The Vampire Lestat: The Failures

“You are listening to The Failures, Album 58, Side A.”

I had to think about this episode for a bit to figure out how I felt about it, and ultimately I believe it is brilliant, but perhaps divisive upon first viewing.

That’s it, the show is over and there is no climax. The concert teased multiple times throughout the season did not happen and instead we are treated to a heart-wrenching hour of torture, trial and trauma. Given how bombastic and loud this season has been, which has all been a mask Lestat has worn to keep away his demons, it should come as no surprise that the finale would fully tear off his mask and force him to face his failures.

I’ll get into the Louis section next, but I have to discuss the entire Lestat sequence, as it was chock full of everything we’ve seen throughout the season. Framed as a trial, not unlike the one Claudia faced, representations of the most important people in Lestat’s life face him around a long table. Well, except for Claudia because she already made her voice heard last episode.

Chaired by Magnus he is confronted with his fledglings, his children, his victims. First is Nicky whose biting sarcasm and anger are in response to his tragic life and death. We’ll skip Gabriella for now and move on to Louis, who is mostly background, adding some well placed comments throughout that slice through the artifice or bring up details Lestat would like to forget. His personality is also very much Louis from their time in New Orleans, which must be how Lestat holds him in his mind.

Antoinette is an interesting inclusion. She serves as the transcriptionist of this trial on an old style typewriter. She is very angry, but also clearly serves as a simple representation of his time with Louis and Claudia and their betrayal. He made her love him, used her to spy and then did almost nothing to stop her from dying. He didn’t even really care about her, and her anger is a way of expressing his guilt about how he treated her.

Finally TC, confirmed to be his progeny, doesn’t say much but her mannerisms and joy represent Lestat’s ability to adapt and his love of life. She is the only one handling the phone besides Lestat, so she must also be his touchstone to modern times. She is also a representative of his band, and perhaps to the music he grew into loving. We know he didn’t pick up the violin until Marius pulled him from the ground some eighty years after Nicky’s death and Gabriella abandoned him.

Gabriella’s representation is at first quite on his side, but when he promotes her to chair she turns on him. This mirrors their relationship in life; the power dynamic Lestat has allowed with her has never been either healthy or balanced. Her presence represents his past and obviously his relationship with her. He finally allows himself to revisit the witch's execution and discovers her motivations for taking him there and forcing him to watch girls his own age burn.

She taunts him, accuses him of failures. But in doing so she also forces him to confront the fact that her words are lies, her actions paint a very specific portrait of a woman who does not care for anything in her life, including him. She uses him, perhaps prefers him, but loves him? She manipulates him, pushes him, leads him into things. He may have instigated their first sexual encounter as vampires, but she planted the seed of that kind of dynamic in his head after the incident with the wolves, when they were still human and he was deeply vulnerable.

His moan upon realizing the depths of Gabriella’s evil was harrowing. Her callousness upon leaving him on the beach. Her constant dismissal of his feelings. Her laughter at Nicky’s madness. Her cruelty for taking a nine-year old boy to watch women get burned for petty reasons, which she spelled out to him as they hung gunpowder around their necks. And of course her casual acceptance of his love twisted by her manipulations and lies into two-hundred years of incest.

Then there is Magnus, his maker and the foundation of his madness. Lestat’s life was fairly broken before Magnus took him, but he was happy living with Nicky and working at the theater. He may have been happy with Nicky, or maybe they would’ve been torn apart in a different way. Regardless, Magnus turned Lestat into a victim permanently. It was a mental prison that Magnus placed him within, and every one of Lestat’s actions afterwards was an attempt at escape.

Except his final response to their accusation of failure is to hit snooze on his own death and laugh in the face of that accusation. He literally changes the scene, and takes the stage to offer his own views. He knows he has failed his blood, but at least he tried to do something meaningful with his life. His mistakes were many, as he stared at a crowd of his own victims. He holds them all in his mind, faces, names. He cares about who he kills, perhaps not in the moment but he wrote a song about a boy he must’ve spent minutes with decades ago.

Towards the end Paul arrives and sits next to Lestat. This raises an interesting existential question about the entire sequence. Is this Lestat having a dying delusion, or is this a brief connection to the afterlife? Is Paul real? Either way it does confirm that Lestat did cause Paul to give into his worst impulses.

I don’t think Paul would have lived terribly long, he was too broken, but it does recontextualize his death and confirm a suspicion I’ve always had about that heartwrenching moment from the interview. Paul takes the time to forgive Lestat, and praises him for his love of Louis. It is almost a sweet moment, undercut by the fact Paul is one of his victims. I also loved the comment about wishing Lestat was a woman, and Lestat agreeing with him (to a degree).

Sorry, I’m rambling. This episode reframes this entire season. It answers all the questions about Lestat’s music and lyrics and is hauntingly beautiful and deeply sad. Sure, we don’t see the concert, but honestly that scene is from the next book and I’m glad it wasn’t shoved into this season. It would’ve been a rotten cliffhanger, because ultimately we should get a full episode unpacking those events, not ten minutes.

The final moment we do see is a huge tease, as we see a very alive Lestat finish his Failures recordings and walk out onto the balcony of his flat in Montreal, into the sun which no longer affects him and reveals the utter devastation of the city. His voice is still playful, but also very somber as he accepts responsibility for what happened with her… The Queen of the Damned.

Okay, onto Louis and Armand. I have a bit less to say about these scenes. This does feel like the direct consequences of what happened at the end of Interview with the Vampire. It was also very difficult to watch, the practical special effects allowing for this visceral image of Louis’ head detached from his body. The intense conversation is very confrontational despite Armand having complete control over the situation.

Again Armand lashes out, does the unthinkable, makes the wrong choices because it is what he knows. He is acting out the trial yet again, this time with a webcam audience. It is quite clear that Armand set this up to be the stage for Louis’ death. While he fully planned for every eventuality, he likely didn’t expect Louis to actually make a true confession of his sins.

But when Louis finally did apologize for his failures and confess the reason he stayed all those years, it started to flip a switch in Armand. You could see in real time all the indignation and anger Armand had built up slip away. Then Armand stopped the recording when Louis started to talk about Armand's past. The fact that Louis could see the innocent and good person within him, that he deserved to have a love that cradled him and he could depend upon was everything. Such a beautiful moment, it was amazingly well done and served as a satisfying end to their relationship.

So what didn’t work? This was a strangely paced season, with a very disjointed narrative hook. This almost Tarantino style out of sequence storytelling does work, but it lost momentum around episode four and there just wasn’t really enough time to pick back up to push through to a satisfying climax.

Instead, I don’t think they even tried, because this finale is introspective and thoughtful, not loud and bombastic. It wraps up the emotional throughline for Lestat instead of pushing the grander plot, as though this were more of a middle chapter instead of a final chapter. I guess that is perfectly fine if we get another season. If this is the end, it is unfinished.

Bits:

There is a bowling sequence with Daniel again, and his floating head rant at Lestat was hilarious.

Raglan showed up again, this time to save Lestat. Although I do not think it is remotely altruistic. The Talamasca seem to be pushing for something major to happen.

It is confirmed an older and powerful vampire can survive a decapitation, although the hows and whys of this kind of reunification is somewhat unexplained. Something about the blood healing the wound, but how Louis is able to control his body after the decapitation is waved away as something to do with proof of the soul.

Gabriella turned Alex and I’m guessing Sam Barclay turned Salamander. I think Lestat made the best choice, TC is the most interesting band member by far.

Quotes:

Armand: “I have been enduring intense conversations with myself in the three years since our companionship ended. And as part of that journey, I wish to say something from the deepest regions of my soul.”
Louis: “Ar…”
Armand: “Two grievous lies, gross betrayals. The first is a well-trod pit of hot coals I blistered my feet on for 77 years.”
Louis: “Arm…”
Armand: “I chose my coven over you, lured you into a production of a play, in which your death would act as the grotesque climax. The coven was twisting my arm, but…”
Louis: “Ar…”
Armand: “I took aesthetic pleasure in making your death visually exhilarating.”
Louis: “…mand.”
Armand: “All of which was made worse by our heady lovemaking throughout this period of betrayal, and… the second. I shamefully took credit when Lestat saved your life."
Louis: “Where am I?”
Armand: “That lie bound you to me, and it lay like a corpse in the boiler room of our companionship. Many times, I told myself the lie did not matter because what we had built, a love that served as a bunker against time, was weightier and more consequential than the lie, but it wasn’t true.”

Magnus: “Magnus gifted you immortality. Magnus gifted you boundless lucre.”
Lestat: “Magnus speaks in the third person when he’s on the back foot.”

Lestat: “You are all here tonight because I murdered you, made you, or memorably traumatized you. Congratulations for your historical proximity to me. No doubt it was the defining moment of your life.”

Lestat: “I took your blood. I did my vampire duty. I brought death, spread fear, fostered superstition and paranoia. Moral complaints all fall on the idea that humanity is…”
Fledglings: “Failure!”
Lestat: “I don’t agree. No one asked you, lady! I think in the end, in the end, I think, I was pretty fucking great! But if I failed, if… if I failed, then that means I actually attempted something.”

Paul: “Thank you for loving him, for loving him the way he needs to be loved. I still wish you were a woman.”
Lestat: “Me too, sometimes.”

This season has been quite a ride, it wasn’t straight forward but neither is Lestat. He needed the journey to get to a place of self-reflection. He needed the chaos to allow his fractured mind to heal. Ultimately this was a season about a good man finding himself again, and I know it will get better upon rewatch. Also Sam Reid is simply incredible as Lestat, I just needed to say that one last time.

4 out of 4 Confessions, mistakes and failures.

Samantha M. Quinn spends most of her time in front of a computer typing away at one thing or another; when she has free time, she enjoys pretty much anything science fiction or fantasy-related.

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