Armends (TVL Spoilers)
So the finale got leaked. I'm gonna rewatch the whole show before talking about the entire episode, but I feel moved to talk about Armand's part for reasons. (spoilers under the cut)
The reason is that I was completely wrong, and I'm not ashamed to say it. I fell for the red herring, that Armand's motive this season was self-preservation. It makes perfect sense for his character. But so does the gremlin. Gremlin doesn't go away just cuz.
I don't mind eating crow, and I absolutely love the two big things we got in the butcher shop.
1.) Assad's performance.
2.) Another Louis reveal.
People are getting so caught up in the question of morality and deserving and "should" that they missed that they were getting a part of a character revealed.
People think, for example, that the show was telling us Louis owed Armand an apology because he apologized. No.
And they think Louis' apology isn't real because it was forced, that he was just saving Regina. If that was true, he would've never let it get that far. And Armand was threatening Lestat, too. The degree to which Louis was dedicated to dying mad was very true to his character.
The reason why it took so long was because Louis meant it, but he didn't want to think about it. Didn't want to admit to it. And instead of seeing it as "Armand deserved an apology" or any version of "this should happen," I prefer to recall that I'm watching a TV show, but not in a "touch grass" kinda way! Hear me out. I love seeing hidden sides of the characters.
It's not real life, so I don't have to connect some moral compass to my desire to see something happen, something revealed.
Louis: "It's sick. You're sick."
Lestat: "We are unnatural beings! And this... this is the half-human soul that you conveniently whip out whenever you want to win an argument!"
Louis is a self-righteous character, and he spent 75 years with someone who was the living embodiment of the consequences of the human life he led, the consequences he'd noped out of when he became a vampire.
When Armand was a child, he was taken by bad men, and they did what bad men do.
The same bad that Louis had facilitated.
He didn't want that to be true, so he believed what he had to about Armand and himself to stay in the dark. Look the other way. Because if it had a face, then it was real.
So that, combined with his justified anger over everything Armand has done, made this secret -- that he was actually sorry for the heartless companion that he was and the massive toll it took on someone he once saw goodness in -- something Louis would never tell until he'd given up fighting it.
I shouldn't have to explain this, but me wanting to see this side of Louis has nothing to do with "should". These characters live when we die and drink when we bleed, we're already lying to ourselves about "should".
But so much has happened and will happen to all these characters. I want them to be friends because I do, not because they should be friends. And so the fact that there's a line to be drawn between this scene and the one of them at the auction makes me happy.
If these mother fuckers can eat our blood, I can want them to be friends for no other reason than that I want it. Everyone's shipping boyfriends, and here I am feasting on the seeds of friendship.
Also, this stuff had to come after the Seance and the Sex Tape. Louis has an instinct for moral outrage and emotional withholding, but he's learning that this is not the man he wants to be.
I'm also fascinated by how Armand cut off the recording when Louis started to circle something real. This made it clear to me that Armand was not expecting it. He wanted Louis to admit it was unfair that, despite knowing he would never forgive Armand, he still strung him along for seventy-five years of bowing and scraping and begging and crawling just to throw him away in the end.
His parent sold him. Marius and Santino and Lestat abandoned him to misery. But I think he felt that, somewhere in his relationship with Louis, there was a promise that things could get better.
If Armand's secret backstory in the show is similar to his one in the books, than the idea that Louis once saw goodness in him is far more confronting than the idea that Louis didn't love him. There's a part of himself he can't remember that was good and innocent and loved god, and not just anyone who came along. In fact, it was this love for God that created the template in his mind for serving with all his heart.
It's a weird shot in the dark, but I feel like the one thing Armand wants for himself is to be good again. Not to convince anyone or to be worthy of anything, but because it was taken from him. Taken when everything else was taken.
