The Vampire Lestat: Sparing the Ambiguity
In episode 6, “Montreal,” Louis and Lestat share a tumultuous night ahead of Lestat’s farewell show.
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You are listening to, and watching, The Failures.
Signposted very early on, this season revolves around bad things happening in unpredictable and disruptive ways, whether we’re talking about the many tragedies of Lestat’s backstory, or the embarrassing nature of his music career, which continues the show’s long-running theme of artistic failure. Director Armand struggled and ultimately failed to retain control over his theater company. Louis took up photography but abandoned his hobby out of a sense of inadequacy, choosing to become a luxury art dealer instead—a relationship to the medium where success is easier to quantify. And now the Pulitzer-winning Daniel Molloy has taken an abrupt turn into tabloid muckraking, as he attempts to siphon off some of Lestat’s B-list fame.
Contrary to the expectations set by AMC’s pre-season publicity campaign, which depicted Lestat as a rock god, Lestat’s band is kind of a flop, starring in a rise-and-fall arc where the “rise” relies on artificially inflated buzz, and their eventual album is greeted with critical disdain. This is not a story where things go to plan. So, in retrospect it should not come as a surprise when, after hyping up the importance of a big farewell concert in the back half of the season, this trajectory gets rudely interrupted in the penultimate episode, ending on a gory cliffhanger that literally cuts off Lestat’s long-awaited romantic reunion with Louis.
Lestat’s narration characterizes this period of his life as a sequence of failures, and it’s now abundantly clear why. He may have succeeded in providing a counter-narrative to Daniel’s book, but along the way, he’s triggered an emotional breakdown and watched his music be co-opted by the Great Conversion movement. Just hours before he cements his impact as a vampire superstar, his most humiliating and painful secret gets exposed online, tarnishing his reputation forever.
For the first time this season, we’re treated to an episode that unfolds in chronological order. It’s Halloween in Montreal, precisely two years after Lestat met his band, and tonight they’re preparing for their final show. In a true sign of the times, the first shot of the episode sees Lestat reach a hand out of his coffin and grab his cellphone to check the reactions to his newly released album: a 3.1 out of 10 on Pitchfork, and an unimpressive showing for his lead single, “Cabbage,” on the Billboard Hot 100.
Human audiences might be underwhelmed, but vampires have traveled to Montreal in their tens of thousands, making ready for the biggest and bloodiest gathering in vampire history. With a characteristic ambivalence toward the Great Conversion’s goals, Lestat’s voiceover describes this as his “final gift” to Gabriella. Afterwards, he plans to flee the city and adopt a new identity.
