Ultimate Girlfailure

Earlier in the season Armand expresses concern over the great conversion and it seems, for all intents and purposes, Armand is against the movement.

Of course you can argue just because he thinks it's a bad thing doesn't mean he'll actively try to stop it. But he does express he wants Lestat to stop playing music because it exposes more of the vampire world to mortals and encourages the great conversion. He also warns Daniel about continuing to hang around Lestat because of this.

He then kills Lestat's bandmate (although Larry had quit the band at that point) and this is perhaps the most confusing action in this season after the finale. But we'll get back to Larry's murder later. Put a pin in it for now.

Let's talk about the finale now. So it turns out Armand's plan this whole time was just to decapitate Lestat and Louis, and force Louis to apologize to him? And then stitch Louis back together, or let him die? And what about Lestat, then? Let him die? Because the implication in the narrative is that if Raglan and co hadn't shown up when they did, Lestat would have died. And then we have to grapple with the implication that Armand is actually willing to kill Lestat. And sure, Lestat dying would have stopped the concert, but it wouldn't have stopped the great conversion at that point. There were already too many vampires. More deaths than births. Even Armand stated this earlier in the season.

And given how many vampires still gathered for Lestat's concert at the end of the episode, the video Daniel (and Armand) released didn't exactly discredit Lestat enough to make the movement turn on him. So it seems it barely made a dent in Lestat's reputation? There might be long-term damage to his image, but that wouldn't stop the movement. It seems the video was more for Daniel's satisfaction than anything else. Which is fine. But what I'm getting at is that Armand's plan can't possibly have been to stop the great conversion, because nothing he did in the finale and throughout the season did any real damage to it, or even scratch it. The number of vampires are already too many. Raglan stated there are over 200k vampires being tracked by the Talamasca now. Even if you take out all the 50-60k vampires gathered at Lestat's concert, it won't do much to the movement at that point. The movement already have huge traction. Nothing less than vampire genocide can stop it at this point.

Armand may have many issues, but he should be smart enough to know this. He should know he can't stop this. And he shouldn't be naive enough to trust and work with the Talamasca to stop it, either. Is the show saying he was fooled by the Talamasca? Either way, if he has a plan to stop the great conversion, it wasn't what we saw him enact in the finale. So what was the point of his actions, then? Just his own pettiness and sense of being wronged by Louis? Which, to me, didn't seem to have nearly enough set up. It's not as if Armand couldn't have done this to Louis while Louis and Lestat were separated, either.

Why even save Louis from the crypt in Paris in the first place? Why the change of heart from killing him to saving him? Why aren't we exploring that in a meaningful way? Especially because Lestat went through all that effort to save Louis at the trial and it makes no sense that he would let Louis die in the crypt. It seems like Armand just saved Louis on a whim and we're suppose to just accept that Lestat would have saved Louis if Armand hadn't had that change of heart? I'm so tired of the vagueness of Paris...

But back to S3.

It's starting to feel, to me, like the writers simply don't know how to write Armand and don't know what to do with Armand outside of DM. I even feel like they deep down don't want to write Armand well. The writers gave him an anime villain monologue, for goodness' sake!

And I know you can argue this was Lestat giving him that monologue through the framing device of The Failures. But at some point we have to accept that the framing device isn't an excuse for everything we don't like. Especially because it's likely Lestat is a bit more omniscient at the time of recording The Failures than Louis was telling Daniel his story in S1 and S2 due to certain book-lore possibly being adapted. While it is show canon that the characters' words and actions are being influenced to some degree by Lestat's telling of the story, that doesn't explain Armand's nonsensical plan.

Find a Claudia look-alike, use her to lure Louis in and fuck with his emotions and mental state, for what purpose? And then, decapitate Louis and Lestat together? To then what? Let Lestat die (which wouldn't achieve anything to hurt the great conversion) and force Louis to apologize to satiate Armand's feelings of being wronged? Even though Armand was the one who wronged Louis the most? So now we're making Armand even pettier than we saw in S2, for what? Putting Louis through some torture, again?(Don't think I haven't noticed how it's mostly Louis going through most physical horrors and states of helplessness shown on screen, which is becoming tired and repetitive. Let's see more of Lestat all fucked up!). And If the writers had just Armand torture Louis (and the Regina thing) because he found it amusing and wanted to test Louis' limits out of his own morbid curiosity before putting him back together again it would have been better characterization than what we got.

If Armand's plan all along was Louis, if his target was always Louis, and Lestat was just what, collateral? And he was just going to let Lestat die?

And what was the point of murdering Larry, then? If we got confirmation Armand just did it out of amusement, or because he thought it would 'help' Alex in some fucked up way, I could accept it. But the show made it seem like this was part of some larger plan, and then it turned out it made no sense. Apart from the shock value, I suppose.

Everything Armand did this season turned out to be nonsensical in the end. Which is disappointing. And now I'm supposed to what, trust the writers have some long-term plan with Armand and it will make sense? Because I am not trusting the show to handle Armand anymore. I would love for the show to prove me completely wrong and have everything make sense in the long run. I would. But I doubt it will.