l o v e a n d s t a r s

and now that i've seen everything, i wish they'd left him the fuck alone. or at least had him kill bruce, realize how hollow he felt after, and go off on his own journey of learning how to be in the world again with his grief and guilt, even if he fucked it up and it wasn't perfect. let us fill in the blanks if they didn't care enough to do so thoughtfully.

either way, they assassinated everyone else's characters including their protagonist, so the season still would've sucked, but at least we wouldn't have had to see the writers gleefully humbling and physically torturing One Specific Guy for the entire rest of the season.

they certainly answered the question of "how to return louis to lestat." the answer is debase him. have half of of the spoken lines about him reduce him to a pimp and a liar. physically torture him, make him crawl back with his tail between his legs. it's never a question that louis and lestat love each other, even when they hate each other most. but i would've loved to see them come back to each other organically. we saw the start of it in episode 6, but a lot of it was entirely left offscreen.

if the goal is to put all these monstrous characters on equal ground with each other, it's a superficial one at best, because you can't deny the disproportionate violence inflicted on louis vs other characters depicted onscreen. it shouldn't necessarily be one to one--"louis experiences this so armand experiences that so this thing must happen to lestat"--that's just lazy storytelling. but tying torture almost exclusively to one--Black--character throughout all three seasons is ignorant at best, virulently racist at worst.

Read here:

After the first episode screening, I thought, “That was a lot, but it’s meant to be jarring!” I actually liked it better watching it a second time, when it dropped for everyone else.

A few episodes in, I reasoned, “Okay. We will see some character development in here somewhere. Some unfolding of the past from Lestat's POV.” Outside of very short glimpses into Lestat’s past, we didn’t get that.

Midway through the season, I thought, “This will be the turning point. There will be a reckoning.” Instead, I found myself having watched 6 episodes of largely…nothing happening at all. No conversation felt real or lived-in. All the characters felt totally devoid of anything that made them compelling previously, including Lestat, who I found myself not really caring about in either direction. Lestat. In the show called The Vampire Lestat. It all felt so hollow. But there were glimpses of the show I loved, like it was on the precipice of achieving its former emotional and artistic impact for me.

So then I thought, “This is intentional. Lestat is telling the story like a play. It’s a bit long-winded, and I have issues with the pacing, but the finale will put the season at large into context. Plus, this season is meant to be one of two parts.”

When the credits began rolling on Ep 7, my first instinct was to cry, and I was reminded of the similar reaction I had to the rushed ending of Our Flag Means Death a few years back. After the initial shock, I was able to process with some friends, pinpoint the things I didn’t like, and consider HBO’s influence on those things. It took me a bit, but I made peace with it, even if I didn't love the season as a whole.

Something felt different about this. And I figured out why, I think. It starts out pretty personal, but I think it speaks to the season’s larger issues.

I am open to changing my opinion. I am open to discussion. I am open to watching the season again, maybe finding more to like in it. But for now, this is where I'm at.

omg i was TRYING to wait until post-finale to vent all my feelings but aaahhhhh twist my arm

Honestly ever since ppl started vaguely teasing "anti-blackness in ep6" ive had a tightness in my chest. I was so nervous for weeks and weeks and really built it up in my head as this big horrible thing, so when I finally sat down and watched it...it kind of underwhelmed me at first? My immediate reaction was one of confusion...because nothing about the character we saw in ep6 resembled Claudia. At all. I was so bewildered it took me sitting with it a while to even feel upset about it.

Which could also be attributed to how ineffective the writing is this season, bc none of it moves me. The jokes don't make me laugh, the 'romantic' parts don't make me feel tender, the tragic parts don't make me feel sad...even the most vile/over the top cruelty barely makes me feel anything. I didn't even feel bad for Louis in this scene!!!! Bc none of it felt real (and also bc he barely seems to feel anything about it himself. they aren't even invested enough in their own flogging of Louis to show him suffering over it...Louis tried to kill himself when he heard Claudia's voice in 205...Louis and Claudia parted on far less hostile terms with a heartfelt goodbye in 106 and Louis wanted to kill himself then. Louis would be ashes rn if this shit was serious!!!) This is a show that used to be a GOTHIC HORROR MELODRAMA ROMANCE all genres that LIVE on heightened emotion!!!!! And this season is a cynical dry passionless husk......they've really bled all these characters of their human essence and rendered each and every one of them a cardboard cutout of themselves. It's the most insane waste of potential I've ever seen.

The thing about this episode, is that it convinced me that isn't an accident.

With all the constant in-text mocking of iwtv ("missing the psychodrama of Dubai?", Lestat laughing at Louis's turning speech, mocking Louis's romanticizing of Dreamstat, the constant calling Louis a liar and ripping apart the book full of his words without meaningfully calling out any specific part of his account...Lestat is not pissed off at Louis bc he made up a ticket pocket, like to this day we do not know what exactly in this book is the big lie he's mad about. and he's spent the whole season being mad.....meaning the point here is not to dispute or provide a contrasting POV, but only to ridicule and illegitimize) and the marketing push to court a new audience, it seems like their final push to distinguish tvl from the thorny, nuanced, deeply emotional, queer niche critical darling that it once was is to make this season of television a hit piece on its first two seasons. Every single choice seems like it was purposefully made in order to spite the original series and everyone who ever loved it for what it was (with a special personal vendetta against the person who was heart and soul of that series, Louis/Jacob).

Its only natural that this season's climax is to attempt to retroactively destroy the emotional core of s1-2, which is Louclaudia.

Louis's story is a story of grief. The common jabs people like to throw at Louis about him being whiny or passive or brooding or a sad sack or whatever - that's because his whole character is built around the concept of grief. Louis is the embodiment of a mother's grief over losing her child, the grief Anne Rice was consumed with when writing IWTV. He is grief personified.

(From The Vampire Companion)

The IWTV novel does not exist without Anne Rice's incredible love for and grief over losing her daughter, and Louis's story does not exist without his incredible love and grief over Claudia.

At first I thought they were honoring Louis's characterization by having his storyline continue to focus on his grief. I had my doubts about the Regina plotline (bc what else do they have to say now about Louis other than 'he grieves'? what does this plot add? isn't it just a retread of his journey in s1-2? if he immediately regresses, what was the significance of "I own the night"?), but the core of it is still Louis's love for Claudia, and Louis's grief wouldn't fade away overnight just because he grew as a person. I was actually pleased that in The Lestat Season, Louis was allowed to spend his time, not thinking about Lestat, but still focused on Claudia, even as Lestat spends all his time bitching Louis out (which is also kind of a 105 retread now that I think about it).

But what episode 6 revealed to me, was that the new addition they had for Louis's story was to undermine his grief. Louis was wrong to grieve, he was selfish to grieve. The person Louis exists to grieve not only hates him, but hates him for grieving her. In the hands of the writers of s3, Louis's love for Claudia is forged as a weapon against him, and his pain at her loss is an indictment of his character.

S3's Claudia is angry with him for grieving her. The first thing out of her mouth is "couldn't keep me on the wall". Claudia, who knew all too well (and according to s3, actively weaponized) Louis's incredible depth of love for her, is upset that the person who loved her so intensely mourns her....why? It doesn't make any sense for her to feel this way...of course Louis mourns her, and always will. Would she rather have vanished from the world without a trace, having left no one behind who loved her enough to care she existed? Would she rather have burned in a house fire when she was 14, died alone and unwanted as an unnamed casualty, the way Lestat said was her destiny?

It's not only nonsensical, it doesn't feel like the character. Claudia, who was so desperate to be loved and seen, to belong, to be "put first" by someone.....begrudges Louis for doing just that? Miss "picked another one over me/never about me" would rather Louis never say her name again??

I really can't even see this being as representative of Claudia in any way. So much of what they have her say in this scene goes directly against her character, and, despite all its overwrought viciousness, she doesn't even take Louis or Lestat to task for some of what we know she saw as their greatest offenses!!!!!!!!

Things Ghost Claudia Mentions:

-Louis grieving her. She, in essence, tells him NOT to grieve her, implies it insults her to grieve her, "burn her diaries, burn this dress". Like I said, this is not something Claudia would fucking say lmao even if she was speaking from a place of deep anger, she would not want to be erased, even if the dress on the wall is just a symbol to remind Louis that he fucked up, and that she suffered as a result, she would want to keep a record of the damage.

-Louis being 'back with Lestat' (which he isn't, really, romantically speaking. like they are at most back in a talking stage. so its pretty unclear what the scope of her knowledge is bc she knows about stuff like Lestat's "song on the radio" but not their most recent interactions? idk)

-She says she only didn't kill Louis so she could keep him around to do her bidding until she found someone better. I believe there is a book quote where Claudia says something along these lines and thats what they're pulling from (I couldn't find it though..), but in the books Claudia actually needs a companion to survive. She is in the body of a five year old and is emphasized as being very physically vulnerable; regardless of whether bookClaudia loved/hated Louis, there is a practical element to her choice to keep him around.

But in the show, Claudia is not physically 5 but 14 and a prodigious hunter who goes on killing sprees alone. She has no physical need for Louis that would justify this idea of her keeping him around despite "hating" him. Her need for companionship in the show is solely reduced to her emotional needs (and if she hated Louis, he would not fulfill that). You just can't take any of this shit seriously if you watched the first two seasons...Claudia was always returning to Louis, she was ensnared by the coven because she returned to Louis. Louis was dead weight in Eastern Europe, an active hindrance, hallucinating, depressed, why not leave him? He isn't any help to her in that period, which was years of them not getting along; she was the one that spoke the languages, she was the one keeping him fed, she pulls the revenant off of him. She doesn't need Louis to survive there, she wants him. She returns to him time again because she wants him. Meaning disintegrates without him...

(Obvs Lestat is included in her statement about missing them, but we only see her follow Louis...I really thought we would get at least one flashback of Claudia bonding with Lestat or even just missing him like this esp if they're gonna try to sell us on him being "her favorite" but no.....there wasn't even an attempt so i have no choice but to call bs)

-Louis "read the diary pages seven decades too late". I already discussed how Claudia was averse to anyone reading her diaries in this other post so i won't go over that again, but it is another inept writing choice that even when they want to vilify Louis here, they can't do it right. Claudia saying something like "it took too long" for Louis to read the pages eliminates the entire moral dilemma of Louis reading and presenting the pages without her consent...shouldn't Claudia be more upset because he violated her privacy in the first place? Nope...apparently he should have done it sooner...? Not to mention that Claudia took years to open up to Louis about Bruce, so this idea that she was waiting around on him to do something about it doesn't add up...if anything s1 Claudia seemed to scoff at the idea of him being able to avenge her with her "knight in vengeful black" comment. also no mention of Louis killing the coven in her name....which he did do immediately lol....like...

(also the fact they have Claudia chastise LOUIS for crying like the sa happened to him when they literally overlaid her words with Lestat's trauma crashout and textually made her sa about Lestat.................LMAO!! unserious)

-She says she fabricated the train scene (or at least exaggerated it) to get Louis to cooperate with killing Lestat. Obvs there is a whole heinous layer where the train scene was evoking the imagery of runaway slave captures and these white writers decided to have a black character lie about this specific kind of racialised trauma which is fucked beyond compare. BUT ALSO!!!!!!!!! IT JUST DOESNT MAKE SENSE WITH THE PLOT!!!!!!!!!!! Claudia DECIDES TO KILL LESTAT AT THE END OF 106 BECAUSE HE DOESN'T LET HER LEAVE.......why would she return with Lestat if she didn't feel sufficiently threatened? and why would she decide to kill Lestat if he did not force her to stay against her will??

I've seen it floated that this was all Claudia's master plan to get Louis to go with her (even though she hated him sooooo much.........right....) as though she had her whole tearful goodbye and then magically changed her mind moments later and decided to do her big one and concoct a scheme to eliminate Lestat and ensure Louis would be 'on her side' and leave with her. Maybe that's even what the 306 scene is supposed to lead us to believe...only there is no scene of Claudia telling Louis what happened on the train, or ever using that event to convince Louis to turn on Lestat. All their telepathic conversations we hear about Louis trying to dissuade her from killing Lestat, and its never once a point Claudia uses to her favor. Ever. We get "we have no more use for him. He causes us misery with no horizon. I can kill him. You will enjoy it" etc. This idea of "oh daddy Lou he was ever so mean to me do you know what he said he'd do!" is a brand new invention for this scene alone.

Also.................

Uhhhhhh........no Claudia.....it pretty famously did not???????????

"Worked good, didn't it?" 😏 LMAO! They made her stupid??

Also they still can't decide what Claudia was threatened with. We get "I won't defile your pocket, I'll turn your bones to dust" in 106, "Did I threaten Claudia with rape on a train?" in 301 and "He'd do worse than rape me" in 306.....so.......which is it..........

-The blood thing feels too obvious to even be worth pointing out?? But they've invented this weird blood supremacy thing for Claudia to devalue Louis and value her maker more (even though they do have the same blood bc they both have Lestat's blood....that's why they're like....siblings....). When Claudia hated the idea of Lestat's blood THROUGH LOUIS being used to create Madeleine (supposedly the only character Claudia gaf about...but she forgot the whole lead up to her turning which was her begging Armand to do it for this very reason....mkay)

-And then ok the whole slave thing. Yes Claudia used the word "slave" in s1. But the context is everything when it comes to black characters using this kind of loaded language. Claudia uses "slave" in s1 specifically to refer to their lack of agency as long as Lestat is around. Claudia uses that very loaded language privately to Louis telepathically in order to emphasize the dire nature of their (shared!) situation! And obvs that phrase has a special resonance for them as black ppl living under the thumb of a white tyrant, and references the racialized nature of Lestat's control and abuse of them! She's saying "he treats us like his slaves! this way of life is not acceptable! we have to act!" Claudia was never using that word as an insult against Louis!!!! She used slave ONLY EVER TO DESCRIBE THEM BOTH!!!

Funny how the context of that word from its first use in a season that had black writers has been completely warped into blatant white supremacist ideology in a season without black writers...a phrase exchanged privately to discuss the oppression shared by black characters in order to encourage rebellion in s1, has become an excuse for a racist tirade from one black character to another in front of a white character in s3...

Also making Claudia spout this anti-black nonsense shows they never paid attention to her character bc she was the one most explicitly calling out Lestat's tyrannical whiteness; besides "he's made us slaves" she makes a lot of comments in 107 that align Lestat with violent white supremacy (calling Bach, which Lestat likes, the music of the master race, "Massa's had so much pain in his life" explicitly calling out that she and Louis should not give a fuck about the pain of their oppressor, "well-dressed tyrants, where have I heard that before" when Lestat compliments Nazi tailoring basically calling Lestat one of them). Like as much as Louis would go back and forth with Lestat about racism, Louis doesn't rly ever call Lestat out as espousing white supremacist thinking as harshly as Claudia does.

(Tbh they kinda fucked up this aspect of her character in s2 with her...y'know...dating a Nazi sympathizer and never giving Madeleine anything more than a raised eyebrow about it, but she was never fucking antiblack...and she at least has that "Armand's skin is darker than yours" comment to show race (and the race of Louis's partners) is a thought in her mind...the more i reflect, the more i acknowledge issues with s2 Claudia but my word i never would have foreseen this....)

This slave stuff combined with Claudia misusing nappy (bc that among black ppl means unkempt hair, and Louis's hair was extremely kempt in the scene - but ofc if ur nonblack and racist nappy just means any black hair so), "bleak black life" sounding like some bullshit from The Help, Claudia speaking to Lestat and referring to Louis as "your black queen" which is not a phrase any one of the three of them would ever use LOL, and even just Claudia's repeated use of "bitch" which is also not a word we have heard Claudia use - it's one of the most aggressively straightforward black stereotypes ive seen in modern media. They took a complex, beautiful black character who was treated with so much love and care for 2 seasons and made her an Angry Black Woman.jpeg. I know they wanted to work in a "MHMMMMM" or "OH HELLLLL NAW" sooo bad. Like Claudia's whole vernacular is different!!! She did not talk like that!! It's like every racist fanfic in this fandom ever!!

Things Ghost Claudia DOES NOT MENTION:

-ANY of the abuse suffered by her or Louis!!!!! In Claudia's last moments on Earth she was fighting through the pain of her slit ankles to cuss out Lestat for dropping Louis like an egg. She offered herself to be punished in Louis's place in 105, and then spent painstaking months nursing him back to health after he was dropped. One of the biggest rifts in her relationship with Louis was when Louis would not leave Lestat despite his abuse of them. Not a single mention of this from the ghost. Even if they wanted to focus on battering Louis in this scene, they didn't even have her bring up Louis choking her in 107, physically stopping her from burning Lestat's body! None of the physical violence that tore apart that household even gets a passing reference.

-Louis ruining Claudia's plan to kill Lestat. Louis's big misstep with Claudia was, in her mind, "choosing Lestat over her". Louis felt unable to leave Lestat in 106. Louis slit his throat, but wouldn't burn him, so they couldn't move on post-NOLA, and lived in fear of his return. She was calling him "dead weight" in Eastern Europe. He carried Lestat, "slowed them down". This was the principle grudge against Louis Claudia carried with her after s1, and it also is not mentioned.

-HER MAKING!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The biggest fucking thing about this character in the books and show is that she forced into a child body for eternity without her consent!!!!!!!!!! It's the original sin of the unholy family, the first wedge to ever be driven between them, a point of contention between Louis and Lestat, Louis and Armand, Claudia and Louis, Claudia and Lestat, THE COVEN who kills her; it's the choice Lestat is haunted by in Body Thief! "Should she have been made or was she a mistake?" "Can she endure, or is she doomed by the circumstances of her birth?" "I WAS STILL BREATHING, WHY DIDNT YOU TAKE ME TO A HOSPITAL! I COULD HAVE LIVED A NORMAL LIFE SWEEPING FLOORS NURSING BABIES!!! WHO AM I GONNA LOVE, WHO WOULD WANT ME!!!!!" Even as late as the trial, Claudia is upset hearing about the extent of Louis's involvement in her turning. SHES IN ETERNAL VAMPIRE HELL BECAUSE SHE WAS MADE!!!!! BY THESE TWO MEN!!!!!!!!!!!! if there was ANYTHING the real Claudia would have screamed at them about it would be this!!!!!! AND HER GHOST DOESNT BREATHE A WORD ABOUT IT!!!!!!! It's so fucking egregious, you have to wonder if any of these writers watched the show

-The Regina stuff????????? If Claudia knows about Lestat's music career, surely she would have witnessed what Louis's been doing too, right? That's not something she would have some shit to say about?? If its the roast of Louis like how is that not her opener. "Yes its really me and not that broke bitch you paid to be my stand in". The Regina plotline truly had no bearing on anything ig

-Charlie???? This show hates black ppl now so I guess they couldn't have Claudia mourn a black boy (only her white gf they fetishized in the previous ep). but they literally showed a flashback to Lestat forcing Claudia to watch Charlie burn THIS SEASON (reshot with Delainey) and drew a parallel to Lestat watching Nicki burn. so....why make that parallel and not have that incident be important to Claudia? its almost like they dgaf

Literally everything about this scene does both Claudia and Louis a disservice. Make no mistake, it may seem like Louis is the target here, but BOTH their characters are being mutilated by this season. This person that we see in this scene is in no way Claudia. s1-2 are contingent upon having empathy for these black characters and being invested in the incredible, complicated, heart-wrenching, deeply loving bond they share. The story is built around Louis's grief over Claudia and therefore Louclaudia is the emotional backbone of the original iwtv series. Tvl has shown itself to be deeply committed to undermining, ridiculing, and eviscerating the notion of the Louclaudia bond and their respective integrity as characters.

It sincerely feels like this writers room has a vendetta against the original series and Louis as its protag by extension, and their hate for Louis so great they can't fathom anyone loving him. and Claudia loved Louis deeply despite all the pain and turmoil of their relationship, and they don't know how to write that, so they're dismantling that bond any way they can. It's disgusting and horrific but also kinda fucking boring.....this show was SO revolutionary bc it was a gothic genre show that took black ppl's experiences and pain seriously and centered them instead of sidelining them and handled them with an empathy that is so rarely afforded to us....and its been mangled into this ghoulish hateful conservative slop.

and they want to do a story with a black female villain next season????? fucking lol........like you just have to laugh.......

didn't have time to go through the #tvl critical but culture kitsch voices some of my thoughts

they have a temporal challenge: this isn't Rashomon's hour and a half. this is years of audience investment, both while airing and between seasons. to tell us we were fools to believe what they presented as true then, and credulous to put any stock in what they tell us now, builds an inherently negative experience. somehow this isn't framed as the wonder and compassionate complexity of various POVs; as you say, op--this show is more about the GOTCHA?

absolved of commitment, it hues less to a thoughtful interrogation of our modern-day online black-and-white thinking, and instead starts to become an unfortunate echo of our current lived experience of baldly lying politicians, systemic gaslighting about the enshittification of goods and services, inescapable ai misinformation. in the 2020s, I find I'm kind of sensitive to feeling stupid for loving but having the rug yanked out from under me, with nothing being trustworthy. ambiguity in art is not just interesting but vital, but I feel the show can use ambiguity in a hostile way. there's probably an elegant way to do this. I'm often not feeling that here, though.

rolin truly said this and believed it to be true, and that should be enough for everyone to know what kind of person he is:

they had claudia refer to her life as not only bleak, but specifically bleak and black. a character who was never ashamed of her blackness. they had her say that she hates louis more than her rapist, abuser, and the people that orchestrated her lynching and burned her lover alive. they completely destroyed her character and killed two birds with one stone, butchering who claudia always was/how she saw louis and lestat, and throwing in more insults and hate at louis while mostly ignoring lestat.

and making it so that claudia is suffering endlessly, even in death, felt like another purposeful story choice. not to make claudia's character even more heartbreaking, either. it was pointless no matter how you look at it. this just felt like yet another way to torture a black character, and a black character that has been repeatedly exploited all season for everyone else's feelings. furthermore, summoning claudia had no effect on louis and lestat at all, as they were immediately over it by the next scene.

none of the heavy storybeats can have any emotional impact because both us and the characters are never given time to absorb them. they're just checking boxes with these heavy moments and moving onto the next scene. and all of this is, again, so we can absolve lestat of his wrongdoings and ensure no blame falls on him. his trauma is the only important thing in the show and the only thing worth discussing/unpacking. it's just antiblack, misogynistic writing again and again every week and rehashing it feels pointless but i can't help myself.

aside from the blatant racism and misogynoir, i also get the impression that these writers are just trying to get their quoteable, hashtag-able, gif-worthy scenes each episode. who needs a cohesive plot when you can have lestat say "serving cunt has its consequences" or give the viewers an iconic shot of their favorite ship that feels entirely unearned—one of my examples of this being the fact that devils minion feels like they just put together a bunch of shots that they thought people would love, without actually telling a story with these two characters. everything we learn of their history and relationship is given to us through exposition. and because assad is such a fantastic actor, he's making these scraps into something interesting.

the showrunners are no longer pretending to be subtle with their sloppy writing, poor pacing, and hatred towards louis and claudia. they're just writing the racism right into the script and think that, because a black character says it, they're free from all criticism. and a majority of their nonblack fans are jumping to defend them by saying that claudia's rage is justified and if you claim otherwise (even if you're not saying that) then you can't accept black characters being cruel and/or evil. which isn't true at all.

claudia's rage is entirely justified, her berating the two people that were supposed to love her and put her first but instead used both her life and death for their own gain is not the issue here. she could've been as cruel as she wanted—but having her say a slew of horribly racist things to louis and direct most of her ire towards him as opposed to lestat or the both of them equally was nothing more than these antiblack writers once again degrading louis for their own enjoyment because they hate his character and know they can get away with dragging him through the mud. especially if they hide behind another black character.

even the decapitation at the end felt like a quick moment of shock to the viewer that turned comical immediately after. the abysmal pacing of this show makes it so that loustat being beheaded has no actual weight because we know they're fine and we're given no opportunity to sit with this moment. there are no stakes and there was no real buildup to it. nor to armand and daniel coming up with this plan and suddenly working together the way they are. in fact after the dust settled, id say the scene was borderline cartoonishly evil.

The Black writers for seasons 1-2 of IWTV were Ben Philippe, David B Harris, and A. Zell Williams.

These are the men responsible for providing substance and depth to the Black characters in the first two seasons, mainly Louis and Claudia. They knew how to tackle struggle, injustices, history, rage, pain, and the ugly truth of American and European Black history. They didn’t pull punches with the hard stuff and they knew how to work with the soft stuff.

Season 3 tried to create edgy content and humor without these men and absolutely failed at it in every way possible. And they have failed both Louis and Claudia.

The Black jokes about Louis being “Louisiana Fried Chicken”, Louis continuing to be the pimp and needing his White savior that is Lestat, Claudia’s entire monologue about Louis being a literal slave to Lestat in that old Louisiana accent. And not to mention the complete erasure of Lemuel after only a couple episodes.

It’s not working.