Whoosh

Assad is also actively doing his best to give Armand his humanity back too like its just them

Accusations of "woobifying Armand" even though it's literally his job as an actor to deconstruct and understand the mind and motivations of his own character. Saying Assad was anti-Black just because he said Louis (the character, mind you!) didn't know anything about Armand's reasoning for transforming Daniel since Louis just assumes it was out of spite (and Assad's correct. Louis didn't know jack shit about Armand's inner workings and didn't care to know which was half the problem of their relationship from the start in Paris and how he underestimated Armand's desperation, attachment, and DANGER all throughout!)

It was so clear that Assad and Jacob saw the insanely disproportionate backlash on Twitter after the article dropped because the next interview Assad did for the Reddit AMA, he was super quiet and refused to answer any questions about Armand's psyche and motivations. Then in another group interview, he only tentatively ventured some ideas and kept prefacing things with disclaimers and then at one point he tried to act nonchalant as he said the last time he spoke on this topic some people didn't quite like it.

Well for one, we’ve already seen Daniel soften around Armand multiple times. There’s when he mentions him to Louis when they meet after the concert, there’s his face as he leaves the bowling alley and then there’s when Armand tells him he’s in love with him. He’s a volatile man so anger ought to be expected but there is still that softness. I think he isn’t sure where it’s coming from. But he wants to be around Armand. He has specifically said so, but Armand is still his murderer and he has a lot of feelings about it. People are not only one thing, they are a dozen things at once. He just needs time to sort through all those emotions.

They aren’t in a relationship. We have no solid reason to think that. “I’m seeing someone” is just dancing around the truth, but even in romantic terms, that is very casual. It’s the first time he says it, hinting it is early days. They are only beginning.

I just don’t think Armand has ever been portrayed as unlovable. Hard to love, sure, but not fundamentally unlovable. I think Louis was still in love with Lestat when they met and wracked with guilt over what he’d done to him, so he could never fully commit to Armand. I think Lestat is an asshole who is in denial about the fact that he and Armand obviously had something deeper than just sex going on, because Armand is too similar to him and Lestat is controlled by his self-loathing. I think Daniel has demonstrated being drawn to Armand and already holds some level of affection towards him despite their lack of closeness. All three other characters have been involved with Armand. He’s the opposite of undesirable. Armand’s problem is everything else he brings with him. He is very unstable and comes with a lot of baggage. Not his fault at all, but being with him isn’t exactly simple. He is, for all intents and purposes, a deeply mentally ill person. He’s lived through so many horrific things and it has left him as someone very hard to understand. What he needs is someone patient enough to try who is not distracted by other paramours, and that is Daniel. I think this will happen in episode 7, or the beginning of it will. Armand said he wants to be Daniel’s maker, and the implication is Daniel accepted. He’s a journalist, so he’s going to have a lot of questions for Armand. He wants to know him.

It didn't make sense to allow Lestat that level of absolution after only revealing that Armand directed the trial/play & that Lestat saved Louis at the last minute. What happens in the books is irrelevant; they completely overhauled most of the trial for this adaptation. Filling in the blanks that way only creates more holes.

Why did Lestat cross the Atlantic in the mid-1900’s to return to the theatre?

Why did he rehearse for however long without any attempt to contact Louis?

How did they capture his voice so well? Did he contribute to the script?

Why didn’t he try for Claudia?

Did he always know that being sentenced meant immediate death?

Where did he go afterwards? There’s still no indication that he saved Louis from his slow, painful death via ‘banishment.’ That’s still Armand as far as we know. And I believe Louis’d be able to differentiate between Armand & Lestat’s blood, if he didn’t see them. Armand also colluded with his revenge against the coven by not warning them.

What were Louis & Lestat doing in the year+ between the final interview and the publication of Daniel's book? There are several lengthy steps taken after a book's content is secured before it can be released. Daniel was working from Talamasca documents, loose notes & interview recordings. Did Louis not think to ask questions about their daughter's public murder in the meantime? We joke about Louis being incurious, but that's crazy by even his standards.

In their mediation scene, Louis reminds Lestat that he did get on a boat, and he did memorise lines—a callback to his and Armand's confrontation with Lestat in that Parisian cave. Are there any caveats that reduce Lestat's culpability? Why, then, did it take his anger at the book to drive them apart again?

How is Armand the only one of the 2 widely considered a true villain by the cast, crew, & fandom?

Critics were flagging this outcome for its problems since it aired, by the way:

This framing holds until the finale episode, when there's a big reveal. Previously, it appeared that Louis's lover Armand saved him from execution when he was found guilty by a trial of other vampires. But actually, Lestat was the one who saved Louis. TWIST! This is a surprise, but only a mild one.* Lestat has long treated Louis as a possession, so it's perfectly in character that he'd want to prevent that possession's destruction. He notably does not save Claudia from the same trial, which lines up with the way he sees her as an obstacle to Louis's affection. At first, the purpose of this reveal appears to be breaking up Louis and Armand. That's sad, since it was nice to have at least one healthy relationship in the show,* but it doesn't affect the message too much. But then Louis meets back up with Lestat, and the two of them act as if everything is great. Louis even apologizes for judging Lestat too harshly. Triumphant music plays. Excuse me, what? From a show with such a firm handle on how abuse works, this is surreal to watch. Are we meant to believe that Lestat has changed his ways because he did one good deed? It's not even that great a deed; Louis was only on trial because of Lestat in the first place. The show does highlight the unreliability of memory, but I really doubt we're supposed to think that the abuse didn't happen. It's always possible that this is supposed to be Louis falling back under his abuser's spell. The scene isn't framed that way, but sometimes miscommunications happen. However, it appears that the show's next season will focus on Lestat as a cool rock and roll guy. So the most likely explanation is that Lestat will now be cast as a sympathetic character we can cheer for, just like in the books.

— Five Stories That Almost Make a Great Point: Interview with the Vampire by Oren Ashkenazi

With the production of this trial, Armand platformed not only Louis’ shitty white ex-boyfriend, but also other white and non-Black vampires and humans, to indulge in the racist torture of Louis and Claudia. The trial was one last bombardment of violent white-faced racism, poisoning Louis to the world so he would retreat into the safety of the eager coffin that is Armand. In this way, Armand cleaned up Lestat’s mess and succeeded where Lestat failed. He isolated Louis by eliminating Claudia. Lestat couldn’t own Louis so he broke him, and after the trial Armand owned the pieces left of him. There is still room for ambiguity in the text about who really saved Louis— it’s really only Daniel’s theory backed by the damning working script that makes anything else Armand says impossible to believe— but post-finale interviews with most of cast and crew confirm Lestat as Louis’ saviour. It does feel bit bizarre to argue in Armand’s case on this one detail (it doesn’t even do him any favours!), but to reiterate: positioning Lestat as Louis’ saviour from the racist trial he co-wrote and most definitely co-produced drains so much conviction out of any commentary made in the previous episode on racist intimate partner violence perpetrated by white abusers.