The Vampire Lestat: The Long Table
In episode 7, “The Failures,” Louis has a gruesome reunion with Armand, while Lestat faces judgment from specters of his past.
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After lulling us into a false sense of security with the most linear episode of the season, The Vampire Lestat concludes with its weirdest episode to date, making the bold choice to leave both lead characters decapitated until the final few minutes. In Lestat’s case, this doesn’t feel quite so viscerally terrifying, as he passes most of the episode in a dream sequence that elides the physical peril of the real world. But Louis’ role is pure body horror, waking up as a severed head in the backroom of a kosher butcher’s shop, with Armand lurking nearby in full Frankenstein mode.
There’s a ticking clock element to their predicament, because vampires can only survive for a limited time with their heads separated from their bodies. To make matters doubly grotesque, Armand has placed Louis’ head just out of reach of his body, leaving his hands to grasp helplessly for reunion as Armand launches into a supervillain monologue. He wants Louis to offer a formal apology for the mistakes he made in their relationship. When Louis tells him to fuck off, Armand ups the ante by bringing a kidnapped Regina into the room, threatening to kill her—and, repulsively, to sew Louis’ head onto her body—if Louis fails to be appropriately sincere.
It’s always hard to gauge to what extent Armand is being authentic (if ever), but in this episode, it feels like we’re getting to see him at his most uninhibited. This version of Armand is simultaneously the bug and the microscope, tapping into the “gremlin” side of his character that book fans (and the cast, particularly Assad Zaman himself) have been clamoring to see for years. In the novels, Armand has an alarming enthusiasm for macabre science experiments, whether we’re talking about microwaving rats for fun, or embarking on more ambitious projects like sewing (child) Claudia’s head onto (adult) Madeleine’s body—a gruesome venture that he recounts in The Vampire Armand, and to which this episode is clearly alluding via his threats toward Louis and Regina.
Among our ensemble cast of abusive, traumatized, and otherwise unstable individuals, Armand always gets points for creativity. While other characters commit acts of cruelty that are somewhat familiar in human terms, Armand makes the most of his (and his victims’) supernatural abilities. Shifting away from his typical specialty of memory alteration and mind control, this torture scene is palpably gory, livestreamed via Dr Bhansali’s laptop to an anonymous audience in Budapest. (You may recall that in episode 3, Bhansali referenced “a study done in Budapest” exploring how long a vampire can survive without its head. Evidently this is a shared interest between Armand and Bhansali, who may well have been conspiring behind the scenes since the end of season 2.)
For the third time this season, Armand launches into a dubious apology statement. No longer presenting himself as a vulnerable penitent with real aspirations toward completing a 12-step program, he begins to list some of the betrayals he perpetrated against Louis during their 77-year relationship. “As for the many boys you drugged, drained, and lay with, I feigned resentment when, in fact, I welcomed your straying,” Armand tells him. “Because your guilt in their aftermath bound you to me all the more tightly—and allowed me my hours of observation with Daniel.”
As Armand strolls casually around the butcher’s basement, Louis’ eyes finally regain enough focus to understand his predicament: His severed head is currently suspended above a dish on the table, posed opposite his decapitated body. “I told you I loved you... But did I?” wonders Armand. “Or was it a clinging to the underside of anyone who would help me survive?”
Armand assures Louis that if he’s willing to make amends for his own past wrongdoings, then Armand will set him free—albeit with some lightly altered memories, erasing the presence of Dr. Bhansali, and of Lestat’s headless body, which is lying on another table nearby. “Don't print the obituary just yet,” says Armand, adding that Lestat is just “getting some much-needed rest before the big concert.” While Armand previously voiced his concerns about Lestat’s music spurring on the Great Conversion, that’s clearly a lower priority than relitigating his breakup with Louis. If he truly wanted Lestat dead, he’d be dead.
