By ‘The Vampire Lestat’ finale, our undead problematic fave taught us a lot about life. Read our season recap.
Maybe we watch The Vampire Lestat due to voyeurism. What would our lives be like if we had immortality? Or at least, were adjacent to it? The latest season of Interview with the Vampiretold us that it doesn’t matter if we have 70 years on this Earth or 200: There will be people and places and situations that haunt us forever. Sometimes, there is no getting over it. Come The Vampire Lestat’s finale, the real takeaway this season seems to be: Seize life — and life after death — by the throat.
Living and loving hard doesn’t come without monumental challenges. In Episode Four, “The Devil’s Road,” Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid) and the gang are on Cloud 9, but in the background, trouble brews. Having gone through a 12-step program, Armand (Assad Zaman) is making supposed amends. We see him talk to vampire journalist Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian) and try to talk to Lestat. We see more of Regina, the Claudia lookalike (both times, Delainey Hayles) who works at the diner Louis de Point du Lac (Jacob Anderson) frequents.
Louis hatches the kind of scheme only someone in the deep throes of grief could. He asks Regina to pretend to be like Claudia. It’s a fair bargain, from his perspective at least: He asked her to read Interview with the Vampire, Daniel’s book, and he’ll pay her. Meanwhile, in Lestat’s slice of trauma-land, he’s reminiscing on his vampire mother lover, Gabriella de Lioncourt (Jennifer Ehle), abandoning him on the beach. There’s a very public shooting targeting Lestat, which, surprisingly maybe to us mortal viewers, leaves him shaken.
But herein lies an opportunity for Lestat to fake his death and release a posthumous album, agreed to by everyone in Lestat’s band. And still, in Episode Five, “New York,” we’re knee-deep in Lestat’s masturbatory storytelling. You have to respect the man for being consistent, because his whole undead life has been one of indulgence. And at the same time, he’s the worst kind of perfectionist: Hard on himself and his band, and self-destructive because of it.
Sam Reid as Lestat de Lioncourt and Jennifer Ehle as Gabrielle de Lioncourt in “The Vampire Lestat”
Pop culture references abound. See: Pitchfork; the Wegmans shooting in Rochester, NY; Florence Welch of Florence and the Machine. The power of music in Lestat’s life also can’t be overstated. Whereas other men of a certain age buy a boat or get really into hiking, Lestat’s undead mid-life crisis was always going to be centered on music, because it has been a throughline in his life.
Even before he was taking Louis to the opera — even before he had a stint on stage with Théâtre des Vampires — Lestat loved the violin. Maybe he wasn’t the best violinist, but his passion for the arts is literally what helped revive Akasha (Sheila Atim), mother of all vampires, from the dead. Lestat revives Akasha by playing records via a gramophone. Considering that this season’s voiceovers were laid down on wax and vinyl is having a comeback moment with hipster audiophiles, there’s a beautiful full-circle quality to this scene.
Yet this modern-day Lestat is like a washed-up rapper who forgot he was the greatest of all time. Haunted by Claudia, his first love Nicholas (Joseph Potter), and even his younger self, Lestat literally works himself to death to make the best possible album. Using a wireless microphone, he runs outside into the sun, burning his flesh black while he tries to muster a raw quality to his vocals. And of course, Lestat isn’t just physically self-destructive, but emotionally self-flagellating as well.
While rehearsing for the big vampire jam in Episode Six, “Montreal,” Lestat invites his mom, Gabriella, and Louis to soundcheck. She nips at Louis; Louis takes it on the chin. There’s a moment where Lestat is singing a love song, and you’re unsure of who exactly is being serenaded. It doesn’t matter in the end: Seduced by Armand, Daniel turns heel and leaks a video of Lestat and Gabrielle having sex, and Louis reacts exactly how you think he’d react.
The Vampire Lestat’s showrunners twist the knife even more, with “Montreal” including a séance between Louis, Lestat and the real Claudia. She lets it rip, revealing uncomfortable truths. She actually hated Louis; at least Lestat she could respect. Just as Claudia drove Lestat and Louis apart in life, in death, she draws them closer. There’s this heart-wrenching moment where Louis and Lestat are sitting on the bench, imagining a future together after all this time. It builds the kind of lump in your throat that you have watching Celine Song’s Past Lives.
As if you weren’t emotionally punched in the gut already, someone comes up from behind and beheads both Louis and Lestat. Ah yes, the other two members from the worst polycule of all time: Armand and Daniel. By Episode Seven, “The Failures,” we find out just how deeply Armand is the architect of Louis’ destruction. Ornery Interview with the Vampire fans who preferred the first two seasons would feel vindicated if they watched The Vampire Lestat all the way through to “The Failures.”
Armand takes vicious pleasure in laying out how he put all the pieces in place for the Claudia arc, just to drive the knife into Louis’ back. This is all done while Louis’ head is separated from his body, his decapitated torso constantly stretching out to grab its own head. As a viewer, you feel conflicted. Armand is punishing Louis for the 77 years that they were together, because Louis’ heart was somewhere else, but Armand had his own transgressions in this relationship, too. The past three seasons of television have shown us, nothing can soothe the hurt of losing Claudia — and the futures that could have been — so violently. Wasn’t that revenge enough?
Meanwhile, Lestat sits with a court of all the most important people in his life or, rather, the most crucial kills, serving as judge, jury, and executioner. Lestat’s conscience is also split: While Magnus (Damien Atkins), Gabriella, Louis, that pesky Antoinette from back in New Orleans (Maura Grace Athari), and guitarist TC (Sarah Swire) lay out all of Lestat’s flaws and flops in this quasi-purgatory, Lestat’s head is in a bag while Daniel goes bowling and gives Lestat a tongue-lashing.
And just like last time, the Talamasca comes in during the last quarter to save the day. When Lestat comes to, he’s in his coffin on his tour bus. You see what feels almost like disappointment from Lestat when he wakes up and realizes he’s not permanently dead. His head has been sewn back onto his body, and Louis’ has, too. We see everyone on the bus getting ready for the big outdoor The Vampire Lestat concert, which we later find out canonically leveled the city of Montreal. We don’t see that particular chaos, but we do see Lestat, in a kimono, surveying the aftermath as light hits the city. You realize that he has been sitting on the floor of his living room, recording the narrative you’ve been hearing this whole season, full of wistfulness and regret at how everything shook out.
But by now Lestat should know better. Because if there’s anything this last episode of The Vampire Lestat taught us, it’s to live life without regret. Whether we’re alive or undead, we should never be going through the motions of life. Failure is a sign that we at least tried. In that prolonged scene where everyone is outlining, with minute detail, all the ways Lestat has fallen on his face and has been, for lack of a better word, annoying, you’re aware of the cognitive dissonance here. Yes, everything that his dinner guests from hell are saying is true. But Lestat is the shit. He could never be defined by his failures. Maybe we shouldn’t define ourselves by our failures, either, and maybe we’re the shit, too.
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