#blahb

This show is suffering from some serious writing/tone problems this season, idrk what happened. Going to talk about characters individually so its not all complaints (so warning some negativity mixed with praise)

Louis:

Genuinely the strongest character this season. Talk to the wall. Jacob anderson is SO good at putting you in his character’s headspace. Louis’s angry, you feel that anger, Louis’s reflective, you see that image, Louis’ bittersweet, you can taste it. All of the Bruce stuff this episode was so so heartbreaking and cinematic. Him killing the house’s residents in a way that parallels Claudia doing the same in Paris (with the Theatre coven)...more please. And compared to a lot of the other jokes that have really been falling flat for me Louis got a lot of that comedic timing right. After hearing Lestat bragging about serving cunt while farting around for 30 mins, it cuts to Louis in bloody clothes smoking a cigarette like HES THAT GIRLLLL. effortless. My only complaint is theres not enough of him. I get its lestats season but white boy wednesday doesnt mean we gotta sideline every nonwhite character, no?

Armand:

Even more criminally underused. He has a giant presence haunting the narrative, making him this almost ghoul or phantasm not to be spoken about but lingering in the shadows, perfect. He was great in the flashbacks, I love seeing more of that dull eyed (half blank/half apocalyptic mind you) look. Him confessing to lestat just to be rejected in the most criminal way was actually funny, especially contrasting his fanfiction in season 2. And his gag at the end was oh so amazing. Using the name Arun too—like yes given the publicized IWTV book it helps him blend in more, but because of how theyre expected to greet him it also allows for him to hear himself being called Arun almost like external reinforcement. Seeking humans and confessing to being an addict. Amazing, lots to unpack. I love that. What the fuck is he doing ever, the gremlin.

Hoping they revisit flashbacks so not going to complain too much of armand’s lack of presence prior to the theatre (from the book: the voices following lestat, the stalking, the luring him into the woods to bite him and drink his blood, the going through nikkis room like a petulant child hoping to gain some insight on what lestat likes about him, etc). I personally think itd be way less confusing to just go in order of the backstory instead of potentially rushing through it and then backtracking (if they even do that), but ah well.

Claudia/Delainey:

Delainey as the waitress was such a nice surprise! The music was really nice during it too, and you can tell the pain but comfort it brings louis to see her. Genuinely one of the rare moments i got emotional during the season. The diner dialogue in the previous episode was already so vivid you could almost picture it—having it come back here was like a punch in the gut in such a good way!

Daniel

Daniel kinda feels...like hes in a sort of purgatory this season. Originally he was the point of view character for the audience and louis was the anchor, so even if they change the anchor to lestat its odd that daniel has strayed with him.

Daniel starts off doing a documentary for…not strong motivations in my opinion. Lestat seemingly requested to speak to him (i believe) and Daniel is of course curious to meet him. He decides to follow along and become part of the crew, trying to get information from Lestat when they have their sit downs I guess? My thing is why does it have to be a documentary in the first place? It never feels fully committed to it as a framing device. Seeing him film b-roll is interesting, so perhaps that? Maybe to see Lestat on camera surrounded by staff as he’s interviewed breaking apart, if/when he does so. But also because theres a camera and an audience of crew it feels so impersonal. And you might wonder “oh thats the point” and thats probably true. The laptop and camera itself feels like theres a veil between them and the crowd makes it feel voyeuristic. But like…if the point is to portray how much these guys dont know each other or how theres a disconnect and arent able to understand each other’s most personal memories…then what the hell are they actually talking about?

Ok im gonna rip the bandaid off, their sit downs are bad. Like actually bad. Its not nearly as interesting or funny as it thinks it is, half the time theres no story being told just lame jokes or pop culture references. And most damning, vampire daniel seems like hes a worse interviewer than even young daniel. Daniel asks about his childhood and Lestat recounts the witches. Daniel goes…uh huh. And promptly moves on after Lestats dumb jokes (is cringe supposed to be the punchline…why is peppa pig here, um). Why not challenge him on that deflection? Ask for more information, or even try to piss lestat off to get him to actually engage about it? And not random burns, but insult his character or honesty or integrity with sarcasm like he did with louis. Even if the conversation moves from the memory itself to lestats inability to recount these memories for him that would at least be something. Instead its just left to lie there. Ok moving on apparently, lets now talk about his album and music. Talk about the lyrics like we’re on genius and then that sort of goes nowhere too. Then we bring up the stutter again. And i have to say, I HATE this addition. In the first episode at least it was self-contained, the implication being lestat hides the less glorious, more meek part of himself in his past and refuses to acknowledge it even though i think its a lazy lazy way to show this. But after episode 1 it should be done, we get the flashback of him stuttering in episode 2 as the conclusion to this question WHY ARE WE STILL LINGERING ON ABOUT IT.

It wants to be “did you eat the baby” or “was it raining louis” so bad, in aesthetics only. Daniel says a snarky question that puts the interviewee on their toes but guys the reason those questions worked is because it is also asking something of the audience. “Did you eat the baby” is what everyone is asking, trying to make their moral judgements of louis as someone capable of hurting an innocent baby or not. And was it raining asks louis something, but also asks the audience, “is louis’ versions of events 100% true to form? Or are they just HIS version of events.” We dont know if its raining, we just have to trust his visualization of it. And it makes us acknowledge that fact. But “did you have a stutter” still being asked every five seconds in ep 3--the audience already knows the answer to this question is yes. We have already acknowledged that lestat would likely not like this version of himself representing who he is now, and its not even a clever question to get lestat to open up. Its just bad writing. And it doesnt help that they always walk the line of ableism so horribly. No, the stutter doesnt matter its just a plot device to be cured and then represent a problem bigger than itself, a weakness he needed to be shed. So odd.

I think I only fully realized that they were discussing nothing the whole time once it ACTUALLY began to work. Lestat says that nikki was a bad love, and daniel challenges this statement for once. He says "such a bad love that you would carry a music box for him?" and Lestat refutes it by implying that he didnt carry it out of love, but out of guilt. And THAT is actually interesting. Like imagine if they had gone back and forth and investigated his story the whole time. It just spent time on trying to be funny or evasive, neither really being done successfully.

And Eric bogosian is nowhere near a bad actor. His moment feeding on that man in an alley, you can see the loneliness in him, the desperation for something at the edge of his mind that he hasnt fully come to terms with yet. And even after the interview when he realizes the camera wasnt recording the breakdown you can see a resentment for lestat. I genuinely think this is a great and much stronger motivation for daniels character. He wants to unpeel lestat because he starts to hate him and wants to see him vulnerable. Its how daniel gets power over people, like we’ve seen, including with armand. Daniel becomes less of “i guess im here cause i didnt have anything to do and sure i am curious about you blondie” to “this guy thinks hes got one over on me, not even worth his time, i know i can get the jump on him, show everyone the pitiful person i know he is but he pretends isnt there behind all this rockstar makeup.” Seemingly smiling when he sees lestat at his emotional peak. too. So things are looking up for daniel at least. Because disliking lestat is some kind of relationship between them besides: they happened to be on screen together, same time same place same touring bus. And as for armand: missing/feeling uneasy about his MIA maker is also super interesting. I hope daniel gets to be so bitter to the both of them. He deserves it.

Nikki

I don't think I have that much to say about Nikki besides we didn't get enough of him. I could probably point out differences between the book vs show but I think that's only really relevant when they've disregarded the source material for a worse story. Nikki's unraveling really does make you feel uneasy and horrified (pretty great acting). But I think the thing is we did NOT get nearly enough time with him to make this really stick with the audience. I feel like I barely know him watching it. He's a violinist, a tailor's son, maybe has a bad relationship with his dad. And that's it. He's no longer even sane.

I think spending time in the flashback (like how much time we spent with Louis' family, even if it was mostly 1 episode it feels like we lived it ourselves), seeing the joy music brings him and lestat. Seeing them together, the conversation that always picks up where they left off. See for ourselves the evil Nikki starts to associate with his music, the same way the religious townsfolk viewed musicians (and theater for that matter), and being turned against his will. After hearing the violin orchestrate their romance, seeing Nikki cut his own hands off genuinely would be emotional. So yeah, more of a complaint of what we could've had more than what we have now.

I will say I am still being pretty generous to their interpretation of things because they can always revisit flashbacks and add context/scenes. I just once again think its a bad idea for getting us emotionally invested. While reading the books, despite knowing Nikki dies tragically in advance, I really was pulled into their little world where no one else mattered but them. And you can almost hope against all odds that they can defy fate, and are heartbroken when everything falls into place. Showing us so much of the fallout now and hoping it tugs at our heartstrings, is really putting the cart before the horse.

Magnus

I mentioned in my other post that I have mixed feelings about Magnus and how he works here. The first thing is the music video-esque scene of Magnus stalking Lestat. It is goofy. SO goofy. And it's trying to be, no way it isn't. There was actual thought put into this by the writers: Lestat does not want to reflect on the actual events of this traumatic memory with the gravitas it actually affected him with, so he puts it in a rom-com light and these horrifying things now seem more silly than terrifying. I can see a "Kevin Can F*ck Himself" version of this where its goofy and then it hard cuts to horror, but they just didn't do it justice. The goofy SNL like quality it was given just make the tone so so confusing. Magnus during this sequence just looks goofy too, doing goofy stuff. So when you see him again later (barely any difference in how he's shown on camera, or even visually looks) I can't help but want to laugh a little. He looks silly, sorry. The hallucination in the back of the car was okay...if a little too cognizant, making villian speeches and talking perfectly back and forth to Lestat. But the one on his passenger seat was their worst idea yet. Why tf did they dress him in a white tee shirt, he already looked vaguely like he was doing Dracula cosplay now he just looked like a random emo bandmate. It's like the Baron in what we do in the shadows when they try to dress him to blend him in haha iykyk

It was such an accidental comedic disaster that I could not take anything he said seriously.

Cutting to the end, I think its a GREAT idea to parallel Lestat's actual turning with Claudia's experience with Bruce, in theory. It was just seriously an editing problem for me. The scene showing Lestat grabbing at the floorboards and being turned is genuinely horrifying. I just wish they stopped cutting back to that fuckass car with those fuckass hallucinations. Or once he started to reflect back on it, the hallucinations disappeared and we see lestat saying Hallucination-Magnus' dialogue instead, speaking to himself like "You wanted this, No I didn't" or something. I think that would really ground it in reality more than seeing this old ass vampire in a modern car monologuing, especially not the tee shirt one...... So they filmed great stuff, the tone is just all muddled because of the final product. I kept being taken out of it when they'd cut away.

Last thing, and this is a more of a question for the people about interpretation rather than a complaint about the show itself. In the goofy mv flashback we see Magnus with a portrait of Lestat, and even lestat's jokey comments try to imply that Magnus was in love with him specifically. It sort of implies that because he was in love with Lestat, he killed and drained a bunch of these blonde, blue eyed humans, trying to replicate Lestat. But that was never my impression, I sort of thought of it as the other way around. I thought of Magnus as wanting the perfect prodigy and to him that was a blonde, blue eyed, able-bodied white man. He had this perfect European ideal in his head to follow him up, and then found that match finally in Lestat. I guess its a chicken or egg situation, but the latter implies something about this racial supremacy that I had always associated with Lestat's creation against his will. And then I thought it looped back around to him being the colonial patriarch to louis and claudia later. I suppose lestat could be implying Magnus fell for him specifically and killed these people for that obsession to ease his own mind, instead of unpacking that he was chosen to fit the mold that predated him (and his reputation as the wolfkiller was the cherry on top). I'm curious what others think.

Lestat

I think there's not much I can say about Lestat that won't be repetitive. He's just sort of an obnoxious point of view character (which why it isnt daniel? idk). Love lestat and I loved him even more reading TVL. I just think they are too committed to the unreliable narrator bit that everyone praised in season 1/2 that they think him not confronting his past is an even cooler way to be an unreliable narrator. But if he's not telling a story, even if a dishonest one, then what is the season about? Is it about the story lestat has to tell, the circumstances of him telling that frankly boring story (boring in show's version), the down time between telling that story and the company he keeps? So far there is no through line, its hard to feel invested in an escalation. I don't really end the episodes like "what will happen next? oh i need to know" because every episode is so detached from one another. If they had grounded it more in flashbacks, it genuinely would be a complete story, we could see the escalation of his turning and his relationship to nikki and gabrielle. and then later armand, this strange strange vampire who feels like a walking corpse clinging to lestats side. you can feel how lonely it is, even surrounded by all these people, how detached they become from him. the vampire loneliness we heard him lament so much about.

I think the problem is so much wasted time spent on "slay" stunts. Like... take the intro of the episode. Is it supposed to tell you something about lestat? be funny? idk. It just feels like a lot of wasted time because the writers thought it would make lestat more of an it-girl if he did dumb stuff like that. Like it just wants the audience to call him an icon or cunt for these overdramatic scenes. I think if you parallel it with season 1 where he takes claudia out to hunt, they're night and day. In season 1 we learn lestat enjoys overdramatic, romantic kills, compare his kill style to claudia, see them bonding, learn about claudia's innocence and lack of understanding her own nearing adulthood. And then we can also realize how weird it is, like Louis points out, how he so inhumanly views raising a child, her exposure to sex, etc. We actually learn about the characters and it moves the plot along because it motivates both leslou arguing and also claudia's attempt to be more adult. This was just a random kill sequence that was weirdly goofy and took so much time away from these actually important parts of the characters. Especially when we feel like we barely know about THIS version of lestat. When he was supposed to be setting the record straight.

Last thing is just we see lestat cry and they want us to feel sad for him. and im sure i would if i actually got to experience these flashbacks, felt like i knew nikki and "what could have been" so intimately before it was ripped apart. He just keeps saying louis is a liar and delusional (yes please feed into antiblackness what the fuck) and then never actually contests anything louis says. He doesnt refute louis or give his own story that he always reminds us that louis has no idea about. So where does that leave us. Hollow. Empty. Nothing. I want to cry with lestat, i want to feel that loneliness and sorrow and grief, but the show will not let me at every attempt.

Gabriella

I've talked about gabrielle/a recently a LOT. Here's my main gabrielle posts one and two, so I won't repeat the same things I said there. But this episode I just finally gave up on the show's interpretation of Gabrielle.

Two main things, and I'm probably not going to discuss it any further because this is the worst thing coming into this new season and it just bums me out.

Gabrielle and Lestat's double scene

This scene is horrible, and it really reveals that they don't care about her character besides making her this horrible evil woman and using her sexuality to do it. I actually hate how women's sexuality is seen as so much more sinful than a man's and they really just play into it here. She just does comically evil stuff and is so loud and rude and thats it. Why does she do this? because her character is lestat's leech. It cuts to her reaction as lestat says stuff, why does she make that face? What is she feeling? I dont know, she has no established motivations or emotions besides being horny and obnoxious.

Wouldn't you feel bad for lestat for having to deal with a horrible woman who wont leave him alone and is always being just annoying and always sexual about everything? I mean yeah......I guess? Is that really how they want me to sympathize with their main character? Like I can only empathize with him if we make him deal with the most awful non-human ever so I guess its fine if Lestat himself is a morally gray character? Throw female/gender-complex characters down a well so you can get a fraction more of character development for the male characters in your story?

And it honestly does worse things for lestat's character too. The car scene shows it best when he drives away later. Gabrielle is NOT avoiding him, neglecting him, leaving him--she is obnoxiously clinging to his side. Now Lestat has to be the one to be like "can you go away? can you leave me alone?" instead of craving her attention and chasing after her. How does that parallel anything with his character? How does that explain anything? If she were more negligent and lestat were more desperate for her company, you would understand his same hurt parallel when being stone walled by louis. Finally comprehend the million other ways lestat craves attention he never gets. But no it doesnt parallel anything or explain anything with lestat. It would rather choose the obvious way out....misogyny.

2. Gabrielle post-turning

Gabrielle in the scene with Nikki, I paused. I realized for a moment, wait a minute she's a vampire here. Since this is post-saving Nikki she's already somewhat adapted already.

And I realized...she's wearing a dress and her hair unbound.

I will not insist upon Gabrielle being trans despite it being a very reasonable and interesting reading of her character, but at the very least she is canonically gender nonconforming/masculine especially in the early days of turning. She struggles with her own gender presentation, has panic attacks about her hair growing back so much that lestat braids it for her to soothe her.

Why is she still wearing a dress? Why does she not care that her hair is down? Its because the writers dont care about it. Sorry. They just dont care about the gender aspect of Gabrielle's character. Maybe that's cynical, but even without her being trans, it is at the VERY LEAST a story about a woman rebelling against societal expectations of gender after being married off at 15. I could spout the same excuses, oh the seasons not done yet, lestat's pov is unreliable, he could be feminizing her in his recollections. But I really genuinely doubt it. From a show previously so interested in talking about race and blackness as an identity and racial horror, I guess I expected more willingness to tackle gender as its own horror. Especially with its male character so openly feminine in presentation. But it seems more like their main male character gets the reap the benefits of femininity while not having to acknowledge gender at all. While not having to acknowledge the gender of Gabrielle (woman or not, made feminine), the gender of random vampires the show began the season off misgendering and treated as outcasts for being nonbinary ("Gen-z followers" killed without mercy), the gender of Claudia (a woman subjected to sexual violence targeted as a female vampire, and all the misogynoir that ended her life)