𝖁𝖎𝖗𝖌𝖎𝖓𝖎𝖆

Lestat is with all his walls up and then here comes Louis with a cannonball full of feelings.

I have a feeling that if they were not interrupted by the plot tm then he would have cried

Also another thing is, it seems like if Louis wasnt the one to open up first lestat would be too scared to 😭😭

I mean, Sam talked about this when he said there's a "right way" to sing Brutal Love and that this is Lestat with his guard still up in S3.

And he is taken aback (and utterly charmed and enthralled) that Louis is being so open and planning their future together —

Sam also said that the revelation of Louis loving him will change everything moving forward and given how Lestat was looking at him in their final scene together —

Compare that to how he looks at Louis on the bench. It's impossible, but there's even more reverence and love and devotion in his look here.

It reminds me so much of this moment from S1 —

So much is being said with just facial expressions alone. The entire story of these two is being told here — Lestat always assuring Louis of his love but never hearing it in return. Lestat reframing his entire relationship with Louis as nothing but hatred and foolishness thanks to the book and putting his guard up to protect his heart after being betrayed by Louis and believing Louis never loved him, actively hated him, and that he was an idiot to ever think it was love with Louis. Lestat reframing their love story in his mind (again!) with the knowledge that Louis did love him back all along.

He was (likely) referring to Armand.

Redemption arc? They might try, but no. Her character was destroyed the minute they turned her into a sex predator pedophile who molests and rapes Lestat. People will not just get over that (like they didn't get over the "abuse" in S1), and it blows my mind that Rolin and Hannah didn't have the forethought to realize "hmm maybe this isn't a good idea."

The way they've framed the entire Akasha dynamic is interesting to me, because it is placing Lestat in the role of being 100% her innocent victim. The books gave him agency in that arc by one, having him deliberately go against Marius' orders by infiltrating her sanctuary and playing for her and two, having him do the concert that awoke her of his own free will. The show has changed all of that. Marius forced him into the role as her keeper after she already *chose* him. We saw Lestat innocently using blood to paint "lipstick" on her lips for the new year, and then we saw her violently assaulting him, spellbinding him, and taking his blood against his will. We also know Gabriella is the one acting as the driving force behind the ill-fated concert. Lestat doesn't want to do it. Just like Lestat didn't want to be Akasha's keeper.

But back to the blood vs. music question — According to both Sheila and Rolin, apparently the music is still what draws Akasha to Lestat. During their time together, which is now years instead of moments, Akasha has seen Lestat's capacity for enduring, just like Magnus saw it, and that is why she will ultimately come after him again. She sees how differently Lestat cared for her vs. Marius, the music playing a large part in that, and she now believes Lestat will be *good* as her king.

The blood aspect, imo, is because of one, the Amel factor, and that goes back to all the ripple effects as a result of what they did with 1x05. We're now at the part of the story in which Rolin and Hannah are beginning to introduce the trapdoor "excuse" for Lestat's culpability in the drop — Hey, it wasn't Lestat. It was the blood and Amel in the blood. Hey, that wasn't Lestat's fault either, because he was forced to be Akasha's keeper. Etc. Etc. Two, they're going the sexual assault route with Akasha, and they needed to establish that the blood rape is synonymous with the physical rape, too, because they've added physical sex back into the vampiric desire. We saw this being demonstrated with the Magnus scenes.

They're making Lestat the victim in everything (oddly enough except for the things in which he actually canonically was 100% the victim) and like I said, it reads to me as if it's all stemming from the fact the writers knew they'd need the built-in "excuse" for the drop when the time came and, well, here we are. The time is now.

In the first episode it showed him answering the door to someone before the Halloween kids scene.

Lestat must have been very very hurt and Louis must have been very dismissive

He is. 🥰

Both.