After a two-year hiatus, The Vampire Lestat is finally premiering this Sunday, with subsequent episodes following weekly. The show is deliciously intricate, undulating between past and present, between real and warped, and full of small details where the devil lies.
In order to appreciate season 3 to the fullest, there are many poignant moments from seasons 1 and 2 of Interview With the Vampire — and some small ones that might have flown under the radar — that fans should remember before diving into season 3.
In case you’ve missed it, read our spoiler-free review of Episodes 1-6 of The Vampire Lestat.
Without giving too much away, these moments from past seasons will play a part in The Vampire Lestat, so let’s refresh our memory.
1. Lestat and Music
A huge part of the advertising for season 3 features Lestat’s rockstar career. While the rock part might come as a shock, it’s important to remember that Lestat has been a composer and a lover of music the entire time we’ve known him. In season 1, we saw him take Louis to the opera, drain a tenor because he fell flat on a few notes, have a decade-long relationship with a singer, and compose music for his significant others. How many times have we seen him passionately play the piano in his and Louis’s Rue Royale home? It must have been such a constant in their lives that Louis even hallucinated Lestat playing the piano during one of his early dates with Armand in Paris. Music is Lestat’s preferred form of expression for which he has infinite appreciation. His first love was a violinist, and Lestat taught Claudia how to play the piano… two crucial facts we should keep in mind as we head into season 3.
2. Louis and Lestat
This is a story about Louis and Lestat — together and separately. Needless to say, their love is at the heart of the series. In the season 2 finale, they reunited and shared understanding in the middle of a hurricane. A few months ago, AMC released a clip from 3x01 of the two of them FaceTiming and back on flirtatious terms. Louis and Lestat are magnets, always bound to find their way back to each other. However, (thankfully) we’re not watching a YA romance; this story is layered, structured, and cares about its characters and their development as individuals. No matter how many or how few scenes Lestat and Louis have together this season, or the relationships they form with other characters (how many or how deep), the narrative is doing all it can to bring Lestat and Louis to a place where they can be together and do it right this time. Trust the process.
3. The Monastery
In Episode 1 of IWTV, while sitting at a Du Lac family dinner, Lestat recounted how he had wanted to become a priest in his youth. He joined a monastery and studied the writings of Aquinas and Erasmus, but his father and brothers did not approve of that education. When they dragged him away from the monastery, they beat the theology out of him, forever severing Lestat from religion. In season 3, there will be a poignant moment when a quote from Aquinas comes back to Lestat like an epiphany, at the perfect time.
4. Gabriella Enter Stage
In the first episode of the series, Lestat mentions that his mother gave him his first mastiff, his first rifle, and the means to make his way to Paris. While he doesn’t talk of his mother for the rest of season 1, it’s clear he holds love for her. Now, if you’ve seen any promo for The Vampire Lestat at all, you know that Lestat’s mother will play a big role this season… and that she and Lestat are much closer than they have any business to be. In season 1, Lestat hung a painting of his mother above his and Louis’s coffins in their Rue Royale home, which, in hindsight, if you’re hiding your mother’s existence from your husband… not a great move? What can we say, self-sabotage is a skill Lestat absolutely excels at.
5. Nicholas
In season 1, Lestat didn’t shy away from telling Louis of his first love, a violinist named Nicolas de Lenfent. A testament to the depth of his feeling, Lestat carried Nicolas’s music box with him over the ocean when he went to America. At some point, he composed a heartbreaking song for Nicki. In season 2, Armand told Daniel of his meeting Lestat in Paris, in which Nicolas played a significant part, as a pawn to draw Lestat to Armand, with a few deliberate tweaks to the timeline. The Vampire Lestat Episode 3 will set the record straight on how the relationship between Nicki and Lestat started… and how it ended. Spoiler: it’s tragic, of course.
6. Magnus
In Episode 1x06, Lestat finally acquiesced and told Claudia and Louis more about his maker Magnus and the circumstances of his turning, which was far from the romantic courtship Louis experienced with his maker. In season 3, as Lestat sits down for an interview for the documentary with Daniel, he will finally reveal more of this foundational part of his story. There is still some he will not say, but the audience is privy to his memories and ghosts. His kidnapping and turning will feature heavily. This part, particularly toward the end of Episode 3, would do well to feature a trigger warning.
7. Claudia's necklace
In season 1, during the happy years of Claudia’s youth when she, Louis and Lestat were a perfect family, Lestat gifted his daughter a splendid emerald necklace, saying it had been given to him by a Marquise. Season 3 will show us exactly when and how Lestat came to be in possession of such a jewel. Tears might ensue.
8. Armand and Lestat's complicated history
Armand claims in Episode 2x03 that he and Lestat were involved romantically and that Lestat seduced him into teaching him the Mind Gift and disappeared after a week. By now the audience knows not to trust Armand’s recounting of events, but seeing Lestat’s version will shed light just on how much Armand twisted, omitted, or downright changed, down to what character Lestat played when he was an actor, or to who was in the room when he expressed his love. Seeing Armand through Lestat’s eyes also gives us a completely different perspective of his character, a far cry from the collected Maitre that Louis met in the 1940s.
9. “Come To Me”
In Episode 6 of season 1, Lestat writes and records a song for Louis, which is ultimately what wins him back. “Come To Me,” goes the song, and the invitation is repeated time and time again throughout the seasons. The Vampire Lestat continues the iteration: we see the words “come to me” playfully escape Lestat’s lips, we hear him hum the song. The invitation is a litany that seems to play in the background for the entire season, one that has accompanied Lestat all his life.
10. Bruce
When Claudia left home in season 1, she encountered the vampire Bruce who eventually kidnapped and assaulted her. In season 3, the audience will see Bruce again, although he goes under a different name in this century. We will be painfully reminded of Claudia’s traumatic memories.
11. Lestat's blind spot
Lestat is known for overindulging. Whether it’s for the sheer pleasure of it or to drown his sorrows and his ghosts, he often gets lost in the thrill of it. Sometimes, he gets careless in his excessive partying. That is how Claudia and Louis almost killed him, with Claudia’s perfectly orchestrated plan to feed Lestat drugged blood as a way to weaken him. Not much has changed in present day, when Lestat will admit, “I have a bit of a blind spot when it comes to drugged blood.” We will see a few instances of what happens when Monsieur Le Rockstar loses control.
12. Mr de Pointe du Capitalism
In present day, Louis is a multimillionaire. He has way more money than what he knows to do with, so he invests in whatever venture he wants now, be it art, real estate, the hospitality industry (especially hotels and restaurants for the sun-challenged)… and, as of late, music. Merchandise, to be precise.
13. Armand and Daniel
At the end of season 2, in a coda to the finale, it was revealed that Daniel had become a vampire, turned by none other than Armand, who has been alive for 500+ years and never sired another vampire, until Daniel, despite having known him for 50 years. This season, we will witness Daniel grapple with his fate and Armand with his choice.
14. Akasha
In seasons 1 and 2, there have been rare mentions of the larger-than-life queen of the damned. Once, Lestat let a comment about “those who must be kept” escape his lips, then never cared to explain. Another time, in the season 2 finale, when confronted with his supposed imminent death at the end of Louis and Armand in Magnus’s tower, Lestat simply offered the explanation “I have the blood of Akasha in me,” as for why killing him wouldn’t be possible. All those questions will finally be answered, for we are about to meet the queen herself when the phenomenal Sheila Atim graces our screens later in the season.
15. The Talamasca
The secret organization watching the supernatural beings in our world is very much still out there. They heavily edited Daniel Molloy's Interview With The Vampire book, changing many things in Louis's narrative. This season we will see a couple of the agents we've met, including Rashid and Raglan James.
The Vampire Lestat premieres Sunday, June 7 on AMC and AMC+. Our season review is out, while our episode reviews will drop weekly.
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