What's so frustrating is that there's a version of 'Claudia lied about the train scene' that's sensitive and sophisticated and nuanced without fully absolving Lestat AND helps to show Claudia as a more complex, more agentic, and less infantilized version of herself (without becoming a shallow antiblack caricature or reductively implying that SA survivors are liars) -- but the seance scene doesn't leave space for / seems to be trying to constantly undercut those readings. (More below, discussion of sexual assault)
Here's a version of what might have happened on the train/around it that's totally supported by the text in 1.6 and presents Claudia as a nuanced character acting at least in part out of necessity. No matter what went down on the train, we already saw an uncontested version of Lestat warning Claudia off with rape in 1.5: 'the vampires out there are vicious...oh, but you know that already', etc. said while trying to dissuade her from leaving and taking Louis with her).* So it's not that she's totally making it up, she's getting this from somewhere.
(*And before anyone comes at me - I did not say that he threatened her with rape but warned her off with it, the implication being 'don't go out there, you'll be assaulted again'. But I think part of what the story is asking is 'where is the line where it actually becomes a rape threat? Who sees it that way?' From Lestat's perspective of being frantic and desperate, it's easy to see him thinking of it as a warning and not fully factoring in the cruelty of the statement (although probably he did--he can be vicious when he feels attacked)-- from a Claudia perspective, coming from a secretive, unpredictable and canonically abusive father figure, it's easy to see how she could interpret shades of threat in his statement and extrapolate on these. Lestat also constantly wants to forget the power dynamic in their relationship when it's inconvenient but she won't let him)
This version/interpretation of the train scene also leaves room for hate/bitterness in Claudia, without these feelings solely defining the character/flattening her to a single dimension/emotion. In the After Dark episode, Delainey's explanation of why Claudia said those things to Louis all ties back to the conditions her of present -- that she's alone in a hellscape missing her person (thanks, writers!), and that she's jealous of Louis having his when all that relationship has brought her is pain. And it makes sense why she would go after Louis because they were always way closer than her and Lestat so it hurts more, she identifies with him (including through Blackness), and that she sees him wallowing in his pain and fooling himself with a romanticized/infantilized version of her (unlike Lestat, who despite his many other flaws always recognized her agency/viciousness). This makes clear that statements like 'she's always hated Louis' are not plain truth (though of course hate would be part of it), and are designed to wound in the moment rather than accurately convey her feelings. In fact, if we accept that Lestat didn't utter those hideous threats to Claudia, then the only way her returning after the train scene can be fully explained is if she loves Louis and doesn't want him to die (even if returning is something that in retrospect she regrets).
The big issue here is the dispensing of information. Even if some of these readings are what the writers intended, how are the viewers supposed to access any of them? Without digging into the incredibly vile antiblack way the revelation that Claudia lied was framed, it is a throwaway line expressed in anger, received for the shock value, and with no possibility of getting at the complex layers of motive and feeling gestured to here, happening in a scene whose main purpose seems not to be revealing the complexity of Claudia, but attempting to 'humble' Louis*.
(*The line that tells me this the most (aside from generally watching the show/us getting early hints about this starting from the previews of the season) is Louis' 'who else would have us' to Lestat in the park. Ah yes, the takeaway here is crude equivalency, that Louis' just as bad as Lestat (not that he hasn't done bad things, but it speaks to a desire to elide nuance and consideration/negotiation of previous events/power dynamics - and the show has never been about anything so reductive as 'who's worse?'). This is why Louis can't be realistically devastated by what Claudia has told him; it would take away from sullying him in the audience's eyes)
And failure to impart information goes so far beyond the train scene: it also explains things like why people have such widely different interpretations of Armand (they literally have given us so little on him!) and why some people are happy with Loustat this season and others haven't been feeling it at all. The result is that the emotional success of the show at any given moment is based on your ability to scry into the bottom of the murky tide pool and guess at the underlying intentions/complexities. This post isn't at all against ambiguity as a narrative strategy -- it's an amazing strategy, but it needs some kind of scaffholding/context to function!
And the sad thing is - this wasn't an issue that the show had in season 1!! (It WAS there, to a lesser extent in season 2). There was such clarity in the timing/amount of information of the reveals in s1 that we were able to fully appreciate the delicious BOTH/AND that the show is constantly pushing -- Louis loves Lestat AND wants to kill him; their love is toxic AND beautiful (Claudia loves AND hates Louis; Claudia lied BUT she had good reason). Those tensions and nuances are just mostly indecipherable this season.*
(*The one place I feel that they're mostly succeeding with this, though I know opinions vary, is with Gabistat - it's so clear that it's abuse and also that Lestat loves her and needs her and struggles to recognize this even while he's kind of known this whole time)
