The penultimate episode in this season of The Vampire Lestat hits different than the rest of the series. The calmer tone echoes Lestat’s (Sam Reid) more focused state of mind; there’s a sense of tranquillity, something we haven’t seen Lestat experience all season, so caught up as he was in escaping from or trying to exorcize the demons of his past.
After witnessing episode after episode of Lestat purposely pursuing failure and courting death, it’s only thanks to facing his life’s regrets that he has finally found peace; after chasing a high all season, it’s only now, keeping low (and pretending to be dead), that he finally feels alive. He’s not plagued by loneliness and no longer needs adoring masses to feel loved or validated.
Louis and Lestat have finally reconciled
Lestat’s posthumous narration wastes no time in revealing the final piece of the puzzle that justifies his serenity: maybe it was him, Lestat admits, referring, of course, to Louis (Jacob Anderson).
Not even the album’s abysmal ratings can truly spoil Lestat’s newfound positivity. The sense of peace permeates through the disappointment, and when Louis sweeps into Lestat’s living room, buttoning up his shirt like it’s the most natural thing in the world, like he belongs there, everything feels fine.
The banter between Lestat and Louis drips love, even when they pretend to be annoyed at each other (and not fooling anyone). There are hesitant looks and a plethora of smiles — shy ones and unabashed ones — making them look like lovesick teenagers. The amount of “we” and “our” that effortlessly escape their lips is ridiculous for two people who are not, technically, together. But that is the deal with Louis and Lestat: they are magnetic, and nothing else matters when they are together. Reid and Anderson’s chemistry is electric, and it’s impossible to look away.
The audience hasn’t seen Lestat and Louis be on (positive) speaking terms since season 1 and this episode finally puts an end to that drought. Their actions and conversations, the easy ones and the hard ones, transcend the decades they’ve spent apart, the miscommunication, the hatred. Even during their fight, the fleeting feeling of betrayal on both their sides stems from the potential of breaking this trust they have just rebuilt.
Despite the sense of righteousness at seeing them together, the audience can probably sense that the peace will be broken at some point during the episode, for the way Louis ominously keeps saying that the plans they had made will end up in disaster.
Dining with Dan
At Louis’s fine dining vamp restaurant, even Daniel (Eric Bogosian) speaks out the audience’s thoughts when he asks Lestat and Louis, by way of greeting, if they’ve set a wedding date. The vampire journalist continues to do what he does best, prying — but as has been the trend this season, he’s left wanting and doesn’t get the juicy answer he’s waiting for; both Louis and Lestat refuse to reveal what words they exchanged when they reunited in in New Orleans at the end of episode 2.07, joking they couldn’t hear each other over the hurricane. It’s obvious they do know, but it’s a detail so intimate they choose to keep for themselves.
It’s a clever device on the writers’ side too, because what few sentences could encompass the complexity of the enduring love that these two immortal beings hold for each other? But, really, does it matter, when Lestat confesses, “It was enough that he showed up”? For them, actions always speak louder than words.
Lestat does answer one of Daniel’s questions, about what he plans to do next: after the final concert he’s holding to appease his mother Gabriella (Jennifer Ehle), the vampire admits he’s been dreaming of forests, where he can retire to a peaceful solitary existence, listen to and transcribe birdsong. This is so beautiful in contrast to Lestat’s previous confinement, where he dug himself a grave and hoped to die — it’s the quiet he’s after, and music. He’s finally in a place where he can be alone with himself and it can be enough.
Before they part, Daniel drops two hints, in full Daniel fashion: he mentions Sofia, knowing full well who she is to Lestat. Louis doesn’t think anything of it, but Daniel is stirring the pot for the bomb he’s about to drop. And two, that he’s seeing someone – but he conveniently avoids saying whom, and Louis and Lestat make fun but don’t ask. Daniel’s amber eyes burn with hate, in a good imitation of Armand’s infamous half-blank, half-apocalyptic look.
A Loustat rollercoaster
In the car to Lestat’s rehearsal, he and Louis discuss their past. Lestat asks about Louis hallucinating him in Paris, and Louis admits that it was his guilt for killing Lestat that was eating him alive. We will never see them fully discussing everything that’s happened — they may have done so in part, or they may have decided to simply call a truce. As Lestat said during their first reunion, “Shall we list all the ways in which we have wronged each other and how it will never be right between monsters?” After everything, Louis admitting guilt is as much as an apology as Lestat needs.
The conversation turns to things left unsaid and to Lestat cheating with Antoinette, and he admits he did that “to provoke you out of the depression… and to punish you” and blames Akasha’s blood for his actions, which Louis calls him out on.
It’s so refreshing to see Louis be so alive, in contrast to the quiet, collected being he was in Dubai, so flirty — considering that the audience doesn’t know him so well in a relaxed (not confessional) setting in this century. Lestat is his usual charming and joking self on the surface, but his words, his eyes, hide the uncertainty underneath. Yet their body language says everything: they are at their best when they’re together. This is certainly the healthiest we’ve seen both of them all season.
At rehearsal, Lestat leaves Louis to Sofia’s inquisitive mercy. Louis is charming and polite when meeting Lestat’s alleged lover, while she scans him like a puzzle, well aware that this man holds Lestat’s heart, that he’s the only person who could free Lestat from her abusive thrall.
Lestat definitely puts a little too much energy and verve into this rehearsal, clearly showing off for Louis. As he sings “Brutal Love,” the world disappears, he is fully serenading Louis with an intensity that makes Gabriella seethe. In fact, she tries to re-assert her control, going back to manipulative Momager mode, telling Lestat what to do, even though he doesn’t seem all that intent in going where she wants him to. Yet she plays all her cards, taking his agency away, even stooping so low as to kiss him, but it’s clear that the spell is broken now that Louis is around, because Lestat doesn’t need to her to feel loved.
Louis got distracted towards the end of Lestat’s rehearsal, and it feels good for Lestat to call him out on it. The dichotomy between his expectations of Louis and of Gabriella couldn’t be wider. In the car, Louis shows the scoop Daniel has just published: a video in which Armand reveals that Sofia is really Lestat’s mother Gabriella… followed by a sex tape they must have used Alex (Seamus Patterson) to film in the recording studio. This was what distracted Louis towards the end of Lestat’s rehearsal, which was really his own private concert.
The revenge porn scandal breaks their bubble like a dam. Louis asks Lestat to confirm, in no uncertain terms, if he is in an incestuous relationship with his mother. And because Lestat is Lestat, he tries to avoid the question, to laugh it off at first, but Louis is relentless. Possibly it’s here, with the intensity of Louis’s questioning, that Lestat finally seems to understand the sheer wrongness of it all. It may just be the judgment in Louis’s tone that makes it click, and it prompts Lestat to have a panic attack.
Louis is livid that Lestat hid his mother’s existence for a century, triggered by what he considers a deceit, this century-long lie that reminds him of Armand… and the mere mention of that name aggravates them both. The fight escalates painfully and Lestat explodes at Louis’s usual self-righteousness, wishing Louis could try to be understanding and not jump to judgement.
When their roles were reversed, when Louis was paying a girl a fortune to roleplay as their dead daughter, Lestat helped him out of that frenzy, offered help, devoid of judgement. That gets Louis, who ceases his crusade for what is right and offers Lestat support, emotionally and physically holding him together with a hug that almost erases the entire fight.
Louis tries to let go of his prejudice and reset for Lestat’s sake, and the atmosphere is bearable again when they stop to talk at the bar. Louis tries to understand about Gabriella, they banter some more, and it’s their own way of dealing with things. The conversation turns serious again when Lestat asks Louis if the sex tape is everywhere online; when Louis tries to reassure him and asks why he cares, Lestat just replies with a shy, “it matters to you.”
It feels good to see Louis apologize, and I love the tiny detail of him asking Lestat to mix some of his blood in Louis’s beer to make it bearable… and the satisfied smirk on Louis’s face when he tastes Lestat’s blood, probably for the first time in 80 years.
Lestat and Louis summon Claudia
It's time for the second bad idea, the séance performed by the witch Merrick Mayfair to summon Claudia’s ghost. It’s touching to know that it was Lestat who suggested and orchestrated this mad plan, thinking that getting some closure could help Louis, under the excuse that, “Maybe Claudia would like a goodbye with you too.”
When Merrick calls her, the ghost of Claudia (Delainey Hayles) does not gift her fathers the goodbye they expected. She is spiteful and beyond cruel with them, going so far as to say that she hates them more than her rapist and her killers. And she destroys Louis with her revelation — half-lie, half-truth - that she didn’t respect or admire him, that she thought of killing him instead of Lestat, Louis was a means to an end as Claudia knew he would always be devoted to her.
Claudia’s screams of desperation for Madeleine pierce through the air, the apartment thick with pain and regret. This was truly an incredible performance from Hayles and such a heartwrenching goodbye to Claudia.
Louis and Lestat go on yet another walk, and sit on a bench like they used to do in New Orleans. There is not much to say about Claudia, nothing that can make their hearts stop breaking. Yet, it’s crazy how after everything that’s just happened with their daughter’s ghost, Louis still circles back to Gabriella, wanting to understand Lestat.
The vampire rockstar wonders why he continuously pursues failure and admits he still has more work to do on himself. It’s here, after a séance with their daughter gone wrong and after discussing Lestat’s incestuous dynamic with his mother, that Louis takes the leap we’ve been waiting for all season.
After everything, there’s no grand declaration of love, no revelation that their feelings have stayed intact for a century… it’s not needed, with these two. The yearning boils down to this: they could go somewhere remote, just be together, and it’s not even a real question.
And as they contemplate the possibility, their fingers touching, helplessly lost in each other’s eyes, the devil strikes. The episode where no danger was at stake for Lestat and Louis ends in their joint decapitation at the hands of Armand and Daniel, with Alex as their accomplice.
Armand warned Lestat to stay away from popularity, to distance himself from the Great Conversion, and him and Daniel have swallowed insult after insult before striking… unlike with his previous murder attempts, the only drug Lestat can blame for his lack of situational awareness this time is Louis’s presence, the fog of love that Daniel inquired about. Turns out, it’s real enough for both Louis and Lestat not to notice Armand and Daniel’s presence.
We know Lestat and Louis will be fine — Fareed has dropped hints here and there all season that decapitation is not fatal for old vampires — but the cliffhanger is enough to garner a heart attack. Will Lestat reach out to Fareed, to the band, for help? Will Louis try to reach Gabriella?
“Monreal” is an atypical episode for The Vampire Lestat. It’s slower and not much happens except for conversations that are long overdue. And yet, it’s exactly what the season — and the characters — needed at this point.
Episode rating: A
Emmy Award nominations just came out. Is it too late to start my campaign for next year for Sam Reid to receive Best Actor? With Jacob Anderson as Best Supporting Actor and Delainey Hayles as Best Guest Star, of course.
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