Most shows might end when their two leads get beheaded, but The Vampire Lestat is proudly its own creature of darkness.
The Voiceover (Guy Maddin) tells us we’re listening to The Failures, Album 57, Side A.
We see a new angle of Lestat (Sam Reid) and Louis (Jacob Anderson) being beheaded in the park. “The world blurs,” Lestat narrates, “I see … a half-painted moon …” This is the bloodied crescent blade Daniel (Eric Bogosian) uses on Lestat, just as Armand (Assad Zaman) decapitates Louis. “And then I dream.”
The Failures thereafter intercuts two “real” settings with Lestat’s head trip (sorry, but when dealing with the p.o.v. of a severed head, bad puns must be made – it’s the Sixth Great Law). To prevent readers’ brains from imploding while trying to keep all straight, we’ll take these sections separately.
It’s November 1. We get tight close-ups of Louis, but at first, we’re so tied to his point of view that the screen contracts and goes black when he blinks.
In the back room of a butcher shop, Armand (blurry in Louis’ vision) reminds him it’s been three years since their relationship ended.
Declaring this comes from “the deepest regions of my soul,” Armand reads from a written-out amends statement (evidently, he took those AA meetings seriously). He’s sorry for choosing his coven over Louis, trying to kill him as part of a play, and for taking credit when Lestat saved Louis’ life. Armand tried to tell himself that his and Louis’ love was weightier than the lie that bound them together, “but it wasn’t.”
“Can’t move my body,” Louis gasps. Then he sees his jagged, bloody neck stump protruding from his body, seated in a chair, hands fruitlessly grasping the air.
Major props to the practical and VFX teams. Films and TV series often take the easy route and have an actor poke their head up through a hole in a tabletop. Louis’ head is on a skewer, with several inches convincingly showing space between its bottom and the nearest surface.
Louis’ head is wired to a computer operated by Dr. Fareed Bhansali (Gopal Divan), livestreaming to a room full of VIPs in Budapest.
Armand is unsettled that he so easily led a cult for 400 years, killing anyone who broke the rules. “I think I might be a room without walls … infinite nothing.”
When Louis asks about Lestat, Armand reveals Lestat’s decapitated body. The head is with “my companion,” i.e., Daniel. Since vampires’ heads can be reattached if done in time and Lestat has the blood of the Queen, he has extra longevity. Also, Armand wants Lestat to perform his concert.
Armand now reveals a hostage – terrified human Claudia lookalike Regina (Delainey Hayles). Louis protests that Regina has nothing to do with this …
Er, well, turns out that after Louis had slammed Armand into the wall of their Dubai penthouse and decamped, Armand used a photo of Claudia and facial recognition software to find a perfect physical double.
Knowing that Claudia was the best way to destabilize Louis, Armand introduced himself to Regina in London, set her up in New York, and put her in Louis’ path. Adding that sometimes Regina’s instincts about how to manipulate Louis were better than his own. Regina tearfully says she’d never have cooperated if she knew what Armand intended.
Now Armand demands that either Louis make his amends, or Armand will cut Regina’s head off and sew Louis’ head onto her body.
While Louis is appalled and Regina freaks out, we can guess this won’t happen. While The Vampire Lestat gets way out there, even this show isn’t up for the gonzo visuals that experiment would entail.
Armand’s human follower Nelson is in the room. To prove he’s serious, Armand instructs Nelson to “rest.” Nelson promptly slits his own throat.
Louis, still feeling responsible for Regina, finally asks for paper, but his written apology is shoddy, even to us. Louis still can’t forgive Armand for orchestrating Claudia’s death and nearly killing him.
Implacable, Armand says “rest” again. Regina resists but slices her arm open. Louis is failing, his eyes going in different directions, à la Pennywise. Armand listens telepathically, repeating Louis’ words (which we hear) for the livestream.
Louis acknowledges he knows what it’s like to live with lies so fully they might as well be true. These include pretending to be heterosexual, a Black man who was deferential to whites, an artist – “Things I wasn’t.”
Recalling that Armand was sold into slavery as a child. Louis says he saw a lot of that in New Orleans where he ran brothels, but he and Armand “didn’t talk about it much.”
Armand agrees, shutting off the recorder, now just listening.
With true empathy at last, Louis’ telepathic voice breaks. “I didn’t want to think on my own sins, or picture you at twelve,” when Armand was being raped by slave holders. “You need a love that’ll cradle you … And I was never that for you. I’m sorry. My coldness, my denial, drove you to this.”
This isn’t the amends Armand expected, but it’s the one he needs. Moved to the verge of tears, Armand fixes Regina’s slashed arm and warns her to keep quiet. Free, Regina flees.
Instructing Fareed to reattach Louis’ head, Armand exits, too. A huge “A” has been carved on Louis’ chest.
In a bowling alley, Daniel has Lestat’s head in a bowling bag. Daniel doesn’t look well, tanned orange except for white sunglasses, circles around his eyes.
Band guitarist Alex (Seamus Patterson) shows up but won’t speak when Daniel asks if Armand sent him.
After Daniel and Alex bowl a few sets – Alex is a terrible bowler – human Talamasca operative Raglan James (Justin Kirk) enters.
Daniel is incredulous when Raglan reveals the Talamasca wants Lestat to play the concert. They’ve been working to bring about the Great Conversion.
Raglan explains that the vampire population has exploded in three years from 1,600 to 290,000, with each vamp killing 1.3 mortals a day. It’s a tipping point. But there are too many humans for Earth to sustain humanity. So, the Talamasca has been planning this for a year.
Raglan admits he can’t see vampires governing, but he and Daniel have different motivations.
Daniel’s is simple. “He pissed me off.”
This journalist can stipulate that it’s no fun being mocked by an interview subject, but with the beheading and monologuing and bowling bag, Daniel may have overreacted.
Raglan says that the independent survival of Lestat’s head and body is evidence of the existence of the soul fighting for survival.
A group of Talamasca agents arrives to claim the bowling bag.
Daniel, unhappy with this turn of events, vamps out on Raglan. We don’t see what happens next, but we know Daniel is outnumbered.
Lestat’s experience is an intertwined combination of memories, hallucinations, and possibly spiritual revelation.
Lestat is in the woods, where he says he’s “transcribing the chattering” of birds into music. He’s had this recurring dream since he faked his death, except now he’s hungry, and it’s daylight.
Child Lestat (Shepherd Munroe) and teen Lestat (Gage Munroe) are seated at the old long table from Lestat’s family estate with their old monastery teacher (Zachary Amzallag).
Suddenly, adult Lestat is inside the tower of his maker, Magnus (Damien Atkins), at one end of the long candlelit table. Magnus is at the other, with Gabriella (Jennifer Ehle), Louis, Lestat’s first lover Nicky (Joseph Potter), band drummer TC (Sarah Swire), and Lestat’s New Orleans lover (killed by Claudia) Antoinette Brown (Maura Grace) on either side.
Served by waiters, the food at the table looks normal but is proclaimed to be “The Soul.”
Magnus proclaims himself the meeting Chair. Antoinette types up the minutes on a manual typewriter.
Lestat concludes that he’s dead. Gabriella says he’s just dying.
Lestat then assumes they’re all here to judge him.
“We are the Failure Finders,” Magnus replies. “Judgment comes from God, Satan, simulation- we don’t know.”
Lestat starts to laugh. “This is a dream. I am not here.”
“You’re here,” Gabriella assures him.
Everybody takes turns criticizing Lestat, although Gabriella occasionally speaks up to defend him.
Magnus condemns Lestat’s abandonment of the Paris Théâtre des Vampires coven.
“I did what my maker showed me – throw money at the problem and run away,” Lestat counters. And why should Magnus be chair? “I knew you for a week! What do you know of me?” Lestat points out that Magnus forced both sex and the Dark Gift on him.
“Consent is a twentieth-century concern,” Magnus says. No, you rapacious putz, it’s just more commonly observed these days.
Lestat wants Gabriella to be the Chair, so Magnus and Gabriella exchange seats.
There’s an unzipping sound overhead. Daniel’s giant face comes down into the room and harangues Lestat for the interview-that-wasn’t. Daniel also says Lestat will be dead in a few hours, so Armand hasn’t clued his companion in on those “the show must go on” plans. The bag gets rezipped.
There is a reading of bad reviews from Billboard and other publications. One calls Lestat “a cross between a Robert Plant impersonator and an ‘80s hot dog embalmed with hair gel.”
Recalling the witch-burning, where the nine-year-old twins at the stake were his erstwhile playmates, Lestat demands to know why Gabriella made him witness this ghastly event. Gabriella explains she wanted Lestat to see what their fellow townspeople, the witch-burners, were really like, so he would escape the horrible community.
Ancient vampire Marius (Christopher Heyerdahl) appears, chastising Lestat for being ungrateful for being rescued after he buried himself and was chosen by Queen Akasha, who “lets him drink of her, makes him a godling …”
Louis chimes in that Lestat went to New Orleans and “gives the gift to a pimp, who lives to make him miserable …”
“The soul!” cries everyone at the table.
Gabriella calls Lestat “a tragic, crippled failure playing a piano, waiting for a hug.”
“The soul!” everyone shouts again.
“An album and a cult,” Gabriella continues.
“The soul!”
Lestat starts to laugh as his life memories run in reverse in flashback.
Everyone piles on – impulsive, stutterer, coward, selfish, a waste, a failure.
Lestat floats up off his chair and walks on the table. “Good shit. That’s why you’re opening and I’m headlining.”
The table becomes a walkway/stage for a concert. Lestat holds a microphone, welcoming the sizable crowd, including his child self, and many other faces he recognizes. “You are all here tonight because I murdered you, made you, or memorably traumatized you.”
Powering through a headache, Lestat declares, “What a life it’s been … In the end, I think I was pretty f***ing great!” The room cheers. “But if I failed … that means I actually attempted something. Which is more than I can say for most of those I love the most.” He promptly recants. “I don’t know if I mean that.” He loved them all.
Lestat flashes back on killing mortals, apologizing to victims, feeling that he let too much blood spill too often.
Weakening, Lestat drops to his knees. Louis’ suicidal brother Paul (Steven G. Norfleet) sits down beside him, assuring him that Louis loves Lestat, even if he has a hard time stating it. “Thank you for loving him the way he needs to be loved.”
They both look up as light shines down on them.
Paul whispers, “It’s not all that once you get there,” then speaks briefly to someone we can’t see.
And we’re out of Lestat’s head. He opens his coffin on the tour bus with Auntie Em and Uncle Henry – okay, Gabriella and Raglan and the band.
This is the next thing Lestat remembered. 45,000 vampires and 10,000 “naïve and beautifully unwell mortals” are waiting for him to sing. He’s disoriented.
“A man I did not recognize” – that would be Raglan – explained that the Talamasca were in on the situation the whole time and recovered the body parts.
Lestat figures out that Gabriella masterminded the concert in order to bring about the Great Conversion. His fears for Louis cause him to skip a confrontation. Lestat finds Louis in a diner, where they check one another’s now healed necks.
Gabriella enters. So much for avoiding the fight. Gabriella and Lestat scream over each other, her insisting that he perform, and him maintaining that he won’t, calling her “You f***ing monster!”
Flashforward to Lestat’s living room. He talks into a tape recorder, wondering who is listening to this. Did nobody buy it at auction and he’s just talking to himself?
The voiceover tells us we’re listening to The Failures, Album 58, Side A.
Lestat looks out from his balcony. Down below, it looks like a horde of kaiju played some high-stakes hopscotch through central Montreal. We hear wailing emergency sirens.
“The fault was mine, all mine,” Lestat concludes.
We are left with quite a few questions, starting with whether we’re getting another season, and which cities will burn if we don’t.
It’s symmetrical if not wholly satisfying that Season 3 of Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Lestat ends pretty much where it started, with us still not attending that (figuratively and literally) damned concert. But this has been one of the most intoxicating, fabulously performed, insane merry-go-round rides ever.
