Sinew & Stardust

The line: “oh, you want mommy in the chair?”

Followed by Lestat’s petulant little: “….yes.”

“Failure continues in the astral plane.”

Oh my GOD, how can you all miss the point this aggressively?

They. Are. All. Fucking. Monsters.

Daniel fucked a girl with a paper bag over her head as a teenager, destroyed two marriages, had daughters that loathed him because he was such a shit father. Later helped Armand behead Louis and Lestat. Has taken swimmingly to being a murderous vampire.

Louis was a pimp who, at best, looked the other way in regards to human trafficking and, at worst, cultivated it. Later lured 158 “boys” (which charitably would mean just late teens/young adults) to his apartment to fuck and murder them.

Armand, Lestat, and Claudia were all fairly innocuous before being turned—but it didn’t stop them from all becoming holy terrors in their own rights.

Armand delights in cruelly punishing those weaker than him to make himself feel better about his own short comings—ranging from vindictively enforcing the Five Great Laws against his coven, lying to and gaslighting his lover over things minuscule and large, organizing the murder of said lover’s daughter on stage while they watch, and enacting horrendous physical torture against now-ex-love in an effort to get him to follow a script he’s written out in his head.

Lestat delights in slaughter and often feels very proud of the extravagance of his kills—regardless of any remorse that comes later for his victims. In the moment of feeding, he delights in petty cruelty and tormenting his victims for hours. He particularly loves killing lovers—meaning often killing them in front of their loved ones. He dropped the love of his life from 2 kilometers in the air that left him with months long injuries. Burned his daughter’s first boyfriend’s corpse in front of her while she sobbed as a form of “tough love.” Lead his mistress along with promises of love while really just using her as a tool in family drama, misleading her about the realities of vampiric healing to the point allowing her to mutilate herself because it benefited him.

Claudia slaughtered children just as often as adults and delighted in particular savage kills and viscera, filling her room with body parts from her victims until forced to stop. She happily manipulated her maker/pseudo-father, encouraging the unraveling of their relationship while lying about abuse she suffered to further bolster her own plans. Loathed her pseudo-father all while pretended she wanted to help him escape an abusive relationship when she really just needed to use him to navigate the human world.

They’re all AWFUL.

They all suck so, so much.

Please realize you can just straight up dislike a character to ANY reason. Literally any reason. You don’t have to play trauma Olympics to just put down the character you hate while trying to sanitized the one you love.

He was just an absolute train wreck and at the most unstable we’ve seen him. The writer Hannah said he’s at his most “vulnerable and most violent” at the same time, both “dangerous and pathetic”.

(I would still love to see him coated in blood, however. Let that beloved little freak of mine be the sopping wet meow meow he was born to be.)

I truly didn’t expect Louis finding it in himself to connect with Armand like he did and I was very touched by it.

In the post show, it was pointed out that Armand was the least deserving of an apology from Louis (absolutely true!).

Despite that—Louis was clearly very affected by the brutal wake up call Claudia gave him and was forced to reckon with how he interacts with the people around him more as props than relationships.

He used Claudia as a bandaid for a shitty marriage and he used Armand as a perverse revenge against Lestat.

(“It was never about me!” applies to both Claudia and Armand, hence them both being compared to pillows, objects for Louis to use.)

Armand was never in the running to be a real companion to Louis because Louis was simply never going to forgive him for Claudia’s death (even before Louis discovered Armand orchestrated it entirely) and because he was (and always will be) hung up on Lestat.

However, instead of doing the sane thing—telling Armand he simply wanted nothing to do with him—Louis locked them both into a 70 year death spiral of a “relationship” that really was just a way for Louis to marinate in his own guilt/self-pity with the added bonus of stringing Armand along with the illusion of absolution/love if he just played the “good-nurse” to Louis long enough, cleaning up his messes all the while.

It was a horrible self destructive cruel farce—and regardless of what Armand does or doesn’t deserve—Louis himself has come to regret being the kind of person who uses people in such ways.

So even if his apology was only given under duress, even if it was just a well placed manipulation, the fact that Louis is now capable of actually looking outside of himself and seeing Armand—

To acknowledge that Armand has all these horrible traumas and emotional wounds that he’s been carrying around completely untended and ignored through his entire vampiric existence, even by his supposed companion of 70 plus years, when Louis was still attempting to play the role of loving partner—

It was colossal for both of them.

It was growth for Louis and catharsis for Armand, what both of them needed to move forward.

I see disappointment from other fans because they felt like it hyped up the queen returning too much and then didn’t show it—and that this episode didn’t feel like a season finale.

I can sympathize with this. I thought the last episode was going to cover the concert as well. However, I think in the long run it was the right call.

There was fair criticism that this season was rushed and that the story felt disjointed compared to the cohesiveness of the first two seasons. The writers struggled with having a bigger cast and more characters and trying to fit it all into 7 episodes. With that in mind, I think it’d good that the writers said “no, the concert will wait until next season. Right now we need to focus on the emotional beat between the characters.”

Seeing the whole of the season, it does feel more like a traditionally mid-season finale than a season end—but it was obviously intentionally devised that way. The show is pretty explicit that this is a halfway point in Lestat’s story (with the record count at the half way mark).

However, I get it. When you go into a show with the expectation that you’re getting a full chapter and they just stop half way—knowing it can take literal years for the second half to materialize with no solid promise from networks that you’ll get it—it feels supremely frustrating.

I hope they don’t because it feels like they’ve gassed Armand up as a one dimensional villain all season and I don’t want them to make his character that flat

But I also am worried they know how much we’ve been invested in Devil Minion and how much they like their “psych you thought!” moments in this show

And I’m just really scared they’re gonna over use that trope via Armand for the sake of a punchy shock ending to the season

I can accept Daniel dying

I don’t want him to but I know it’s being heavily foreshadowed, although I think it’s a red hearing/a set up for a body switch (granted I really don’t want anyone other than Eric or Daniel’s young actor Luke, despite speculation he might end up in Alex or the Talamasca guy)

I just don’t want it to be some kind of intentional heinous act by Armand because “lol Armand is such a horrible gremlin and he loves absolutely nothing”

(I’m also worried about the Queen rising and then Armand pulling a “kill him not me moment” with Daniel because Assad has stressed Armand wanting to survive above all else)

I can even accept Armand devastatingly being forced to witness Daniel’s death, caused tragically by his own machinations

I just really don’t want it to be a swarmy “haha you guys should have know better than to trust Armand” moment