“The question was, ‘How do vampires hide from Google?’ Not ‘How did Lestat break his heart?’”
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You gotta give it to Daniel (Eric Bogosian) for insisting on keeping Armand (Assad Zaman) and Louis (Jacob Anderson) on their toes and refusing to let their pretty little love stories derail his mission. He’s here for answers. Real answers about how the likes of Armand have stayed hidden for so so many years. And yet all he’s offered time and time again are soap-opera antics about boys falling for other boys in the dead heat of the night. Which, you know, is precisely why a lot of us are tuning in week in and week out.
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This time around, though, we’re going all the way back to when Armand first met Lestat (Sam Reid). After centuries of lording over the Parisian coven, keeping them safe (if cloistered) by having them hew to well-known vampire rules, an emaciated Armand is right to sense that the arrival of a dashing vampire in the late 18th century will destabilize whatever frail equilibrium his group had achieved in the French capital. He recognizes Magnus’s blood immediately.
Lestat, as we see, doesn’t hide in the shadows. He takes to the stage every night and seduces any and all who lay eyes on him. He’s not beholden to the ancient laws Armand finds himself honoring in his coven. He’s a loose canon who, of course, lures the ancient vampire to him, which leads to a fight the vain blond vamp was never going to win: He has no powers to match and so finds himself looking agog as Armand freezes the humans all around them, easily shoves Lestat up against a wall and onto the street, and absconds with the vamp’s pretty little mortal boyfriend. It’s all in the service of a perfectly orchestrated standoff wherein Lestat (with a large wooden Jesus crucifix on hand) makes clear to Armand’s children that God is dead: “You are the gods.” That’s enough to break apart the coven—or, as it happens, to reimagine it into the one we’ve met in the postwar period. With Lestat and Armand now an item, each lured by the other’s thrall, the Parisian vampires set out to put themselves on display onstage.—and, in so doing, find ways of killing openly within the guise of performance: “Belief is protection,” Lestat puts it when discussing why audiences end up being so gullible, giving them cover to do with mortals as they please.
How all of that, and the setting up of the logistics of the Theatre des Vampires, answers Daniel’s questions about evading an increasingly capable surveillance state is a question for another day—especially now that Daniel is having to contend with the fact that he is being surveilled and hacked. Can he really trust that shady character he met while dining out (played by Justin Kirk) and acknowledge that Lestat’s “prophetic vision” (a world where humans are so distracted they can’t see the vampiric bloodshed in front of them) is coming true right before him? Could it really be true that four other writers had, at other points, attempted what Daniel is doing now? Might it be possible to believe that the number of vampires really is increasing at an alarming rate?
Neither Daniel nor we have enough time to ponder these questions. For we are thrust back into postwar Paris once Louis joins Armand again at the table once we learn that soon after learning how to utilize all his powers (and necking Armand quite explicitly at the theater where their coven was thriving, telling him how much he loved him), the ever charming cad of a vamp fled. And so years and years went by before the wounded Armand would utter those words again to, as it turns out, Lestat’s boyfriend and killer.
Yes, it was only a matter of time but the secret is finally out—even if it’s been obvious Armand knew that Claudia and Louis were lying about some opera loving motorcyclist vampire named Bruce who had turned them both. They may be good liars, but those Bruce details were getting increasingly absurd. Few things get past Armand, who continues to seduce Louis even as the American vampire has little interest in his coven (though maybe some interest in the ever alluring coven leader). Long walks at night find the two would-be lovebirds getting to know one another and, as it happens, dancing around the very thing that binds them together: Lestat, who remains a haunting vision in Louis’ world. He can’t escape him and so, eventually, during an outing with Armand, he comes clean and confesses how he’d known Lestat. It’s quite an affecting scene, especially as it thrusts Louis into a blinding rage that finds him killing an unsuspecting bystander thinking him Lestat.
If you’re wondering where Claudia is in all of this, you’re not alone. That’s Daniel’s question, too. The not-so-young vampire is now obsessed with the Theatre des Vampires. She’s been working behind-the-scenes shifts in hopes of finally getting to be onstage one day and following in the footsteps of Santiago (Ben Daniels), terrifying audiences while commanding the attention of their victims. Long gone is her defiant attitude. You wouldn’t even think of her as a ruthless leader. She’s been reduced to a servile vampire who smiles when Santiago winks her way even after he’s asked her to not stare at him directly.
This is all what’s required of her ahead of being officially incorporated into the coven, a ceremony that coincides with an ultimatum set by said coven to Armand: either deal with the pesky American vampire he’s so infatuated with and who continues to flaunt his independence in the City of Light…or else.
As we watch a giddy Claudia being welcomed into the coven in a surprisingly tasteful initiation (some laws being read out loud, many of which Claudia has already broken), we see Armand pursue Louis into the sewers of the city, seemingly to corner him and kill him. Yet the two have such attraction for one another that it’s no surprise to find them ending up, instead, at Louis’ place:
“Are you gonna come upstairs?”
“That depends. Are you gonna kill me?”
I, for one, can’t wait to see how this turns out.
- Can we talk about the sumptuous, romantic score Daniel Hart (A Ghost Story, The Green Knight) has been conjuring this season? I was particularly taken this episode with the theme he composed for the moment when Armand and Lestat finally cave into their joint, balletic seduction of one another.
- Justin Kirk. That’s it. That’s the observation. From Angels In America to Weeds to Succession, there is no show that doesn’t immediately benefit from his presence. I cannot wait to see what his RJ has in store for us this season.
- My favorite hand-written note Daniel wrote to himself is “MI6?” as if that was such a simple query best jotted down in a scrap piece of paper.
- Love that one of the first plays at the Theatre des Vampires is Le Bûcheron Malheureux (The Unhappy Lumberjack).
- What are the odds that this Bacon triptych art dealing business is going to end up factoring more into our story than we’re being led to believe?
- Could Louis and Claudia not come up with a more believable vampire name than…Bruce?
- How curious it is to hear that Armand thinks Claudia will soon perish, her teenage body no match for her vampiric powers. Ponder.
- Speaking of Claudia: How hideous was that baby-girl dress she now has to wear onstage? We’d be as aghast as she is! (And not just for the realization that among so many, she’s bound to be reduced to her teenage-girl looks for all eternity.)