What bothers me the most about Armand's arc this season is his characterization as a premeditated schemer. It turns him into the cunning, one-note villain the writers and cast kept insisting he wasn't. The concept of him demanding an apology from Louis and genuinely believing Louis owed him one is fine. Although that wasn't their dynamic in the books, the change does bother me because why transplant that dynamic onto Loumand when Lesmand is right there to explore and deepen? Plus, Armand has already done enough to Louis, and the optics of the situation do matter, especially if you're going to have Louis give him a sincere moment of connection and frame it as earned and somewhat heartwarming.
But if you were going to do that, I think a much better approach would've been to have Armand come to Louis with his own apology while expecting one in return, only to become angry and violent on impulse when Louis refused to give it to him. It would've made the point about how dangerous, delusional, unstable, and sadistic he can be without betraying the characterization the show had already established.
Because almost every time Armand has done something violent or harmful, it's been impulsive. San Francisco was driven by emotional weariness, anger, and impulse. His lie about the extent of his participation in the trial, and about saving Louis, was a spur-of-the-moment decision when he saw an opportunity and seized it, not something he'd been planning beforehand. The only thing he planned carefully over a long period of time was the trial, and even then it wasn't his idea in the first place. Someone else came up with it, and he went along with it.
A person who is constantly in survival mode, who stays on sinking boats because they're too afraid that if they jump and swim they'll never find land, only an endless sea that will drown them, just isn't someone who takes initiative as a master planner. They aren't the kind of person who orchestrates something as complex as the entire Regina scheme or constructs an elaborate torture scenario. They'd improvise it instead, just like they did in San Francisco.
Up until this season, the show consistently characterized Armand as someone whose manipulation and violence were primarily reactive, adaptive, opportunistic, and rooted in survival. This season shifts him toward a more proactive, long-term scheming role, and to me that feels like a meaningful change in characterization rather than a natural extension of what came before. I also think it's a less interesting and less psychologically complex version of the character.
