What To Know
- Episode 3 of The Vampire Lestat explores Louis’ ongoing grief over Claudia.
- Lestat reaches new emotional depths as he confronts traumatic memories involving his maker Magnus and his mother Gabriella.
- The episode draws parallels between Nicki and Claudia’s tragic fates, with Armand projecting his own struggles onto Claudia.
Warning: The Vampire Lestat spoilers ahead. This article also contains discussion of sexual assault and incest.
The Vampire Lestat Episode 3 delivered a scene that’s been in the works since Season 1, according to showrunner Rolin Jones. It featured the return of a character from Season 1 to bring one storyline full circle, but in an intentionally unsatisfying way that sets up the next stage of Louis’ (Jacob Anderson) grief about Claudia (Delainey Hayles). The episode also showed Lestat (Sam Reid) at the most emotionally honest we’ve ever seen him, after two episodes of the rock star swatting away difficult memories as quickly as they can flash through his mind. It also marked the return of Armand (Assad Zaman). The Vampire Lestat cast reacts to Episode 3 in the video interview above.
Lestat finally sat down for a long-form interview with Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian) in Episode 3, but he was not as willing a participant as Louis was in Season 2. Lestat danced around hard topics before the presence of his mother, Gabriella (Jennifer Ehle), Daniel’s consistent prodding, and his exhaustion from the tour finally gave way to something real. Lestat told the story of his first love, Nicki (Joseph Potter), and how vampirism curdled his mind. Armand and Gabriella were with Lestat as Nicki reached the depths of his psychological torment caused by being turned into a vampire. Zaman tells TV Insider that Armand’s feelings about Nicki in this episode are similar to how he felt about Claudia.
“There are definitely parallels that he recognizes. When he meets Claudia in Season 2, Nicki is probably running in his mind. There are similar energies there, but Claudia was a hell of a lot younger and more vulnerable. I think Armand, in a really, really weird way…kind of identifies with the torment in her.”
Armand “naively” assumed that Claudia’s mind would curdle just like Nicki’s, Zaman says, but the actor admits that he decided this about Claudia without ever really getting to know her. Zaman says that Armand, in a way, feels that he was doing Claudia a favor by killing her. Hayles thinks this is a “cop out,” because Claudia loved being a vampire. She struggled deeply with the age of her turning, but her mind was built for immortality, unlike Nicki’s.
“I think she was just in [Armand’s] way,” Hayles says. She thinks that “Armand knew that she was a good vampire, but just her circumstance was the only thing that was holding her back, and she was in the way of what he wanted, and she had to go.” Hayles and Zaman agree that Armand was, to a degree, projecting his “self-hatred” onto Claudia.
Louis’ plot in this episode was all about avenging Claudia. He found “Killer,” a.k.a. Bruce (Damon Daunno), the vampire who kidnapped and sexually assaulted Claudia in Season 1. Bruce married Baby Jenks (Ella Ballentine) and returned home to find Louis waiting for him. Louis read Claudia’s diary pages about Bruce aloud before he killed him. These were the pages that were withheld from Daniel in Season 1. Jones says he’s been planning this scene with Claudia’s diary pages since Season 1.
“Knew exactly where those pages were going to happen, how that was going to happen,” Jones explains. “Probably had a different setting initially about where it was going to happen, but I knew that’s where we were going. [They’ve been] sitting on that for a while and knew pretty early on that that would be a pretty empty experience for [Louis]. That is ultimately what is driving him towards Regina. It’s not a destination port, and actually it’s just a stop along the way on that journey.”
Regina is the New York waitress who looks just like Claudia. Louis first mentioned her in Episode 2 in conversation with Daniel, and then the unfulfilling experience of killing Bruce to avenge Claudia led Louis to go back to Regina’s diner to see her again. Anderson says the Regina storyline is a continuation of Louis’ grief. The Game of Thrones alum felt that Louis’ journey to find the truth about himself and Claudia was wrapped up well at the end of Season 2, so he couldn’t picture how this grief storyline was going to continue. But this season reminded him that grief never ends; it evolves. When you live forever, that evolution comes at varying degrees of difficulty and can reveal sides of yourself that are uncomfortable and confronting.
“I was going to say he’s addicted to grief…I think that is true to an extent, but how do you ever un-grieve?” Anderson tells us. “I think that something that’s really unique about this show and about this story is that it’s not just about tying up loose ends. This is a conversation we’ve had. With Louis, I’m like, you just so beautifully rounded everything off, but then, and then! They live forever. You have to sit in your psychological sh*t all the time. The residue’s gonna…”
Reid chimes in that it’s important to remember that “Dubai was only 11 days,” so Louis still has a lot to process. The same goes for Lestat, who is at an extreme emotional low in this episode as he reflects on the trauma of his nonconsensual transformation into a vampire at the hands of the villainous Magnus (Damien Atkins). The episode depicts Magnus’ obsession with Lestat as a campy music video, casting him as a modern-day stalker. The humor of the scene adds to its horror. As Atkins told TV Insider, this humor is Magnus telling Lestat that “your feelings, your vulnerability is of no consequence to me. I’m unaffected by you.”
Lestat’s personhood has been disregarded by his mother, Gabriella, as well. She sees him as the man she could never be, and that’s part of the foundation of their incestuous relationship. She had sex with his doppelganger, Jarda, in Episode 3, in the middle of Lestat’s interview with Daniel, and she was intentionally loud to make him jealous. Reid says that Gabriella has been bad for Lestat’s mental health since she returned, but that his mental health struggles were also the reason he begged for her return.
“He’s so messy when she arrives; he’s in a mess mess. But he’s probably at his most messy because he’s begging for her to come back as well,” Reid says, “and so she does create the worst version of him. And then she arrives back, and yeah, from Episode 2 to Episode 4, he’s gone batsh*t crazy.”
The flood of memories about Nicki and Magnus, paired with Gabriella’s actions, left Lestat in emotional distress. A scene with “muse” Magnus at the end of the episode showed the real terror that Lestat feels about his maker. This scene played out as Louis read Claudia’s pages about Bruce, highlighting tragic parallels between Lestat and his vampiric daughter.
Learn more about the episode from The Vampire Lestat cast in the full video interview above.
The Vampire Lestat, Sundays, 9/8c, AMC, Streaming on AMC+