TV Review: "Interview with the Vampire": "And That's The End of It. There's Nothing Else" (S2, Ep. 8)
The second season of AMC's evocative and beautiful vampire melodrama goes out on a remarkably strong note while also setting the stage for an even more dramatic third season.
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Well, fam, we made it. The second season of Interview with the Vampire is now complete, and what a wild, deliciously unhinged ride it’s been! The finale is heartbreaking and melodramatic and wrenching; in short, it’s all of the things that we’ve already come to love and expect from this show and then some. It knew the assignment, and it more than delivered on all of its promises.
The heart of this episode is Louis’ escape and recovery from his imprisonment at the hands of the coven as well as his subsequent revenge. Driven nearly mad by bloodlust, he cuts a swathe through their number, ultimately killing all but two of them, one of whom is of course Armand. However, things get complicated in the presence when it’s revealed that his beloved wasn’t the one who saved him from execution but instead both a willing participant in the trial and its prime mover. Thereafter Louis leaves Armand behind and finally reconciles with Lestat, while Daniel becomes a bestselling author and, in a final twist, is turned into a vampire by none other than Armand.
Look, I know that Armand is a villain. I even wrote about him in that light a few weeks ago. Even so, I wasn’t prepared for the revelation of his complicity in Louis’ near-death at the hands of the coven. This being Armand, I’m sure that he managed to convince himself that this was the only thing that he could have done in the circumstances, that when it came down to it he cherished his own life over that of the vampire he supposedly loved more than any other. Now, there’s some room for debate as to whether Armand would have allowed Louis to actually perish. Duplicitous he might be, but I truly do think that Armand–in all of his iterations, both in print and on the screen–has always loved Louis and would have done everything in his power to save him from the sun.
The scene in which the truth finally dawns on Louis is truly one of the best that this season has yet given us. Everything about it is perfectly staged, from the way that Eric continues to needle Louis, forcing him to think carefully about his memories of what had happened, both during the trial and during his life with Lestat to the looks on all of their faces as the truth finally bursts into the open. As it has since the beginning, Interview forces both its characters and its viewers to contend with the slipperiness and impermanence of memory, even if doing so leads to devastating revelations that upend everything one thought about the world and one’s place in it. For his part, Assad Zaman acts the hell out of this scene, his eyes blazing with mingled fury and frantic fear as he realizes that Louis is well and truly lost to him now. You almost, almost, feel sorry for him as he reckons with the fact that his one source of stability has been taken away.
But how about that reunion between Louis and Lestat? This is the moment the entire season has been moving toward and, despite everything that has passed between them, they find a way of reuniting, even as a hurricane threatens to tear New Orleans apart around them. This is the first time that they’ve ever really been able to speak to one another (the trial certainly doesn’t count), and the chemistry between Reid and Anderson is, unsurprisingly, off the charts, particularly since it offers both of them a chance to show their more vulnerable side. Reid in particular shines in this scene, just as he did in the earlier one where we saw him in the lonely tower where he was once imprisoned by Magnus (along with all of the others that the elder vampire failed to turn into a successor). It’s really quite refreshing to see a softer, gentler side of Lestat, right before he becomes a full glam rock queen in what promises to be a fantastic third season.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t shed a tear or two at the sight of these two finally getting their moment. The scene is filled with so many emotions–regret, sadness, even a bit of fright, particularly when Lestat asks Louis whether he harmed himself in San Francisco–but more than anything else there’s love. The bond between Louis and Lestat is one that nothing, not even Armand in all of his subtlety and manipulation nor Claudia in all of her rage and rebellion, can ever fully dim or destroy. The scene is melodrama at its most poignant, powerful, and overwhelming, and thank goodness for that!
And then there’s Daniel. He’s been the most incisive and sarcastic character this entire show, and that stays true right up until the end. He clearly doesn’t bear Armand any great resentment at having been turned into a vampire; if anything, he seems to relish his newfound fame and power as both an author of bestselling proportions and a child of the night. It’s quite a satisfying conclusion to his storyline from these first two seasons, and I can’t wait to see what the series has in store for him and us going forward.
The season ends, appropriately enough, with Louis claiming his mastery over his own fate. Yes, the publication of Daniel’s book has brought him to the attention of legions of vampires the world over, many of which want to destroy him, but he’s been through so much that he doesn’t seem to care all that much. There’s something exhilarating about his declaration that he owns the night, precisely because as viewers we’ve already seen him go through much. Jacob Anderson has well and truly made this role into his own, capturing all of Louis many facets: his queerness, his Blackness, his melancholy, his fury and rage and, at last, his acceptance of himself and his own power. As with Daniel and Lestat, it’s going to be so much fun seeing what happens to him next season.
If I have one complaint about this finale, it’s that Santiago’s death seemed far too perfunctory to feel really satisfying, something that it has in common with the film. In both cases, the malicious manipulator is beheaded using a scythe, whereas the rest of the coven at least get the honor of a fiery demise. Then again perhaps it’s fitting that this most theatrical and scenery-chewing of the Paris coven should meet a fate that’s as grisly and blunt as it is abrupt, denied the grand finale he most certainly would have wanted had he got things his way. I do know that I will miss getting to see Ben Daniels ham it up every week, and we can but hope that the series manages to find some equally compelling villains going forward.
All in all, I’ve loved every minute of this season of Interview with the Vampire. Finally, after all of these years, we have the Anne Rice adaptation we’ve all deserved. Here’s to an even better season three!