Editor's note: This review contains SPOILERS for The Vampire Lestat Episode 2, "Toledo."
The Vampire Lestat’s premiere set the bar so high, it was almost impossible to follow in its footsteps, but Episode 2 managed spectacularly. “Toledo” moves away from the ADHD-heavy, drug-induced incoherent frenzy of Lestat’s narration in the premiere, but it still conveys the chaos inside Lestat’s heart and mind that’s causing his bottled up emotions to manifest themselves as literal specters. The quick pacing and refusal to linger on trauma are slowly relenting; week after week, we are watching this show transform along with its protagonist.
We’re following the titular rockstar through his own personal hell, and the journey has just begun. It’s an unpredictable origin story; this episode feels more like the retelling of a fairytale gone wrong in which we watch the underdog becomes the hero and then be corrupted by external forces, wreaking havoc and bringing destruction. The focus is entirely on the facts, there is no time to dwell on Lestat’s feelings. One thing becomes clear: we aren’t just witnessing Lestat’s traumas; he is showing us what he deems to be his greatest sins.
The Incest Factor
After the previous episode ended in a jaw-dropping cliffhanger revealing that Lestat is in an incestuous relationship with his mother, the vampiress Gabriella (Jennifer Ehle), this episode takes its sweet time paying off the expectations and showing us the layers behind their dynamic. It takes Lestat (Sam Reid) various flashbacks and narration of present-day to attempt to justify the grotesque, before he eventually gives up and plays the generic excuse card, “it’s different for vampires.”
It would be remiss not to state that their disturbing mother-son relationship borders on abusive. Gabriella has every reason to chafe at the marginal role that the 18th century afforded her and to experience gender envy; the issue is how she manipulates and dominates her own loving son for her schemes, playing on his inherent loneliness and desperate need to be seen, to be known, to be loved. There is a lot to unpack here, and matters between Lestat and Gabriella will become more complex as the season progresses.
Humanstat and the de Lioncourts
The audience is introduced to the de Lioncourt family in late 18th century Auvergne, a less than idyllic picture. In a clever stylistic choice, all their scenes are shown in the same setting around the dining table; this allows every tiny detail to signal even the smallest shift. Lestat’s father and elder brothers are brutes, and his mother Gabriella is emotionally detached as a result of the abuse she has suffered and her strong personality that makes her at odds with what liminal role she can claim. The audience is set up to believe that she cares about Lestat, that the two share understanding, but it soon becomes clear that Gabriella’s interest in Lestat is not so much motherly, but in the way of an architect who’s building a project; she is invested in his education, going so far as to pay a monk to teach Lestat the great Italian thinkers of centuries gone by. There is ample dramatic irony when the monk, in trying to persuade Lestat’s father to let the child be educated at the monastery, mentions Lestat’s “ability to picture the unseen,” which is funny considering that Lestat has been — and will be — seeing literal ghosts all seasons. There’s another prophetic gem in this scene: a holy man declaring, in no uncertain terms, “I see goodness in your son.” It’s interesting that Lestat remembers this detail at all and that he chooses to recount it, because it’s clear he has little belief in his own goodness. He even recounts, “The good in me [was] lost at the monastery.”
As a stuttering teenager, Lestat tried to flee and join a traveling theatre troupe, in pursuit of a meaningful life away from his family of “cabbages," the little inside joke Lestat and Gabriella share to describe the rest of their brutish family devoid of pursuit or aspirations. Beyond this feeble sense of partnership, mother and son share little else at this point. Gabriella is engrossed in ignoring her family and even conveniently looks away — and pointedly at her book — while her elder sons beat up Lestat as ordered by their father.
Through the retelling, we see Gabriella progressively lose status as the years progress. At first she occupies the head of the table opposite her husband, and she’s allowed to address the monk, even pays him to ensure Lestat’s education is up to her standards. A few years later, we see her be silenced by her sons, then be relegated to Lestat’s left, her sons openly mocking her in front of the villagers.
The inciting incident
We also see the shift in Lestat when he finally ceases to be a passive spectator to his life and takes matters in his own hands. The turning point in Lestat’s transformation from underdog to hero is his mother’s frustrated shout, “But be men!” at the family’s utter inability to deal with a pack of wolves plaguing their lands. This is the biggest hint of her lifelong grievance with the world, the clearest sign of being at odds with her gender. This is where Lestat picks up his mother’s desired mantle and becomes, despite the likely death sentence he is choosing in pursuing the wolves. “She meant to kill me with the challenge. Better a quick end than watch me surrender another decade, watch me join the cabbages.”
Except Lestat, in his incredible capacity to endure, doesn’t meet his end. He pulls through and steps into the shoes he will fill for the rest of his life: a figure for others to idolize, to project their expectations to, the various versions of Lestat based on other people’s vision of him that he will take on time and time again. His wolf-killer persona is the first faux larger-than-life version of himself for Lestat to inhabit, a moniker given to him by the worshipping villagers seeking to thank him for ridding them of the wolves. “I let that define me for a while,” Lestat admitted pointedly in Episode 1, and he will continue doing so, is perpetrating that even now, in an eternal performance, taking on the role everyone wants him to play.
This ambiguous scene between Gabriella and Lestat as she tends to his wounds and first crosses the incestuous line is a foundational moment for Lestat. It’s here that he admits to dreaming of slaughtering their family; in front of his mother’s encouraging stare, his hate becomes a tangible thing, this violence inside him coming to the surface at his lowest. This must be where he decides he can no longer live under the same roof as them, he has to seek something more for himself in the city.
The memories become less and less linear as we move forward, and by the time we get to Gabriella’s arrival in Paris, and see a glimpse of Nicolas (Joseph Potter), they’re barely anything more than flashes. After Lestat turns his mother to save her from death by consumption, her first act after draining a servant is to declare they should make way to Auvergne and slaughter their family, an idea Lestat is all too happy to enable in the heat of the moment and perhaps only slightly regrets as he lies awake and listens to the horrified screams of his young nieces and nephews. Gabriella sleeps peacefully, no remorse to be seen.
Lestat being complicit in his father’s murder carried out by his mother brings so many new layers to the story, in a generational cycle of patricide that Lestat both perpetrates here and is a victim of when Claudia (Bailey Bass) orchestrates his murder and enacts it with Louis (Jacob Anderson). Of course Lestat didn’t fight them, he must have loved the poetic justice of it all.
Meanwhile, in Toledo
In present-day, Lestat must face the consequences of his actions the night prior in the form of the band forcefully demanding answers on his vampiric nature. Their concern is understandable but misplaced — it’s not Lestat they should be scared about, but the vampires coming for him. Tough Cookie (Sarah Swire) asks the fanservice question the audience is waiting to hear the answer to, “Are all your songs about this guy Louis?”, prompting Lestat to get defensive about his feelings towards their relationship. He hilariously tries to downplay the pivotal role Louis has in his life by proving exactly how important he is: “I lived 55,554 days before I met Louis de Pointe du Lac!” Like counting the exact number of days you’ve lived without someone will disprove the fact that your life kind of revolves around meeting them.
Eventually, things with the band simmer down. TC is desperate for a breakthrough, Larry (Noah Reid) is greedy for success (and Lestat), Salamander (Ryan Kattner) is on board with whatever crazy vampire thing may be going on… it’s Alex (Seamus Patterson), the most functional of the foursome and therefore the most easily de-centered, who puts his principles first and decides to leave. This crack in the band leaves the door open for a vulnerability that will bite Lestat in the rear later this season.
Sensing an opportunity, Gabriella chooses to stick around Lestat’s tour, under the fake name Sofia. It’s clearly not a good idea for Lestat’s sanity or wellbeing, but he is ecstatic at the prospect of spending time with his mother and it’s heartbreaking to watch him be so open and vulnerable when he asks, relentlessly, how long she intends to stay with him, begging for a straight answer and having to settle for a vague, “long enough.” The true power imbalance of their dynamic is made even clearer when Lestat tries to set boundaries regarding their carnal relations and Gabriella minimizes and mocks his requests, proceeding unperturbed. Lestat may view his mother through rose-tinted glasses, so grateful he is to have her back, but the hints of Gabriella’s own agenda and reasons to be around her son are starting to show.
The cherry on top of this episode is the reunion between the estranged ex-husbands at the heart of the story. After the better part of two years of radio silence between them, Louis sets up a meeting with Lestat and their lawyers under a fake alias and the pretense of litigating for property damage to his hotel from the fight in Episode 1, when all he wants is to see Lestat and maybe rage-bait him a little. The interaction might seem hateful on the surface — with mentions of the book, Armand (Assad Zaman), new partners — but it’s never been clearer that these two just need to sit through an uninterrupted conversation to heal from what they perceive to be each other’s betrayals. All petty attempts at making each other jealous through their lovers fall flat; Louis openly admits that his relationship with Lemuel works because it’s not that deep — obviously what he needs after the intensity and ever-present mind manipulation of Armand — and Lestat’s jab does not even land.
Louis attends Lestat’s next concert, where Lestat outdoes himself during the performance. Interestingly, the writers chose to show him singing “Why Do I Have To Feel?”, a song he wrote for Nicki, instead of others that are clearly more inspired by Louis. Pettily, as he sings the line “I tried to write you the prettiest song in the world / But I got distracted / And I didn’t,” he hands Louis his own annotated copy of Interview With The Vampire, where Lestat refutes every untrue statement in the book. It’s safe to assume that Louis will read Lestat’s notes in the margin and that this will help him re-attune himself with Lestat.
When he meets Daniel (Eric Bogosian) after the concert to patch up that other rocky relationship, Louis admits that the book hurt Lestat and that it halted the budding relationship they were slowly rebuilding between them. It’s important to note that this scene is fully conjectured by Lestat who did not witness the exchange and it’s intriguing to piece together what things really happened and what Lestat made up from his view of things. The fact that Louis fully blames Daniel for the book hurting Lestat and absolves himself from the blame is, I believe, a shortcoming born of Lestat’s expectations and not the truth. Similarly, when Daniel talks of his loneliness, it’s a deep echo of the sentiment that has accompanied Lestat all his life. The conversation turns into a confessional of sorts when Louis, who Lestat must imagine being comfortable in talking to Daniel about his feelings, admits that he has seen a lookalike of his daughter Claudia (Delainey Hayles) in New York and followed her into a diner. Only half-listening, Daniel forces Louis to talk to his “producers,” the Talamasca agents Raglan James (Justin Kirk) and Rashid (Bally Gill), who spent seasons 1 and 2 working undercover as Louis’s help. Raglan’s request that Louis take care of a rogue coven of vampires in Detroit is firmly denied until the cunning agent plays the last card up his sleeve and reveals that the coven leader Killer is really Bruce, the lone vampire who assaulted Claudia nearly a century ago.
The episode ends with another double image of slaughter: in present day, we see the aftermath of Gabriella and Lestat destroying a restaurant. Amid the carnage, Lestat sits somberly at the piano and Gabriella inquires about Louis, envious of the pull he still has on Lestat. Cheekily, she remarks that she can see why Lestat gave Louis a daughter and why Lestat took Claudia back. This angers Lestat, who starts playing and singing a melancholic musical rendition of Baudelaire’s poem “La Fontaine de Sang," irritating Gabriella in turn for choosing to sing in French, the tongue of her hateful husband. The song brings back more quick flashbacks of Gabriella’s turning and the slaughter of their family in a crude display of revenge and inhumanity.
“Toledo” is our first real glimpse at Lestat’s past and it is handled with all the diligence Lestat cares to exhibit towards himself (next to none), which is why it works so brilliantly. It’s a masterclass in avoidance and sweeping the uncomfortable under the rug and it reminds us that Interview With The Vampire is constantly outdoing itself for its clever choices. This is a transitional episode, but a foundational one, and necessary to prepare us for what’s next this season. Episode 3, “Toronto” will settle for a more linear retelling of Lestat’s past as the horrors continue and intensify.
Episode rating: A
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