‘Interview with the Vampire’ Finally Gives Us the Real Lestat

Editor's Note: The following contains spoilers for the Season 2 finale of Interview with the Vampire.

The big picture

• Interview with the vampire
  's season 2 finale finally reveals the real Lestat after two seasons of portraying him through the perspectives of other characters.
• The ending reveals that Lestat, haunted by Clàudia's death, is a more complex and broken figure than he thought.
• Season 3 will likely further explore Lestat's character by adapting the next book in the series,
  The vampire Lestat
  .

Yes Interview with the vampire he has a best friend, it's ambiguity. Based on Anne Ricethe best seller The Vampire Chronicles series, subjectivity is the thematic name of the game in this adaptation: examining how our preconceived notions and self-serving biases influence the way we interpret events and individuals, and how these tendencies intersect with trauma. From Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson), a vampire trying to heal and escape his violent past, serves as a Interviewunreliable narrator, each character is filtered through his point of view, and none more so than his direct counterpart, Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid), a subject of equal ire and adoration. For two seasons, Interview has avoided showing Lestat with an impartial lens. It is always presented through the eyes of another person, and we must question a framing device contaminated by the emotional baggage of the observer. Once the Season 2 finale concludes the interview for which the series is named, Interview embrace objective truth for the first time. The series finally shows us his most mercurial figure, and the answer is the last thing viewers, or Louis, could expect.

Season 1 “Interview with the Vampire” makes Lestat a mystery

Louis has spent two seasons and many interviews mythologizing Lestat with a menacing but irresistible mystique. Hearing Louis explain it, he falls in love with a charming predator capable of both exquisite tenderness and terrifying violence. Approaching a character as compelling, controversial and complicated as Lestat, however, opens the floor to other opinions. Once Armand (Assad Zaman) joins Louis' modern interview with Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian) and the latter reads Claudia's (Bailey Bass, Delainey Hayles) newspapers, Interview brings together a bigger picture. If Louis wants Lestat to suffer but can't seem to permanently cut ties with him, then Claudia adores her vampire father until their similar personalities collide to the point of no return. Finally, he introduces Lestat as the recurring villain of his story.

In the past timeline, coven leader Armand sets out with Lestat because the latter's blatant disregard for rules sets him apart. However, Armand's account of Lestat as a diabolical fiend is almost too extreme: a romantic figure elevated to theatricality. And when it comes to the Lestat that Louis hallucinates, Sam Reid fuses his regular performance with Jacob Anderon's gestures, hinting at a Lestat born straight from Louis' mind. Although all of Lestat's versions are similar, compared and contrasted, they sound suspiciously discordant; almost as if Louis, Claudia and Armand bent it into the shape they want. The one point on which all three agree is how well Lestat weapons his mesmerizing presence; it is the undead equivalent of an emotional black hole.

Come Season 2 Episode 7, the existing cracks in Louis' story were blown wide open. Louis admits he misremembered or lied about the pivotal events of Season 1. The confession casts doubt on Lestat's culpability in those tremendously influential moments. Viewers already know that Louis has obfuscated the truth and shifted the blame to others, but Season 2 forces us to recontextualize our assumptions by emphasizing that no one's account is trustworthy; Lestat is still an unknown.

Lestat saves Louis' life in Season 2's “Interview with the Vampire.”

In one of Interview with the vampireMany refreshing twists, Daniel provides the on-ramp that leads to the real Lestat. Like any good journalist who checks his sources, Daniel provides the receipts and successfully exposes 77-year-old Armand's lie. As Louis confirms the truth about the events leading up to Claudia's death, Interview interrupts his angst with two brief but revealing flashbacks. For the first, the Théâtre des Vampires rehearses the coming trial. Lestat participates, obeying Armand's directions with mockingly mocking physicality, until Armand hints that Claudia will be easily overpowered. Enraged, Lestat shouts, “You have no idea of ​​Claudia's strength,” and throws the script at Armand in a heartbroken and ultimately futile gesture.

The second objective revelation concerns who actually saved Louis' life during the trial: Lestat himself. Her affected expression makes clear her fear for Louis' safety, as well as the considerable willpower it takes to psychically influence a crowd. Viewers still don't know why Lestat cooperated in this charade, but if he can't save Claudia, at least this act of love will not be useless — because in Lestat's mind, this story is a tragic romance.

'The interview with the real vampire Lestat is delighted

Sam Reid's exclusive interview with Collider confirms that Louis' return to New Orleans is the first full scene where meinterview with the vampire assumes a non-partisan point of view from the traditional series. “Now you're out of the narrative,” Reid said, “and you're in real time. [… Lestat is] he said without any kind of subjective or narrative point of view framework there.” Compared to the glamorously volatile figure Interview built over two seasons, the reality is totally different. Louis finds Lestat sitting in a dingy, rotting house a hurricane from the collapse. Lestat plays a fake wooden piano in time for a recording, with a worn robe slung over his hunched shoulders. He looks unkempt and disheveled, his thick blond hair has gone limp, his angular cheeks more hollow, probably because Lestat is drinking wild rat blood like Louis did.

When Lestat finds himself to talk to Louis face-to-face, it's almost as if he's left a dead body behind. His eyes are empty, his voice brooding and petulant a creepy mumble. He addresses Louis with reserved caution; any dim shadow of his familiar joie de vivre descend quickly into self-snarling hatred and even fear, shunning Louis's approach like a cornered animal. Perhaps worst of all, Lestat states that his obvious misery is not “enduring,” but “living.” This is the whole feeling, as it taught Louis that the vampiric existence is enduring without end. Lestat also calls New Orleans his home. But, chosen or not sanctuary, who can call it alive? Isn't Lestat enduring what he called a vampire's worst fate and destroyed lives to avoid: loneliness?

Hoping for Louis to rub salt in his wounds, a stunned Lestat's defenses crumble as Louis takes responsibility for his ugliest mistakes. Lestat then breaks down in harrowing tears once Louis confirms that he ran into the sun in 1973, a moment Lestat has memorized down to the time difference between San Francisco and New Orleans. He can barely speak, the symbolic hurricane gathering intensity around him, he confesses as Claudia pursues him. Sample; he is worn down to the bone marrow after spending almost 80 years poisoned by remorse. He overflows with self-loathing and “lives” to punish himself. Why else is he practicing for his upcoming tour by playing a fake piano? He has been forbidden to devote himself to music, which most positively “pierces his soul”.

“Interview with the Vampire” Season 3 could lean into Lestat's past

Interview with the vampirethe ending reveals it Lestat is more broken than anyone could imagine. He knew the consequences of loving Claudia and did it anyway, a sentiment that Louis and Claudia's stories hinted at, but buried beneath his growing disdain. When Lestat agrees to marry her for Louis, he warns his lover that “you'll regret this for the rest of your life.” The prophecy comes back to Lestat as much as to Louis. Her betrayal didn't matter once she was burned alive; Clàudia will always be the daughter that Lestat did not protect.

Early in the finale, Louis, fresh from murdering the entire coven, corners Lestat in a tower that once belonged to Magnus, Lestat's father. Infamously, Magnus had chained Lestat to the wall for days before forcibly turning him into a vampire. Months after Claudia's death, Lestat leans against Magnus's wall, talking to himself and reflecting on what made him who he is. The real Lestat is not glamorous. He loves too deeply and holds on too tightly, their trauma manifests through deeply toxic and destructive means. “It's a story of love, not carnage,” Lestat insists during the trial in episode 7, correcting one of Santiago's (Ben Daniels) falsehoods. The truth has been there all along. Since no other character could see through their respective pains, neither could we.

Perhaps the graduated catharsis that Lestat and Louis shared in New Orleans will guide Lestat to the redemption of an anti-hero. Regardless of what Season 3 holds, not only does showing a truthful Lestat align with the series' themes and focus on Rice's work, but it sets the stage (pun intended) for the adaptation of third season of the following two novels, The vampire Lestat i Queen of the damned. In Rice's universe, Lestat corrects the story with his own memoirs after Louis and Daniel publish Interview with the vampire. In the world of AMC, The full story of Lestat is yet to come — and certainly brings its own subjectivity. Reid told Collider, “Lestat is probably a little messier than we've seen. I think it's brilliant and there's a lot of room for him to explore.” Till then, Interview he has finally played his long game: to make his most evasive character tragically tangible.

Interview with the vampire is available to stream on AMC+.

Watch AMC+