They have been teasing this season for two years having dropped a rock music themed teaser shortly after season two of IWTV indicating that they were leaning into the Lestat-as-rock-star subplot at the heart of Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat. In recent months they have even been releasing singles recorded by Lestat actor Sam Reid and so far they have been really good. We know from behind-the-scenes interviews that composer Daniel Hart has been more actively involved with the show his season, even acting as a fully-fledged staff writer so the music has been given a lot of attention and is supposed to be integral to the overall storytelling.
The first episode dropped early Sunday morning and...wow.. I don't know why I continue to be surprised at the quality of this show. I keep having a fear in the back of my mind that one of these seasons will be a disappointment but if "Detroit" is any indication, it will not be this season.
Based on the trailers, I had surmised that Daniel's rockumentary was going to be the framing device this season in the same way that his interview sessions with Louis and later Armand were in previous seasons but the show actually starts with a mysterious auction which the two are attending and in which Lester's "complete works" are being sold off. Both Armand and Louis are attending (separately) and looking worse for wear, with Louis seemingly missing a leg and Armand sporting an eyepatch.
Raglan James, the main antagonist of Tale of the Body Thief is also there presumably representing the Talamasca, although with James you never know. We are to understand that this is taking place at some point in the future after the events of the Lestat's tour and after a series of calamitous events. For book readers, this seems to indicate some kind of post Queen of the Damned timeframe. We are fully off-book here so I have no idea what this is about. This episode actually has several references to Akasha and the events of QOTD, seemingly corroborating that series Akasha will have a similar MO to her book counterpart.
One of the items up for auction are "The Failures," a set of vinyl albums with Lestat's account of these events and it is this account which provides the structure and narration for the episode, with Daniel's interview so far failing to yield any insight. Also included is a bottle of Lestat's blood. Last time we saw Raglan James in the Talamasca series, Raglan was trading in powerful vampire blood so that might be his angle on things here.
Lestat's voiceover is one of the great joys of this episode. Lestat is famously the narrator of most of the vampire chronicles with a very distinctive narrative voice and point of view and Sam Reid provides an often hilarious version of it here. The combination of the playful and ironic voiceover and the often chaotic, drug-fueled antics put me in mind of the classic movie Trainspotting.
We soon come to the previously-released scene in which Lestat and Louis are having a FaceTime conversation seemingly sometime after their reconciliation scene in Interview (assuming that actually happened.) This is a great scene that feels authentically like two exes warily re-entering each other's lives. It is during this scene that Lestat learns of the publication of Daniel Malloy's publication of his book based on his interviews with Louis in the form of Interview with the Vampire. Much as in the books, the publication of IWTV causes a lot of drama in the vampire community, for no one as much as Lestat and we get a hilarious montage of him reading the book and reacting to its perceived inaccuracies, some extremely petty. This is topped off by a visit from a group of trick or treaters dressed as characters from the book, which sends Lestat spiraling. By the way, Lestat both ignores peanut allergies and requests to use gender neutral pronouns which gives him a grumpy boomer vibe. I mean he is over two-hundred years old...
Like any great rock musician, Lestat crashes out in the middle of a concert and then overdoses from drinking a groupie's blood, leading to a vision of a conversation with said groupie's soul who heralds the arrival of "muses" from his past. I suspect we may get episodes devoted to these muses who seem to be Nicky, Gabrielle, Louis, Claudia, Marius and Akasha and this might be the framework for the rest of the season. It would actually be hilarious if Daniel's documentary completely fails to uncover anything relevant.
Lestat is approached by a pair of vampires from the "Fang Gang," a faction that appears in Queen of the Damned, in this case Tim and Russ. Lestat shadily dismisses them as "regional vampires." The Bruce/Killer character from season one of IWTV is associated with this group in the books. The two later ambush Lestat with many more vampires leading to a skirmish in which Lestat's vampire nature is revealed to his band. Lestat exits by dramatically flying through the window and ends up in a cheap motel somewhere where we finally see the person that he had been texting with the whole episode, his mother, the vampire Gabriella.
Overall, this is a great return for the show. The thing that was most surprising was how funny the whole thing is. While there was plenty of humor in Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat had me laughing out loud multiple times. Also, perhaps it is due to the fact that this is our first time seeing Lestat on his own terms, it really feels like Sam Reid owns the role as never before. He is the Vampire Lestat.
MISC OBSERVATIONS
*The intro is okay although reminds of a cutscene from a Rock Band game.
*The "previously on" is delivered in the ironic tones of Daniel Malloy, "Previously on the show formerly-known as Interview with the Vampire."
*There is a weird subplot of Lestat having a body double, also played by Sam Reid. As Lestat points out, completely on brand, the body double is three inches shorter than him.
*Dr Fareed returns from IWTV. This is a character with a significant role to play in the Prince Lestat trilogy of books and maybe, just maybe, can help Louis replace that leg...
*Show Lestat claims to have been underground for "the majority of the 1800's." So did he meet Marius before or after his slumber?
*"...collecting fledglings like Labubu dolls."
*Lestat's reaction to the Fang Gang claiming to be the Medieval Children of Darkness "reborn" was priceless: genuine laughter followed by "Are you fucking kidding me?" Although maybe not as priceless as his reaction to Tim's tattoo that reads "Armand Told The Truth," "Have you met him? What the fuck does that even mean?!?!"
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