While the title change indicates the change in focus from Louis de Pointe du Lac to Lestat de Lioncourt, the shadow of all that occurred before still looms large over what is happening now.
Such as the terrible fate of their daughter Claudia.
After presumably killing Lestat at the end of season 1, Louis and Claudia booked it to Paris in the 1940's and became involved with a vampire community called the Théâtre des Vampire. Louis gets a new lover and mentor in the form of the Vampire Armand.
Spoiler: Lestat ain't dead and was a patron of the Théâtre des Vampire. For Claudia's role in trying to murder their patron, the Parisian community sentence her and her vampire lover Madeline to death by sunlight.
It was a horrible, violent death and watching a defiant Claudia, along with Madeline, crumble into dust is a terrible scene that remains burned into my memory.
And Louis's biographer Daniel Malloy puts things together that Lestat was not the enemy Louis and Claudia thought he was and it was Armand who was working against Louis.
Daniel completes and publishes his book "Interview With A Vampire" and gets turned into a vampire by Armand and that brings us to The Vampire Lestat.
The Vampire Lestat is frontman for a punk rock band called "The Vampire Lestat". He's on a bus tour of a various mid-sized venues, building a small but devoted cult following.
Lestat is tapping into centuries of pain, loss, longing, desire, rage, guilt, yadda yadda yadda crafting songs for his big kick ass album.
Lestat is also in a love/hate/obsesssive/sexual relationship with his mother, the Vampire Sofia. Yes, Lestat is fucking his mother and we could try to explain it or just go with Lestat's excuse,"It's different for vampires."
When Louis finds out about this relationship, he will not agree that "it's different for vampires."
SIDE NOTE: Jennifer Ehle who plays Sofia was born in Winston-Salem, NC and attended the North Carolina School of the Arts.
Louis, using various aliases, has built an empire of property, think Monopoly but with actual hotels and also vampires. Louis has discovered Regina, a diner waitress who looks like Claudia. Louis acually pays Regina to pretend to be Claudia.
In the background of all this is Armand who is up to sketchy shit, slyly plotting against Louis and Lestat. Helping him with all that is Daniel Malloy.
And the big thing rumbling through the vampire community at large is something called the Great Conversion, a plan to bolster the number of vampires in the world.
And there's the Talamasca, a secret society that's trying to navigate the perils of a world with vampires and witches in it.
That is a LOT to keep track off.
OK, back to Louis and Regina...
Regina's read the "Interview With A Vampire" book and gets the details right but this doesn't provide the closure Louis is looking for regarding his guilt over Claudia's fate.
So Louis and Lestat arrange a meeting with a Mayfair Witch (oh, do I need to start watching Mayfair Witches?) to conduct a seance. The witch sommons the spirit of Claudia and she is not happy. At all. Most of her rage is directed at Louis.
Yeah, Lestat is a total prick but he never hid that. But Louis tried to pretend he was better than that and it's his fault Claudia was condemned to existence as a vampire.
Also wherever Claudia's soul has been since her death in Paris 80 years before, Madeline was not there with her and she's not here in now and this really pisses off Claudia as she screams Madeline's name before vanishing.
Well, that was a lot. Sitting on a park bench, processing what they just witnessed, Lestat and Louis chat with a warm and gentle familiarity. Perhaps there's an actual chance for our gay vampire couple.
Until Armand and Daniel slice their heads off.
Wait! Who did what to who how now?
Which brings us to the season finale.
Armand has Louis's head and his body hooked to wires and shit in a makeshift lab while he torments and tortures him. He also has Lestat's body but not his head.
Lestat's head is buried in Daniel's bowling bag. Inside his dying brain, Lestat is put on trial by manifestations of his maker Magnus, Sofia, Louis, others he had turned into vampires over the centuries. They accuse him of squandering his vampire existence and condemn him as a failure.
Lestat asserts himself against his accusers. If he is a failure, it means he tried to do something with his life.
I can't begin to summarize or analyze these twin torments that the severed heads of Louis and Lestat endure.
Let's just cut to the end and Louis and Lestat get their heads sewn back on.
The episode ends with Lestat looking out from a balcony as the sun rises on a burned and shattered world.
The Great Conversion went too far? That's a question for another season.
If Interview With A Vampire felt more (for lack of a better word) grounded, The Vampire Lestat leans harder into absurdity, with Lestat's drama queen rock star and the growing threat of an exposed vampire community demanding more than a furtive existence in the shadows. Add in some full on mad scientist shit (Lestat and Louis spend time as just heads and then get them sewed back on to their bodies? Really?) and The Vampire Lestat is a wild and chaotic ride.
I'll be honest, I'm not sure I understood it all but damn, I had a blast trying to hang on to whatever this was.
Until next time, remember to be good to one another and try to keep it down in there, would ya? I'm trying to watch TV over here.
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