What hath the dark lord wrought?

And this is why Season 2 started us down the path of being controversial among the fanbase. And by “controversial” I genuinely mean “debated”, because people have very different opinions of it. The S2 reunion scene is heavily debated (primarily in Louis spaces) with half saying they hated it and the other half enjoying it. You have half the fanbase happy with Lestat’s apology during the trial, and half saying Santiago was right and that Lestat was too hard on himself.

Season 1 was clearer on how things were to be interpreted. While there’s definitely argument for how fans/crowds/mobs take ideas and run with them regardless of intent, nothing in Season 1 garnered as many different interpretations as the content in Season 2. I think this is because this is when the team behind the show started, seemingly, disagreeing with each other.

This is how you get “wait what was Louis’ apology to Lestat in the finale about? Was that Louis coming to terms with himself, or was that the show engaging in victim blaming?” And everyone has different POVs on it. It’s clear now, that the ambiguity behind the scene, behind quite a few scenes in S2, is because the writers themselves couldn’t agree on what they wanted them to mean.

But with all the people they’ve let go for Season 3, and the new ones they hired on, it’s obvious which side remained on-staff and the kinds of likeminded people they got to take the others’ place.

So now, in Season 3, there is no debate. There is no “hm I can see this interpretation but I can also see this interpretation….” There’s no ambiguity. This side of the team, the side that viewed Louis’ apology in S2 as Louis apologizing for ‘abusing’ Lestat, that seemed to view Louis’ charred, crumbling body apologizing to Armand as deserved punishment instead of horrific abuse, are the ones that have stayed and taken over the show.

And we KNOW debates started happening in the Season 2 writer’s room given the recent interview where Rolin briefly mentioned it, such as whether Louis asked Armand to erase his memories or if he never did. Certain things in Season 2 are controversial among fans, because the writers themselves started disagreeing on characterizations and important story beats.

So with this portion of the team let go vs the ones that were called back + those newly hired to replace the former, this is how we got Season 3. A season that is not as ambiguous as Season 2 where the writers were fist fighting when they put pen to paper. We are back to the single vision of Season 1.

Except this vision wasn’t born from heartfelt creativity and love for the material. It’s out of agreed upon resentment and shared biases. You even have the production designers of all crew members throwing in “I always liked Lestat more” unprompted when their job has NOTHING to do with character preference. Season 3 is the way it is, because these are the people who originally wanted Louis’ arc to only be compiled into a single season, and were irritated when fans kept wanting more. Whether they wanted more of Loucob or simply wanted more of Loustat as a duo.

And Rolin’s “we wrote from the gut” or “the id” and all of his sayings that they wrote instinctively lays it out that this whole mess is emotional retaliation. The writing behind Season 3 is a temper tantrum.

Not just as retaliation to Louis, but to everyone. Assad’s Armand shot through the ROOF and instantly became one of the most popular characters in S2. I’d even argue is Thee second most popular after Lestat (I’d say Daniel is the second most popular among casual viewers whereas among non-casual viewers, it’s Armand.) With DM shooting to the stars as the most popular ship among non-casual viewers. (And DM does beat out Loustat in terms of popularity when looking at the dedicated fanbase.)

But once again, this seems to have pissed That Side™️ of the creative team off after Season 2’s release. With none of them expecting Assad’s Armand to be as beloved or for DM to be as highly desired as they are. And you can see this frustration in all of Armand & DM’s “development” in Season 3.

Why Armand had less than 15 minutes total of screentime across episodes 1-6 before reducing into a maniacal villain in 3x07. Why DM’s eagerly anticipated relationship happened completely off screen, and both characters butchered so it would be intentionally unsatisfying once revealed. (And the excuse that they’re a minor / secondary relationship so they were never going to be as focused on doesn’t make sense when looking at Claudeleine. Who was still emotionally moving and well paced even in the midst of the Loumand-Dreamstat-Loustat triangle.)

The “meta” that they kept talking about in pre-S3 interviews isn’t that the writers just kept the fanbase in mind while making it, it’s that the entirety of Season 3 is a response to the fans themselves. It’s less about the actual characters that were written in Seasons 1 & 2, and comes off more as one long Twitter thread titled “My IWTV Hot Takes”

Because you also can’t say any of this was for Lestat. It’s very reminiscent to Season 2, when Lestat point blank says “I hurt Louis because I wanted to hurt him” and a portion of the fanbase shoved a pacifier in his mouth to shut him up and for years afterwards kept saying “No he didn’t mean it.” Even Samstat was reduced from a character into a figurehead.

Loucob became a punching bag, Claudlainey and Assad’s Armand were weaponized against Loucob while simultaneously reduced to punching bags too, and the writers put Samstat on the same idealized pedestal that the characters Magnus, Marius, and Gabriella are supposed to be condemned for, treating him as a concept rather than a person.

Sorry, my response turned into something else lol. But “Why would the writers write Louis this way? Why would anyone like him?” My personal opinion after really trying to understand what on earth has happened, is that no, they likely were not writing like this since S1. The season just doesn’t make sense from that POV. Everything we’re seeing right now is reactionary.