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The polarizing discourse this season. Like damn I feel a bit slapped every time I check the "for you" page and see a ton of where-did-you-even-find-that-thing opinions. But I wasn't really around for the other two seasons emerging (watched them obsessively as they came out but didn't check out any fandom stuff until the post-season 2 drought). So, eh, it might have been this way before and I never knew. Everyone is allowed to feel a way about art — this season invites you to, even (facts are irrelevant, feels are everything, the hate me boots, etc) — and the block button exists. And yeah I'm using it liberally while intentionally seeking out opinions that might challenge and offer other interpretations after I've had the chance to fully react to the work as it stands.

Which of course doesn't make the below any less my opinion. Block me if it improves your internet space, I mean it! I'm just some person rambling on my blog!

There are so many amazing scenes to think about in this episode. Like, wow! I could write for so long on it but hand injury still in full swing so I'm gonna focus on where discourse has me percolating: the car scene between Louis and Lestat. And this ramble isn't about one side of the fence or the other. In a story (at least in part) about cycles I interpreted this as sort of putting them both in position to make the same mistakes with each other and asking if they're going to do something different.

Which of course they're having this meeting at the point of Claudia.

After a lot of no-to-fraught contact (as far as we've seen), Louis reaches out to Lestat for help that he desperately needs regarding the situation developing with Regina. I'm so proud of him for this! Asking for help isn't easy, especially in this situation that I'm sure he feels some level of shame about. And Lestat really is the only person who can help him. Which he does, he comes out of hiding and shows up for Louis, hearing the harrowing story out fully until the question, "Can you go in there and tell me if it's her?"

To which he replies, "Four months ago I was shot in the street and you didn't call."

An audience that is paying attention should know immediately why Lestat asks this question. He's not really asking about getting shot in the street. Though that part is significant — imo it's bringing into the present the scene where Lestat goes to the theater for the first time after being turned, makes a big ole mess, and gets shot in the stands. Which in the books spells the end for Renaud's as it was, and in the show spells the end for TVL as it was. Renaud's, after a bit I won't summarize here, eventually becomes Theatre de Vampires and TVL becomes vampires! Neat! Except Larry of course, and I have so, so many thoughts about the Larry and Armand connection that I won't type out here. But can if anyone besides me ends up caring about it!

Anyway, I (Amel lol) digress. An audience that's paying attention (and I guess, cares about the character at all) would pick up on that this is a continuation of Lestat's conversation with Gabriella earlier in the episode around why she left (I did not need you anymore / you don't need around you what does not need you anymore). He's trying to understand the important relationships in his life and wants to know if Louis is like her in the sense of you only matter when I need you to do something hard for me. Are you going to disappear as soon as I've given you what you need?

And an audience that has been paying attention and knowing and loving Louis for seasons 1 and 2 should know immediately that of course he cares! Louis de Overthinker du Lac cares so much. In pretty much every way except for words for the person they apply to. And we know much of that traces back to that heartbreaking, tragic moment with Paul. Doesn't make it less hurtful for the people in his life that don't feel valued. Claudia (the 'can you imagine me without the burden of her' conversation), Lestat, Armand…we even see that play out in present with Lemuel, who gets reduced to a great lay and emotionally unavailable to his face and in front of Lestat when he seems to be his phone background and he tells Regina that Lemuel actually asks for more attention.

Louis' response is really interesting to me. Part of it is reiterating/reinforcing how he approached Lestat in season 2. But it's not quite right. It took me awhile to figure out what felt so off about it and I'm not sure I'm correct (or that there's any "being sure" lol). And not because Lestat is putting words in Louis' mouth through the Failures, I don't think that's it. The words don't feel like Louis' but they don't feel like Lestat's either. Now I do think it's in conversation with the conversation on the bed in season 1 where Louis is going through it (understandably) and Lestat does comfort him as best he can. But overall something about the way he says "I'm selfish, anyone who spent 5 minutes in a room with me could tell you that" feels like Daniel. I think Louis is quoting/paraphrasing from the book. And we know from the conversation with Daniel in 3 × 02 that Louis also feels reduced to caricature. Passive, selfish, a liar. It kind of feels like, do you think these things of me now too, after reading it? It's hard enough to think that about yourself and feel like the entire world thinks that about you without feeling like that one you still trust above everyone else feels that way too.

Louis did not apologize. He almost did, I think! What he said instead, I think, was far more impactful. "I'm — I don't have an answer for it." I think what's important about it because Lestat hasn't actually asked the question he wants an answer to. He hasn't asked a question at all. We, the audience, have the context of Gabriella to interpret it the way we do. That's not to say that Louis thinks what happened isn't a big deal (his reply suggests to me that he's really been noodling about it), and he knows that it's a big deal to Lestat ("I knew you were gonna ask"), but he doesn't have an answer. He doesn't know what the question is because he knows it's not about the shooting and imo has been actively thinking about what is going on with Lestat. He doesn't want to have a wrong answer (potentially a wrong answer again, if the lawyer meeting lure was meant to try to legitimately reach out again), so he doesn't have an answer.

Conversation with Lestat when you bring up something personal is either full shut down or trying to play chess with someone who is eating the pieces when you go pee, and when you ask where that bishop went tells you all about what bishops used to wear in the 1700s. We're on the road to understanding why. How many people in his life have exploited his weaknesses and continue to do so? That doesn't make it any less damaging. His secrets built the framework for the environment of Rue Royale. A huge part of Paris was the fallout of his secrets. With a little more than the tip of the iceberg of him, things might have gone down differently.

And I guess it just occurred to me that when Louis was shot and the fallout of his own life/the race riots, Lestat did have an answer and it wasn't one that was helpful to Louis. But it did galvanize him to find Claudia in the fire…

Louis non-answer and plea for Lestat to face Regina galvanizing Lestat to face the pain and loss he was only able to face with Louis to protect….and sing about Claudia starting with her birth…

Man this show.

I was going somewhere totally different with that one. Namely that they're the champions of picking each other's worst scenario. Louis would rather have no answer than a wrong answer and Lestat would rather have a wrong answer than no acknowledgement at all.

But they do both leave this with something important. Louis isn't alone. Lestat does come when called, listen without judgment, help (try to disengage them from both sides, "you're hurting him" / "don't see this person again"), and validate that it's not her (the eyes / no spark right). And while Lestat doesn't give him the question he does give him an answer, "the next time someone tries to murder me, call." I want to hear from you, I want to be in the room with you for more than five minutes, I don't think you so selfish that you can't show up if you want to, you don't have to talk to a stranger in the guise of our daughter.

And Lestat? He ended episode 4 singing a song called "Nothing to Lose." Helping Louis and trying to protect him from the situation reminded him, I think, both of who he has lost and who he could still lose without more honesty. He lets in Claudia, the muse who doesn't share the stage with any other and I think the one who has been there all along according to 2 × 08 even if that's not what he was calling her. It's honest mourning, something beautiful and jagged like the knives they were together. And that honesty leads him to more honesty when it comes to the band asking to be turned. One step closer to breaking the cycle.