looking for signs

In other words, for example (literally just an example, not actually trying to pull a pivotal scene), there is something very different between: LOUIS NARRATION: "Claudia was so happy to be in Paris." and being actually shown images of Claudia looking happy. In the first case, if we're reading a text, we can clearly accept that this is Louis' understanding and maybe not necessarily the (whole) truth. But if we are shown an image of Claudia walking through the streets, smiling, we as viewers are far more likely to simply accept this as the truth of the story.

But this actually complicates the absolute hell out of a visual medium, especially when it comes to how an audience is meant to start to understand character traits and motivations. Technically, IWTV is entirely Louis' story. Moments where he doesn't know or didn't know his own story are explicitly signaled and framed--we get repeats that completely change our (and his) understanding. Only when we are in the present day are we theoretically getting a "true" (or "unbiased") view of the characters, outside of a single perspective's framing.

But obviously when we're viewing these flashbacks, the actors are imbuing these characters with far more complexity than just "Louis' perspective". The actual story we get feels so much richer than just a single participant's read of all these people--and that's what makes it compelling and interesting. We want to be shown a story after all, not simply told it. So for me, part of the issue that's happening is that film/TV is a fairly unoptimized medium for this kind of storytelling. That DOES NOT mean the show isn't great or it shouldn't be done, but that there is something in the medium itself that's introducing the challenges people are experiencing when it comes to a sense that TVL "destroyed" or changed these characters.

Because we were given more than just Louis' perspective in IWTV, but the show will still insist on this as the constraint for its characterization. So according to the logic of the show/showrunners--and they have explicitly said this multiple times!--the characters we loved from Louis' perspective will and must be different when being portrayed from Lestat's perspective. If main characters suddenly feel like side characters, that's the fucking point. If a deep love suddenly feels shallow, that is the point--that is actually information we are supposed to be learning about Lestat, just like we were learning about Louis in the first series.

The show itself actually even explicitly tries to help us with this: in the very first scene in TLV where we see Daniel and Louis together again, we have Lestat's narration warning us that these people might not be acting like you might have thought. The show is aware of what it is doing. But again: the medium is extremely not optimized for this kind of story telling. So we as viewers, regardless of what Lestat has just told us, are still ultimately seeing Daniel and Louis, portrayed by fabulous actors bringing depth and complexity to the screen, just as we thought we were seeing them in the previous series. It's actually extremely difficult to suddenly see these characters differently--but the show does explicitly ask us for that.

So instead, the feeling is more like, "who the fuck are these people? It's the same actors, the same universe, but everyone is fucking different. Why are they destroying everything from before? Why do they hate [x character] now??" And then all sorts of absolutely batshit bad takes and conspiracies start flying around.

Now, more complexities: I'm not actually trying to defend the show as flawless and all critiques as wrong. The biggest strength of the first series with regards to its narrative technique is that it was extremely clear when we were in Louis narration and when we were in present-day, outside of that framing. TVL aims for another level of complexity: the only "unbiased"/unframed scenes we get are actually the very opening of the series with eyepatch Armand and Louis at the auction. Everything else is technically contrived as Lestat's narration on the auctioned off discs. So that means every scene, including the one's where Lestat is not present, are meant to be seen through his eyes. Armand and Daniel's thing, the finale scene between Armand and Louis, etc. everything.

What that means is that we haven't actually, at any point in TVL, gotten these characters "free" from Lestat's interpretation. He sees Armand as a kind of pathetic schemer, that's what we get. He sees Louis as helplessly caught up on Claudia's death to the point of it being kind of cringe, so that's what we get, etc.

But AGAIN: the problem is, we are dealing with a visual medium with (I cannot emphasize it enough) fantastic actors that imbue these characters with so much life. And as a viewer, it's frankly pretty fucking frustrating to feel like I just learned something about a character, or just witnessed a profound exchange, and have to constantly caveat it as "well that's just what Lestat thinks". That's obviously not the actual impact of the show, and I think the showrunners and actors themselves wouldn't want every single scene dismissed as such.

So the show beings to collapse under the weight of its own contrivance. Any changes in the characters can be dismissed as part of the shift in perspective, BUT it's a fucking continuation of a previous series. Of course we want to keep going with the characters we knew. Of course we want to keep learning about Daniel and Armand and Louis and fuck maybe even get some new information on Claudia--but even while the show seems to offer that in one regard, it actually withdraws it in another. We're actually just learning about Lestat. (lestat lestat lestat les--)