Last week, AMC wrapped up the second season of Interview With The Vampire, its splendid adaptation of Anne Rice's classic horror novel. This show has been good from the start, but it reached a new level in the back half of season 2, when every episode felt like it was tearing my still-beating heart out of my chest. It pains me that there won't be a new episode tonight. Instead, let's celebrate what showrunner Rolin Jones and his cast and crew have accomplished here by looking over the season that was.
Here, as I see, are all eight episodes of Interview With The Vampire season 2, ranked worst to best:
8. Episode 204, "I Want You More Than Anything in the World"
The second season of Interview With The Vampire finds bloodsuckers Louis (Jacob Anderson) and Claudia (Delainey Hayles) heading to Europe to try and find more of their own kind. There are a lot of new elements to introduce: Louis is still dealing with his lingering feelings for Lestat (Sam Reid), who made him, loved him and abused him. He starts up a new relationship with a vampire named Armand (Assad Zaman), who who runs a vampire coven in Paris. The coven is also a theater company. Claudia is a part of it. Louis isn't. Also Claudia forms a connection with a dressmaker named Madeleine (Roxane Duran).
It's a lot, and the first half of the season can sometimes feel bogged down by setup. That issue is most apparent in "I Want You More Than Anything in the World," which pushes along several storylines but lacks any huge set piece or distinct identity to call its own. Lestat keeps hanging around Louis as a ghost from his past; at this point in the season, it starts to feel like like a thin excuse to keep Sam Reid onscreen.
But even the lease episode of Interview With The Vampire is still run through with atmosphere, blood and romance. This is a solid hour of TV and things only improve from here:
7. Episode 203, "No Pain"
Like the episode to follow, "No Pain" follows Louis and Claudia as they hang out with the Parisian coven, and asks whether it's possible for Louis to find new love with Armand even as Lestat's phantom shadows him. The wheel on the story are moving slowly here. The difference is that, in this episode, modern-day Armand gets some time alone with journalist Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian) and talks about his own romance with Lestat, which happened years before Armand and Louis met. So we scenes of Lestat performing onstage and carrying a giant cruxifix into Armand's vampire lair, being the quippy brat prince we know and love.
The show is fully capable of being entertaining without Lestat — later we'll see evidence — but he does help a lot. At the very end, Armand and Louis take an important step forward as they spend their first night together. Anything can happen in the City of Love. "No Pain" also gets points for spending more time with the sarcastic Daniel Molloy, always a good choice.
6. Episode 201, Episode 201, "What Can the Damned Really Say to the Damned"
The season premiere finds Louis and Claudia on the road, searching Romania (home of Dracula, naturally) for fellow vampires in the immediate aftermath of World War II. They find one: an ancient creature who throws herself on a roaring fire rather than join their wanderings. She gives Louis and Claudia a preview of what could happen to them if they become disconnected from whatever remains of their humanity. This whole story feels like a demented fairytale, and makes the premiere feel unique; no other episode explores this territory.
Interview With The Vampire has a framing story: Louis and Armand narrate their lives to Daniel Molloy decades after the fact from their plush pad in Dubai. While the scenes in the past have a dreadful weight to them, Daniel keeps things light, constantly punctuating the self-serious mood with questions and corrections. The back-and-forth adds a ton to the show, to the point where I was enjoying the Dubai scenes at least as much as the European ones, and sometimes more. If you've seen the 1994 Vampire movie and wonder why you should both with the TV show, these scenes are a big selling point.
5. Episode 202, "Do You Know What It Means to be Loved by Death"
Louis and Claudia's arrival in Paris is exciting. There's an immediate attraction between Louis and Armand, and Claudia is quickly taken with the coven, a theater troupe that kills mortals onstage and passes it off as a show. I love the superfans who dress up in vampire drag and come back to the theaters again and again; this show is great with details like that. I also have to praise Ben Daniels for his performance as the smug vampire actor thespian Santiago, who makes a wonderfully hatable antagonist.
We also get a healthy dose of Daniel Molloy sarcasm back in Dubai. What's not to like?
4. Episode 206, "Like the Light by Which God Made the World Before He Made Light"
The back half of season 2 is undoubtedly superior to the first. It's where Claudia's story in particular really heats up, mostly thanks to her would-be eternal companion Madeleine, a lonely woman whom Claudia convinces Louis to help turn into a vampire, with her full cooperation. Madeleine doesn't get a ton of screentime, but she makes a huge impact; seeing our vampire characters interact with this jaded human makes them reconsider their conceptions. The scene where Louis and Claudia work together to turn Madeleine is strangely beautiful, part spiritual awakening and part threesome, as gentle a bloodletting as ever see on this show.
The episode ends on a cliffhanger which leads into the incredible one-two punch that ends the season. Lestat is back and things are about to get crazy.
3. Episode 208, "And That's The End of It. There's Nothing Else"
Ranking these last three episodes is very difficult, but I think I found an order I'm happy with. The season finale is spectacular. We get a straightforward revenge tale as Louis sets the Théâtre des Vampires on fire and decapitates Santiago, punishing them for their role in Claudia's death. And the episode is just getting warmed up. In Dubai, Louis learns that Armand was actually complicit in all of it, and these two immortal lovers throw down. Armand comes out of this episode looking like a manipulative sneak, although I wonder if we'll hear more of his side of the story next season. I'm particularly interested in learning the particulars of how he turned Daniel. The show has me hooked!
But the real emotional climax is a reunion between Louis and Lestat. They don't get back together and no words of forgiveness are exchanged, but they acknowledge each other, share their pain, and embrace in a moment that surely had fans crying enough tears to rival the storm outside Lestat's window.
And I haven't even touched on the final ending, where Louis dares vampires angry with him for sharing their secrets and come and confront him. Season 3 can't come fast enough!
2. Episode 207, "I Could Not Prevent It"
As great as the finale was, I was more impressed with the penultimate episode where the Paris coven puts Louis, Claudia and Madeleine on trial for their alleged crimes against vampire-kind. The trial doubles as a stage show in front of an ignorant audience, because of course these vampires have to do everything in the most over-the-top, melodramatic way possible. There's lots of tensions as Louis and Claudia try to defend themselves against the lop-sided narrative the coven is pushing, but their fates are all but preordained before the curtain rises.
And yet, with Lestat as chief witness, you know things aren't going to go exactly to plan. Lestat finds ways to introduce a heartfelt apology into what's supposed to be a witch burning, frustrating Santiago and thrilling everyone on the other side of the screen. In the end, he saves Louis from the sun, something we don't find out until the finale.
But Claudia burns. Her father's daughter, she puts on a show as she goes, promising each and every audience member that she will kill them in this life or the next. It's Claudia's best showing in the entire series.
1. Episode 205, "Don't Be Afraid, Just Start the Tape"
I didn't expect Daniel Molloy to be my favorite character going into the show, but he was. The focus on the "interview" part of Interview With The Vampire is the show's biggest innovation, the thing that most makes this story worth revisiting. So of course I loved this big solo show.
So much of Interview With The Vampire is about the fragility of memory. No episode drives that home like "Don't Be Afraid, Just Start the Tape." We find out what happened between Louis and Daniel back in the 70s, the first time Louis tried to get his story on tape. The revelations are as surprising to them as they are to us. It's no shock to see that Daniel was different as a young man, but Louis is different too; he's angrier and more unstable. Things get dangerous fast, and we don't know what's going to happen next because this episode breaks completely with the source material.
This is a gripping bottle episode that tells us lots of new things about Daniel, Louis ad Armand. It's an essential part of the show's tapestry, a queer epic that can't decide if it's a love story or a horror story, and the best episode of the series so far.
I hope some of this gushing has encouraged you to check out Interview With The Vampire if you haven't already. It's available to stream on AMC+ and is coming to Netflix sooner or later. If you already know and love the show, know that I bleed with you as we wait for season 3:
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