Or Rolin could have just, not included the drop? Since it's not canon to any of the books, and it what most book fans hate the most (other than the lack of Lestat/Claudia moments).
Are we really arguing that the drop made Lestat a more complex character? Because we know why it was included, and it wasn't for complexity, it was for rule of cool.
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Sure, and he could not have moved us into 1910 and not aged Claudia up, or diversified the cast, or reframed the series in a second interview, or made Louis a pimp, or brought a BDSM element into Armand and Louis' relationship. It's an adaptation of the books, it's not a recreation, TV is a very different medium to literature, as I've discussed before, and the internal has to be externalised in order for it to work as a visual medium instead of a text medium. On top of that, Rolin as showrunner has to have an authorship of the series, which yes, needs to be grounded and guided by Anne's authorship of the book, but it also has to be fueled by his own interpretations, and the interpretations of his creative team, otherwise there's no point to adapting something to a different medium at all.
Lestat as a character does have a history of violence across the books no matter which way you cut him. He's born into a violent house and he is raped into immortality and he perpetuates violence against others in ways that are often understandable and sometimes not. In my opinion, the drop is not out of character for him, and I also don't see it as something fundamentally unforgivable. It's okay if you do, but I don't, and I don't have to 'accept' your opinion as fact.
You're also misrepresenting my argument. My argument isn't that the drop made Lestat a more complex character, my argument is that it was written in to give Louis a clearer, more understandable motivation in killing Lestat, and to balance audience sympathies ahead of the next stage of the story. I'm sure that they did write it in as opposed to something else because they thought it was the cooler option - it probably is, it's a great looking sequence from a technical standpoint - but a writer of Rolin's career and calibre is never doing things purely on the basis of 'cool', and the shape of the season makes it extremely clear that the writing is ratcheting up both domestic tensions and external pressures in those last three episodes in order to get us to Lestat's murder in a way that will feel justifiable and satisfying on both a story and character level. Television as a medium generally demands that.
Could they have done it a different way? Yes. Did they choose to do it in the way that they did because they felt it was the coolest of the options they'd laid out? Probably, yes, apparently they said so, but it also feels pretty clearly a part of the broader arc of those episodes of growing tension, animosity and desperation to get us to the point where killing Lestat feels like a reclamation of Louis' agency, power and sense of self, rather than a ceding of it to Claudia as it is in the book.
As a fan of the books, as a viewer of the show, and as a writer myself, I think it works and I feel I can see the creative decision making process there. It's okay though if you don't like it, and think it was a mistake. I just respectfully disagree.
