The Vampire Lestat Season 1 Episode 2 Review: Lestat’s Past Comes Alive

Critic’s Rating: 4.4 / 5.0

4.4

A trip into the past reveals more about Lestat than we’ve arguably learned throughout all of Interview with the Vampire, which feels fitting for a series now centered on his perspective.

Through glimpses of his pre-vampiric life and his deeply complicated relationship with Gabriella, the hour offers valuable insight into the experiences that shaped him.

More importantly, it demonstrates that The Vampire Lestat isn’t content to simply reframe a familiar character; as it peels back the layers of Lestat’s history, the series continues to expand its broader vampire mythology, resulting in an episode that is both revealing and entirely engrossing.

As someone who hasn’t read the Anne Rice books, I’ve mostly entered each season without a ton of preconceptions about much of anything, basing my thoughts on what the show has given me on-screen.

Anything I knew about Lestat’s childhood came from the anecdotes we heard from Louis’s telling, so hearing firsthand from Lestat during The Vampire Lestat Season 1 Episode 2 was a welcome sight that helped better flesh out the cunning vampire.

My main criticism of the flashback was how quickly they seemed to come and go, but it also seems fairly obvious that this won’t be the only foray the season takes into the past.

It’s also apparent to us that, in the retellings of his past, his childhood may not be one he wishes to spend much time remembering.

Lestat’s childhood was marked by abuse, surrounded by a callous and cold family of men who looked down upon his stutter and his very existence, leaving Lestat to feel only a modicum of comfort in the form of Gabriella, who was only marginally warmer in a house that was slowly sucking her soul dry.

Their inside jokes seemed to quell something in Lestat, and he held onto that.

The scene in which Gabriella pushes back against her brutish sons and husband, with Lestat chiming in at her side, gives us a moment to see the pair as a twosome standing up to the bullies, as if they’re on the same team.

But when Lestat’s brothers start to physically harm him, Gabriella does nothing.

She sits stoically behind her book, not even sparing Lestat a glance, when he’s looking to her like a son looks to his mother, overwhelmed, scared, and in need of the balm of affection that only a mother can provide.

It’s a perfect encapsulation of their dynamic, as we see in the present day, where Gabriella holds him at a distance, evoking the power over him that she knows she possesses, as someone he desperately needs but she’s rarely willing to be.

Lestat’s killing of the wolves is mostly shown off-screen, but it came about as Lestat seemingly tried to show Gabriella, especially, that he could be the man to actually do something and be something, in a way his father and brothers refused to be.

In a way, it seemed like she wished that she could.

When Lestat said that the killing of the wolves defined him for a time, it’s easy to understand why the experience, which left him on the brink of death, would have such a profound effect.

It was courageous and almost spellbinding to kill eight wolves single-handedly and live to tell the tale, but when he was sitting on the floor, unwilling to even accept help, a darkness enveloped him, and Gabriella didn’t use that opportunity to comfort him but instead to prey upon his vulnerability.

Nothing about the experience left Lestat feeling positive. If anything, he was trembling with the notion of what he was capable of, as well as mourning the loss of his horse and dog in the aftermath.

Gabriella took that opportunity to speak about her own desires, after Lestat confided in her, culminating in a frankly uncomfortable exchange.

What struck me most was how unabashedly honest Lestat was about these raw desires to murder his family and strip himself of that cruelty, only for Gabriella to not only make it about herself but also leave him with the parting gift of her impending death.

Gabriella was wrapped up in this entirely unfulfilling, stagnant existence, and it was apparent that the one thing she craved more than anything was freedom and a form of independence she could never attain in either her life or her body.

It makes her eventual turn at Lestat’s hand later, and the way in which she subsequently comes in and out of Lestat’s life, even more devastating because of the callousness and selfishness with which she treats Lestat.

It’s often masked with a seductive smile and a shallow warmth that Lestat seems almost powerless to fully excise due to his own complex feelings and idolization of her.

For her part, Gabriella recognizes her power over Lestat and exploits it at every turn. It’s such an odd mixture of wanting to control and possess her son, and at times, wanting to be him. Or at least have the freedom to be someone like Lestat.

The interactions between Lestat and Gabriella in the present day are marked by an odd mixture of reverence and fear: more than once, Lestat asks whether she will be staying, and it’s clear from what he’s not saying that he’s afraid she’ll abandon him again if he can’t give her what she needs.

Because their dynamic revolves around Gabriella.

Gabriella remains a deeply manipulative presence in Lestat’s life, constantly giving him just enough affection but not the emotional reciprocity he craves.

And wasn’t it interesting to see Lestat put up a firm boundary with her after they had sex in the motel, only for Gabriella to trample over it the same evening?

It highlights how little respect Gabriella has for Lestat’s limits, while also showing that she’s staying for him, but only if she can get what she wants in return.

It was wildly uncomfortable to see his conflicted face on whether to give in and please her, or stay firm in what he wanted, knowing she might then leave again.

Lestat presents as a man in control, but with Gabriella, she holds all the cards. It is Gabriella who dictates the terms of their relationship, leaving them trapped in this back-and-forth volley of emotional devastation.

On the opposite end of Lestat’s reconnection with Gabriella, or Sophia to everyone else, he had to deal with the fallout from the boutique hotel massacre in The Vampire Lestat Season 1 Episode 1, involving both his band and the mysterious owner of the hotel.

The comedic beats in this hour were mostly centered on the band’s bus meeting, with a bevy of truly laugh-out-loud moments as Lestat’s fellow bandmates and team tried to come to terms with a new reality in which the ruse they were participating in was actually real.

Lestat, on the defensive, trying to quell fears but also unwilling to let his guard completely down, was at his very best.

He kept trying to bring the conversation back to the music and the small success they were receiving, while everyone else was unwilling to forget what they had just seen.

Each mention of Louis or Armand made Lestat a little more impatient and desperate. It took every bit of placating to get them to stay, and even that wasn’t enough, so he had to bring in the big guns: mind-reading.

I thought the band dynamics would be a bigger story this season, but perhaps with the first two hours being almost introductory, that will come later as the season progresses.

It almost feels like the series decided the first two hours had to be balls-to-the-walls Lestat-focused, but I don’t mean that in a bad way.

If you’re telling Lestat’s story, you have to start at the beginning because his human life informed the vampire he would become.

And we haven’t even touched on his turning at Magnus’s hands or his relationship with Nicky. Those two events are seminal moments in Lestat’s life that the series would do well to explore more deeply.

But anyway, this hour marked the start of Louis’s journey, and it’s very obvious where things are heading.

First off, Thomas Pitts being Louis and owning the boutique hotel in Detroit was peak television, even if the reveal was basically spoiled by the way we’ve seen that mediation confrontation between Louis and Lestat for months now.

Here’s the thing about Louis and Lestat: theirs is a history marred by half-truths, trauma, anger, uneasiness, resentments, and all the things. But buried beneath all that pain is love.

It’s confusing, but it’s also unbridled.  

Louis loves Lestat. Lestat loves Louis.

That’s not controversial or up for debate. It’s not as white-picket-fence as people like to see romance in, but nothing in a vampire world will ever be that way.

Did I believe Louis when he said he came because he was concerned about Lestat? I do believe that.

But I also think Louis was somewhat spiteful during their exchange, needling Lestat in ways he knew would prick him. And maybe even in ways that were unfair.

In Interview with the Vampire Season 2 Episode 8, during their emotional New Orleans hurricane reunion, Louis said what happened to Claudia wasn’t all on him, but here he was once again placing blame on Lestat, which felt odd.

The two throwing their sexual activities in each other’s faces was peak toxicity, but also not unlike the kinds of bombs they lobbed at each other in the past.

None of that changes the underlying truth of their relationship.

The fact that Louis still ingratiates himself in Lestat’s life says more than words ever could, but I don’t think Lestat’s at a place to genuinely hear what those actions say, and Louis is content enough where he is.

The concert scene in which Lestat sang to Louis, with the crowd morphing into a muted sea of beings and Lestat flinging the book at Louis, was one of my favorite moments in the entire series.

“I tried to write you the prettiest song in the world. But I got distracted.”

How crushing is that line?

That book, which they both hated, by the way, is currently the unmovable object between them, but it will never negate their bond or erase the connection that keeps pulling them back into each other’s orbit.

Louis and Daniel’s dinner was lowkey awkward, if only because there was a slight thrumming of tension, but knowing that this was Lestat’s version of an event he wasn’t actually privy to gave it a slightly different context.

Like Daniel admitting that he feels Armand in this almost spiritual way, and Louis immediately said “No” when Daniel asked if he felt Lestat that way.

Lestat would think Louis would respond that way because he doesn’t know or believe Louis loves him.

Their conversation took a disastrously solemn turn when Louis told Daniel about seeing someone who looked like Claudia, and the absolute, resigned, wretched look on Louis’s face made me feel many things.

Claudia’s death remains the defining event of Louis’s life, a wound that never truly healed and perhaps never can. And at this point, it feels larger than grief alone.

It’s become a permanent fixture within him, a solid mass of guilt, regret, and self-loathing he can’t escape.

There’s a before and an after with vampires. There’s a before life, the human one. And then there’s life after the turn.

For Louis, he has that, sure, but there’s also a pre-Claudia and a post-Claudia existence, and he’s currently living in the memory of her absence.

Ragland swooping into the dinner felt cruel for various reasons, but his handing Louis a nuclear bomb, complete with the codes, was every idiom you could think of.

Like taking candy from a baby.  

Ragland knew Louis would take the bait, and now Louis’s mission is set, but will it provide him any form of relief? Any form of satisfaction?

Louis only comes for those who come for him, but Bruce would always be the exception to that rule.

Lestat’s Liner Notes

• Daniel immediately making eyes at Sophia and flirting was funnier than it had any right to be. Vampire Daniel is something else.

• Louis is dating a man who is emotionally unavailable after everything he’s been through, and it tracks. He doesn’t have the bandwidth to give anyone else that part of himself right now.

• You could see how increasingly frustrated Lestat was when Gabriella brought up Louis and Claudia, because she’s so misinformed. And when Lestat starts talking in French, he’s over whatever is going on around him.

• Alex’s departure from the band will have consequences in the future. It has to, or Lestat wouldn’t have threatened him like that.

• The slaughtering of his family was a lot. Was that also in the books?

There was a lot to unpack with this one, and this is only the beginning of Lestat’s story.

How are you liking the season?

What do you think is next for Louis?

Let me know all your thoughts in the comments below!

You can watch The Vampire Lestat on Sundays at 9/8c on AMC and AMC+.