when even jam can't make it fully work

The whole bar scene is crazy. Having Louis reveal that he's also a csa/incest victim in one sentence, Lestat chastising him like 'louis', Louis apologizing, and then him and Lestat immediately moving back to talk about what really matters: Lestat and his mother. The only thing this season seems to care about even though Gabriella and Lestat's relationship with her are written so one-dimensionally. Louis having been a victim of sexual abuse is harrowing and could be addressed further - but is this show even interested in Louis' interiority anymore? I'm not sure.

I knew about the Merrick and Claudia's appearance but actually seeing it i'm 97% sure it wasn't the real Claudia. Her word choices and the thoughts she supposedly has are just so bizarre and the way she focuses on Lestat over Louis while at the same time being much more vicious towards Louis is noticeable. Most importantly she just doesn't feel like Claudia, just like Regina didn't feel like Claudia. Delainey wasn't acting this spirit as Claudia being herself. It possibly/probably not being the real Claudia doesn't change the scene is still extremely, viscerally racist and anti-black. Anything like this shouldn't have been written by all non-black writers' room.

The continuation (or rather the lack of it) to the seance scene is even more bizarre. Especially Louis went through what was likely one of the most heartbreaking moments of his life, and then him and Lestat are in the park like. well that was unfortunate but at least there's no ambiguity now. our daughter is alone in hell but let's ponder getting back together and living in a trailer in Nevada. If this is meant to portray that Claudia really is just a roof shingle to them it's still such a shallow depiction. Louis was just a while ago so desperate he was paying some woman to pretend to be Claudia and started to actually believe she was her and in San Francisco when he thought that Claudia hated him he tried to kill himself. I don't see how the seance scene could give him closure like i see some people saying, it would realistically make him only more confused and distressed.

I guessed that Lestat was getting beheaded but Louis was a surprise. That scene like so many in this season doesn't really have the intended impact and feels more like they just wanted to come up with something that would make people go 'that was crazy'. I also feel it's uncharacteristic of both Armand and Daniel and i think it's likely that there's something more than them just trying to kill loustat. (i suspect this was one of the moments that Assad was speaking about that made him go wtf but made sense in the finale). I expect they continue the tradition of having big twists in the finale.

A) having Claudia use racist language and call Louis a slave in the previous episode casts a weird light on the scene

B) having two brown men who are Muslim-coded or Muslim-adjacent livestreaming a beheading from a Jewish deli was YIKES

If it’s just Armand being crazy and Louis acknowledging he was a dick, then it would have been a great scene. Also Louis reminding Armand that even though they are monsters, they can be good, and Armand immediately ceasing the torture, is so rich, because Louis is often the conscience of the diabolicule in the books.