Ahead of the finale, The Vampire Lestat turns grief into a beautiful, messy, glam rock nightmare. Here is our review of episodes 3-6.
WARNING: SPOILERS FOR THE VAMPIRE LESTAT
Before we head into the finale of The Vampire Lestat, I feel like this season has officially
hit that point where I have no idea what this show is going to do next, but I am fully
locked in.
And honestly, that might be the best compliment I can give it.
Episodes 3 through 6 have been wild, uncomfortable, confusing at times, beautiful at
times, deeply horny in ways that will send many people straight to therapy, and
somehow still emotionally devastating underneath all the vampire rock star chaos.
This season has been a lot. I mean that in the best way and occasionally in the “Jesus
Christ, show, what are we doing?” way.
The big thing I keep coming back to is that this really has become a giant grief story for
Lestat. Yes, it’s about the tour. Yes, it’s about vampires going public. Yes, it’s about The
Great Conversion and all this lore that feels like it’s going to explode in the finale. But
emotionally, this whole back half has been Lestat surrounded by every unresolved
wound he has ever tried to turn into performance.
Nikki. Gabriella. Magnus. Louis. Claudia. Armand. Akasha. Every person who made
him, loved him, abandoned him, destroyed him, or was destroyed by him is basically
crashing into him at once.
That is what I think the season is doing really well. It’s taking this larger than life
character, this ridiculous vampire rock god who speaks like he swallowed every
thesaurus in France, and it’s slowly revealing how much of that is armor. Lestat is
performing all the time, whether that’s On stage, in interviews, in his narration, in his
memories, in front of Daniel, in front of Louis, even in front of himself.
The question becomes, when does the performance begin and when does it end?
Episode 3 really worked for me because it digs into that. Daniel is not just interviewing
Lestat. He’s hunting him. He knows Lestat is full of it. He knows Lestat hides behind
beauty and poetry and jokes and theatrics. So every time Daniel presses on the stutter,
Magnus, Nikki, or what really happened, you can feel Lestat trying to redirect the room.
And Sam Reid is just ridiculous in this role. I know we keep saying it, but COME ON.
NOMINATE THIS GUY! The guy is playing Lestat as charming, awful, wounded,
childish, terrifying, hilarious, and tragic sometimes in the same scene. The stutter stuff is
especially effective because it takes a character who is so obsessed with control and
exposes the little boy still trapped underneath the rock star.
The Nikki material was probably some of my favorite stuff from these episodes. There’s
something heartbreaking about the way Lestat talks about him. He can’t just say, “I
loved him and I hurt him.” He has to dress it up, turn it into music, turn it into mythology,
turn it into a story that makes him feel less guilty. But when he says he kept the music
box to remind himself what he was capable of, that hit.
Because that’s the thing with Lestat. He can be the victim of horrific things and still be
the person who inflicts horrific things on others. Both can be true. That’s what makes
him interesting. He is not just misunderstood. He is not just evil. He is this walking
disaster of abuse, ego, longing, shame, and desire.
Then there’s Louis… I have loved what this season has done with Louis. Watching him go after Killer
(formerly Bruce) felt like one of those moments we had been waiting for without even
realizing how badly we needed it. It’s justice for Claudia, but the show is smart enough
to know that revenge does not magically heal grief. Louis can rip out the heart of the
monster who hurt her, and it still won’t bring Claudia back. It still won’t fix what
happened in Paris. It still won’t fix what Louis did or failed to do.
That’s why the Regina storyline is so uncomfortable and sad. At first, it feels almost
absurd. Louis finds a Claudia lookalike and starts paying her to play into this fantasy.
But the more it goes on, the more tragic it becomes. It’s not just creepy vampire
behavior. It’s a man who has lived too long with a wound that never closed, and now
he’s doing something pathetic and wrong because grief has made him desperate.
And then Episode 6 comes in and just absolutely crushes both Louis and Lestat with
Claudia.
That whole sequence with Merrick trying to contact Claudia is the kind of scene this
show does better than almost anything else on TV right now. It’s supernatural, theatrical,
intense, a little insane, but underneath all of it is something brutally human. What if the
person you mourned did not forgive you? What if the ghost you spent years
romanticizing came back and said, “Actually, I hated you too”?
That is so cruel. And so good.
It’s not what Louis or Lestat wanted to hear, but it might be what they needed to hear.
They’ve both turned Claudia into something. Louis turned her into his eternal guilt.
Lestat turned her into proof of his worst self. But Claudia gets to come back, even
briefly, and refuse to be their symbol. She gets to be angry. She gets to be unfair. She
gets to be hurtful. She gets to say, “You don’t get to use me to make yourselves feel
better.”
That was powerful.
Now, Gabriella.
Look, I’m not going to pretend this storyline is not a massive ask. It is. It has been from
Episode 2, and the show has only doubled and tripled down since then. The incest
element is gross. It’s supposed to be gross, but “it’s supposed to be gross” does not
automatically mean everyone has to enjoy watching it.
For me, I am still more compelled than repelled by it, but I also understand why that is
not going to be everyone’s experience.
What I think the show is doing with Gabriella is not just shock value. It’s about how
every role in Lestat’s life gets broken and reassigned. Mother, maker, lover, child,
worshipper, abuser, muse. He labels everyone. He turns everyone into something they
can perform for him. And Gabriella being both mother and lover is like the most
horrifying version of that. It’s not romance in any clean sense. It is vampirism taking
human boundaries and setting them on fire.
Again, not for everyone. I get it. I really do.
But dramatically, I do think it tells us a lot about why Lestat is so broken. He was
groomed by trauma before he even had the language to understand trauma. Magnus
violated him. Gabriella shaped him. Armand manipulated the people around him. Louis
loved him and hated him. Claudia became the daughter he failed. Akasha made him
feel chosen. Every relationship becomes power, hunger, performance, or abandonment.
And somehow the show is putting all of that inside a rock tour. That’s INSANE.
I also have to shout out Daniel and Armand because their stuff is getting increasingly
unsettling. Daniel has always been one of my favorite parts of this universe because he
cuts through the gothic nonsense with old man “I’m not buying your vampire poetry”
energy. But now, with Armand circling him, there’s this whole new danger to him. Daniel
thinks he’s the one exposing people, but he’s also being pulled deeper into the game.
Armand is fascinating because every time I think I understand what he’s doing, I don’t.
He can act wounded, enlightened, apologetic, spiritual, pathetic, and then suddenly
remind you, “Oh right, this guy is terrifying.” The fact that he and Daniel end Episode 6
by apparently decapitating Louis and Lestat is such an outrageous cliffhanger that I
laughed and screamed at the same time.
Do I believe they are actually dead? No. Come on. But as a finale setup, hell yeah. That
is exactly the kind of “what the hell just happened?” ending that makes you want the
next episode immediately.
And that’s where I’m at with this season.
I don’t always know what is happening. I don’t always know whether the show is being
brilliant or just completely out of its mind. Sometimes it is probably both. But I am never
bored. I am constantly intrigued. I am constantly wondering what detail from three
episodes ago is suddenly going to matter. I am constantly watching the performances
and the production choices and the music and thinking, “This is one of the weirdest
shows on TV, and thank God for that.”
It is messy. It is uncomfortable. It is sexy. It is ridiculous. It is tragic. It is camp. It is
horror. It is a therapy session inside a glam rock nightmare.
And before the finale, I think this season has done its job.
It has made Lestat feel bigger and smaller at the same time. Bigger because the
mythology around him keeps expanding. Smaller because the more we learn, the more
we see the scared, damaged person underneath the persona.
That’s what keeps me invested. Not just the vampire lore. Not just the romance. Not just
the cliffhangers.
It’s the fact that this show understands monsters are most interesting when they are still
human enough to be hurt, but monstrous enough to hurt everyone back.
So yeah, bring on the finale. I have no idea if I’m emotionally prepared…
Probably not.
About The Vampire Lestat
In the new rock and roll centric season, the Vampire Lestat (Reid) goes on an electric multi-city tour while being haunted by “muses” from his wild and rebellious past. As his band’s popularity and star power rises, so does Lestat’s influence over vampires and humans alike, leaving others to contend with Lestat’s power in the face of the Great Conversion, an unnatural surge in the vampire population.
In addition to Reid, The Vampire Lestat stars Jacob Anderson, Assad Zaman, Eric Bogosian, Delainey Hayles and Jennifer Ehle and is executive produced by award-winning producer Mark Johnson, creator, writer and showrunner Rolin Jones, Hannah Moscovitch, along with Christopher Rice and the late Anne Rice.
Starring Sam Reid, the wild and captivating next chapter in Anne Rice’s Immortal Universe premiered Sunday, June 7 at 9pm ET/PT on AMC and AMC+.
