The Vampire Lestat, Episode 4: The Devil’s Road

​

This show seems to be alternating between brilliant episodes and less inspired ones. Epidemic Four, The Devil’s Road is in the latter category. It is an episode that despite the fact that there is a ton of book material yet to be touched, spends much of its time meandering like the chapter of The Vampire Lestat for which it is named. Incidentally, a chapter that frustrated and stymied author Anne Rice to no end.

My big problem with this episode (aside from some arguably questionable Gabriella characterization) is tonal. I know Lestat is firmly in his brat era but it is just…too much. He’s overshot brat and is firmly in obnoxious territory for parts of this episode. His behavior is way over the top. When the episode has me empathizing with Armand over Lestat, we have problems because I loathe Armand.

This is also frustrating because Lestat seemed to have developed some real self-awareness in the last episode, in which he appears to say goodbye at least to some of the ghosts of his past, and seemingly Gabriella. In any case he is riding a bit high at the start of the episode having gone viral for video of his concert levitation.

Meanwhile Louis, dubbed by Lestat as “he who licenses and franchises the night,” a spin of the Louisiana vampire’s “I own the night” line at the end of season two,” has been hanging around the diner where Claudia’s doppelgänger, Regina, works. This is borderline creepy stalker behavior and we learn more about her throughout the episode, specifically her checkered past back in Europe and the UK. This character is extremely sus. It is pretty crazy that there is another character who exactly resembles Claudia. Most likely she is a Talamasca operative. Her name translates to Queen in Latin, so perhaps she is some kind of harbinger of Akasha. She is observed  interacting with other customers so it seems like she is real enough. This is uncharted territory as Claudia does not appear this way in the books although she does return as a ghost a couple of times. The two settle on an arrangement where the young woman agrees to do some Claudia LARPing for Louis. His storyline this episode has less to do with being a vampire than a really messed-up billionaire.

Daniel continues to try to break Lestat for the documentary, despite the humiliating experience last week. Lestat describes the telepathically-shared story as a gift but Dan is not buying it. I do think Lestat is sincere here. Ironically, Daniel,seems to hold a point of view common to many younger people that if an experience didn’t happen on camera it holds little value.

However, Daniel does seem to have worked out that Sofia is actually Gabriella, Lestat’s mother despite the fact that Lestat spins a sad yarn about her demise in their interviews. Throughout the episode we see some flashbacks that detail the “real” story of their post-Paris travels together on “the Devil’s Road.” These flashbacks cover about a decade of the pair traveling across Europe and we see their new vampire relationship develop. These scenes are scored with lush romantic music and often feature a recurring sound effect of the crashing waves which Lestat associates with her abandonment.

There is a lot of the Gabriella characterization that the show is getting right, particularly the liberation she experiences at her new-found state after first living as a girl “wrapped in black silk” and cloistered away and then shipped off to rural France to be subsumed into marriage and motherhood. In the book, her lust for freedom also manifests in her gender expression and she eschews binding female clothing and long hair in favor of a more male or androgynous appearance. Sadly the show has kept her pretty glam. As in the book, she takes to vampirism even more than Lestat, with little or no compunction about killing. 

The show does play up this element of her character as well as making her generally more sinister and manipulative. In this episode she is seemingly aligned with the Great Conversion, the explosion of the vampire population around the world. Indeed, she seems to want Lestat to lead or be involved with it and she sees the tour as a way to rally the vampires together. Book Gabrielle-while in her younger days expressed some of the same sentiments-is largely uninterested in the world of human beings or even vampires for that matter. It will be interesting to see how this plays out with Akasha’s appearance. In the books, Akasha (and, Amel, the spirit that animates her) are offended by the unchecked spread of vampirism as it dilutes their power.

If Lestat is on a rock music tour, Armand is making an apology tour. Apparently his introduction in an AA meeting last week was to be taken literally and our favorite murder gremlin is going around making amends to the people he has harmed. The fact that a five hundred year old vampire would take part in a mortal recovery program is a little goofy but so is blood piss and blood showers. So here we are.

He starts with Daniel Malloy the fledgeling that he created out of spite apparently, and then abandoned. Daniel, of course is having none of it and we get the first of a series of brutal Armand reads this episode. Maitre then makes his way to Lestat for his apology. Lestat takes this in the way you would expect and confesses that his silence about his role in saving Louis from the vampire trial was specifically to torture Armand and eat away at their relationship over the decades. When you have eternity to be petty, you can really play the long game. 

Lestat invites Armand to his concert where he literally shines a spotlight on him and sings a diss track  that he wrote which begs the question: is it possible to overserve cunt? Because I feel at this point we are getting diminishing returns, especially if the result is making Armand into a sympathetic character. The treatment was so humiliating that even Daniel followed his maker out to the street to check on him. From this scene Armand claims to love or have loved Daniel. When? Where? How? Also, the phenomenon that Daniel has been feeling of the whole world disappearing save for Armand does not seem to actually have been caused by Armand. Is this perhaps related to the Akasha’s awakening and other apocalyptic events that seem to constantly happening around the fringes of this tour?

After the concert the fan for who Lestat “signed” a copy of IWTV in the “Detroit” episode shoots Lestat and his lawyer, Christine. He also releases an anti-vampire manifesto online. This storyline is reminding me alarmingly of the “witchhunter” subplot of Mayfair Witches. While Lestat was prepared to return home, Gabriella returns and convinces him to conclude the tour.

NOTES:

• Lestat claims the Talamasca are behind the bots responsible for the viral concert clip. WTF are they even doing? This is another reminder of how the Immortal Universe has completely bungled this organization which is one of Rice’s best creations. This is the one thing that Queen of the Damned movie actually got right compared to this show.

• Lestat refers to Daniel as “The Vampire Bourdain.” 

• Lestat asks Daniel “Are you missing the psychodrama from Dubai?” This could also be a troll aimed at the audience, some of whom are missing the pacing, drama, and maturity of the first two seasons.

• Alex before he describes his AA experience with Armand: “This is going to sound like a can or corn.” “I like corn.” A not so subtle shoutout to Johnathan Davis the lead singer of the band Korn who fulfilled a similar role with the music on the 2003 Queen of the Damned movie that Daniel Hart does on The Vampire Lestat.

• Armand has apparently been sponsoring Alex and helping him. Mind you, not helping him do the work of recovery but by messing around in his mind and taking away his pain, which is Classic Armand.
• Lestat to Armand: “You used my lover to lure me and my mother to you underground death orgy.” So she was there despite Armand omitting her from his retelling last season.

• This episode is the source of the semi-cringey “I’m quite sexy” line from the trailers.

• This one doesn’t feature any great music, at least not that is showcased. We get a couple of snippets and Plastic Fiends is blasted over a scene. The only showcased song, “Big Boss” is obnoxious and terrible.

• Marius is next week! And he looks…very Roman.

• For all Lestat’s Akasha name-dropping, strange we haven’t heard anything about her in his music. In the book, there is a specific Those Who Must Be Kept song and music video. Maybe next week?

• Lestat refers to his portrayal in IWTV as “Toxic bitch anxiously-attached show pony with a personality disorder.” I mean if the Lelio costume fits...

I’d like to close with a curated selection of Armand insults from “The Devil’s Road.”

• A “Friendless Bottom Twink Sociopath.”
• A “Five-hundred year-old pussy.”
• That his recovery is sponsored by “Pseudologis Pensioner Fuckboys for Sobriety.” I had to look that one up. Pseudologis basically means compulsive liar.
• That he has no soul.
• That he has “uso, Japanime eyes.”
• And that he is a “fuck cloud.”

Patrick Garone