The Vampire Lestat, Episode 6: Montreal

The penultimate episode of TVL is surprising for a number of reasons. There are no flashbacks and very little lore. Instead we get a  Louis and Lestat relationship “open bottle” episode in which the two characters warily circle each other and try to reconcile their vast baggage. That and a completely bonkers ending. 

Personally, I am a huge fan of these kinds of character-focused stories in which we follow characters around for a day and watch them interact. And it works early well here due to the strength of the these two actors and their incredible chemistry together. I can’t even be mad about not getting the kind of novel material I would have wanted. I'm honestly happy to let these actors and this creative team cook.

Failure is a recurring theme in this season and Lestat is stewing in the fact that his album is poorly reviewed and only reached a mediocre number sixty-eight on the Billboard Top 100. This is a distinction from the novel in which (at least as Lestat tells it) the album is a huge success.

We are full circle from the season premiere and Lestat is back in Montreal on Halloween, although now with Louis in person instead of via FaceTime. It has been a month and a half since the “New York” episode and the two have been spending more time together in the wake of Louis’s crash-out over “Fraudia.” Since then, Satan’s Night Out has been turned and guitarist Alex has taken his brother’s apparent suicide hard, seen here lurking around moodily in a Dracula mask. 

Lestat seems to be taking his  death-faking at least somewhat seriously, as we seem him thumbing through some fake passports featuring some of his known aliases from the novels. We see here Sheridan Blackwood and Clarance Oddbody. This does give some context for his apparent “death” in the framing device in episode one. Maybe he’s just leaned into is faked death and has fucked off somewhere.

Although Lestat and Louis are not back together, they are certainly interacting comfortably together. A familiar refrain in this episode is “Should we cancel?” both referring to some dinner plans and mysterious other event. One of the joys of this episode is seeing the two interact and interact in a (for this show anyway) healthy way. “Why you bein’ nice,” Louis asks him.

Lestat (complete in Grim Reaper costume) and Louis meet Daniel to conclude the documentary interview. Dan is a suspiciously Trumpy orange color. The two proceed to fuck with Daniel as they had been all along but one again Lestat gives him an honest and gracious response to his question about Louis and Lestat’s reunion in New Orleans, “It was enough that he showed up.” Dan is not in a place to really appreciate the candidness and intimacy of this answer.

Lestat and Louis then head to a band rehearsal where Louis and Sofia/Gabriella finally meet. At this point Louis doesn’t know who she really is other than that she is an intimate of Lestat. She toys with him, clearly threatened by his hold on her son. When Lestat sings his ballad “Brutal Love” in their direction, it becomes clear he is singing to Louis and Gabriella is not happy about it. At this point a bunch of music has been released and some of them are clearly about Louis (a few are specifically about Gabriella) despite Lestat’s protestations. Although in this episode he does admit that “most of them” are about Louis.

When asked what he though of Sofia, Louis responds “I’ll tell you in the car,” which is never a good sign. Sofia, threatened, is attempting to get Lestat to go with her to Spain to watch the fallout of the Great Conversion but he brushes her off. It seems like he is finally getting sick of her manipulative shit.

Much of this episode takes place in the back of Lestat’s limo and Louis is sent a link to a video that Daniel has posted showing Lestat and Gabriella in bed and an interview with him and Armand outing her as Lestat’s mother. I love that Armand has descended into high school Mean Girls cyber-bullying at the this point. Also, Dan and Armand are seen in the daylight. This is one of those weird deviations from the lore established on the books. While certain vampires are old and powerful enough to survive the daylight, none of them are what might be called “daywalkers” in other lore. Certainly, Daniel would not survive this.

This Gabriella information causes a blow-up with Louis and Lestat. I think the show is making too big of a deal over this. As Lestat says, they are “unnatural beings” and he accuses Louis (rightly so) of whipping out his “half human soul” to win an argument. The problem with Gabriella is less that she is Lestat’s mother but more that she is toxic and manipulative and that he was lying about it.

The make it to their final appointment of the night which is with a witch named Merrick Mayfair, a character who was a protagonist of the eponymous Anne Rice novel. She is a character spun off from The Lives of the Mayfair Witches and is also associated with the Talamasca and the apparently-dead-on-the-show David Talbot. Here she is a New Orleans acquaintance of Lestat, and a voodooine that he brings to Montreal to hold a seance to reach Claudia and provide Louis with the closure that he seeks.

I really wish they had brought the characters back to New Orleans for this episode. Narratively it would make more sense since that is where Merrick lives and also where Claudia was born and lived much of her life. Mostly it would have been nice to get those season one NOLA vibes back.

Much as in the book, the raised ghost of Claudia is pissed and not having it from either of them, especially not from Louis. Delainey Hayles is amazing and powerful in this scene, so much so that I wish they wouldn’t have pooched her appearance in the Fraudia subplot. I think her appearance would have been more impactful if this was the only time we saw her this season. A lot of the people behind this show are from the theater and this scene really has a heightened theatrical feel and Delainey prowls this mystical circle like she is performing in the round. Lots of people associated with this show have and will deserve awards and Hayles is one of them. Hopefully she gets the recognition she deserves for this show-stopping scene.

Among the many terrible things she says to Louis is “I liked him better,” referring to Lestat. Which is basically what she says in the book. One thing I wish we had got this season was some of the events of IWTV from Lestat’s perspective and especially his take on the Claudia relationship. In Louis’ telling, the two were constantly at odds but boom Lestat describes much more closeness and camaraderie between them which we never really see on the show.

Of course, there is no closure for Louis, only more trauma but it must be said he takes it better than his book counterpart. As with the books we are left to wonder was that really Claudia? Was it all of Claudia or just a shadow of her rage? Did she really mean all those very hurtful things that she said? This scene is lifted straight from Rice's writing and is consistent with the way that she approached ghosts throughout her writing which is to say in her cosmology you can never expect to get truth, clarity or "closure" from a ghost. 

As Lestat and Louis discuss their baggage and even carefully broach getting back together they notice Alex skulking in the distance with his Dracula mask. They are then promptly beheaded by Armand and Daniel.

NOTES:

• Lestat refers to the different roles he has fulfilled as “The nesting dolls of identity” and the show is very much about him reconciling all of those  elements of his his personality. I thought that was a lovely way to put it and as far as I know not from Anne Rice.
• Louis’ solutions to his Claudia issues in this episode: seance and blocking on social media.
• Gabriella mentions to Louis that vampires from Dubai, Paris, and Detroit will be attending. All famously the sites of his rampages.
• My goodness Jacob Anderson was serving some face during Brutal Love.
• Lestat about Gabs: “I conduct the chaos, she is one of the many chainsaws I juggle “ 
• During the voodoo ceremony Claudia breaks the barrier ring. Does that mean she is loose in the world? Ghost Claudia does have a VERY memorable scene in Queen of the Damned. It's also one of the most genuinely scary scenes in her writing which despite all the monsters is not really what you would call horror.
• So, Gabriella turned Alex, which I am sure Lestat is going to be totally cool and not possessive about. Did Lestat make any fledglings? I imagine that Gabs, Sam, and Lestat each turned one of them…
• Lestat’s aliases are straight from Tale of the Body Thief and tie into the themes of that book or are literary allusions. Clarence Oddbody is a character from Its a Wonderful Life, tied to the theme of a supernatural vision of what life could have been. Sheridan Blackwood is not related to her novel Blackwood Farm but instead a combination of the Gothic authors Algernon Blackwood and Sheridan le Fanu who wrote Carmilla, an early vampire story which was a big influence on Rice for its Gothic atmosphere and complex, conflicted vampire.
• Louis was Degrassi High fan. These vampires are consuming A LOT of media.
• The uncle in question here is Cortland Mayfair who is a main character of AMC’s Mayfair Witches series, although Merrick has not appeared on that show.
• Justice for Antoinette. Indeed.
• Blood of Akasha count. Here we go again. Does Louis even know who Akasha is?
• Did we ever see Gabriella’s portrait in Interview with the Vampire season one?
• “She spared us the ambiguity.” Indeed.
• “Why do I actively, manically pursue failure?” Although a case can be made that book Lestat is less messy than show Lestat, I think this line is true for both versions. Book Lestat has some cosmic-level failures and wild lapses of judgment.
• Somehow it looks like we are getting more Auvergne and Nicky in the finale.
• Look, they have been teasing decapitaitons…They are both okay. It's fine. We're all fine.

The Vampire Lestat, Episode 5: New York

"New York" is a long, dense episode chronicling Lestat's attempt to make an album out of his three-century "trainwreck" of a life. We get into some serious lore here, introducing VC character like Marius and Akasha. Even Amel, the evil spirit animating the vampires gets a few name drops. As is the case for other elements of the season, there is a bit of deviation and compression of the source material here which is initially distracting and even upsetting to those of use who love The Vampire Lestat novel but once you have gotten over some of the nagging differentness of the story, it is an enjoyable episode with a ton to unpack. The first appearance of Akasha does not disappoint.

We start with the band in studio making the album. At this point, Lestat has faked his death. Christine (apparently having survived her gunshot), Farid, and even Daniel have been sent on their way with the rest of the entourage having been replaced the vampire Sam and Gabriella, who are producing and managing respectively. Lestat, being the consummate demanding musical diva that he is, is starting to come to the conclusion that the band in its current form will not be able to give him what he needs from this album.They are planning one live show, presumably with Lestat. Maybe he is going to pretend to a hologram? Like the novel, it looks as though everything is building up to one massive and chaotic concert event.

Cut with these scenes hots of him being pulled out the group by Marius and taken to the sanctuary of Those Who Must Be Kept located in Greece. In this version of the story he is recruited by Akasha. In the book, during his wanderings he had been actively seeking the Roman vampire, Marius during his travels with Gabrielle and Marius finds him in the ground.

In the show Lestat underground for 80 years and Akasha sends Marius to him. This is (at least for the moment) a different interpretation of Marius than the book version. As the keeper of the Those Who Must Be Kept, he is apparently actively in the shrine the majority of his time and seems to have gone a little mental, as Lestat does later. When we first meet him, Marius has a very Yoda-in-his-early-Empire-Strikes-Back-scenes vibes.

Now Marius is a core Vampire Chronicles character, whose story is told not only in his own book, Blood and Gold but he is a major character in The Vampire Armand and Pandora. The showrunners have indicated that this is just a tease of the character and they have "plans" for him so I can't be too mad we didn't get the long sit-down with Lestat where he tells his life story. Seemingly there are other opportunities to do that. Given the success of the show and the popularity of the Armand character, it seems reasonable that we could get an Armand-focused spinoff in which Marius would be a major character.

Meanwhile, Louis is doing some uncomfortable improv with Fauxdia and a local actress playing Madeline. Is this the most disturbing element of the show? Maybe.

Armand is also in town and hovering on the fringes of things as is his wont.  He finds Daniel shooting interview segments for the documentary and recounts his fifty plus year monitoring of Daniel's life. He offers to help him "finish the job" of the documentary. He also offers to let him "walk in the sun." Armand reveals that Gabriella is Lestat's mother, which it seems Daniel had been working out on his own. "He lies with his mother," the gremlin adds, spicily.

Lestat and Gabriella discuss all the times she has abandoned him. This includes an unseen instance in New Orleans, presumably after Louis and Claudia left. "You were a terrible mother," he concludes. Letat's mommy issues have been a big theme this season and I can only assume this is to set up his seduction by Akasha who will be his new mommy.

In flashbacks, we see that Lestat has been taking care of TWMBK. He is going slightly mad in the same way Marius had been but on some level he seems content to take care of a mother who is incapable of abandoning him. In the book, they are described as looking like marble but are her depicted as having an almost bronze finish and they look fantastic.

Louis and Fauxdia continue their uncomfortable IWTV LARPing. She's writing things down in a book. It's very Claudia but also very sus. Characteristically, Louis seems tortured by the whole situation.

Back in the sanctuary, Lestat hosts a mad imaginary dinner party on New Years Eve, 1900. This would be about a decade before the events of season one. Akasha awakens and drinks his blood.

Back in 2025, Louis reveals his Claudia situation to Lestat. It's so nice to see these two back together and speaking. Despite Lestat being upset that Louis hadn't reached out after the shooting. Louis seems to be confused as to whether or not Fauxdia is actually Claudia on some level. I'm honestly a little confused as to what the show wants me to think about this. This subplot has been presented in a very grounded kind of way but the show seems to be suggesting that something supernatural is afoot. It should be said, that in the Anne Rice cosmology, ghosts can be very physical. So the fact that she is visible to others does not preclude Fauxdia from being a ghost.

Lestat goes in to see Fauxdia in full Low Key Marvel disguise, complete with sunglasses and a hoodie. He is deeply affected by seeing this woman who looks exactly like Claudia, although he tells Louis a different story. He goes on to record a really beautiful song about her which changes his whole approach to the album.

Lestat concludes that the band needs the blood, much to Gabriella"s delight. There are three vampires and three band members. Also, Salamander given the blood basically equals Matt Berry's character in What We Do In The Shadows and I am here for that.

Marius returns to find in Akasha awake and ranting and Lestat floating in the air. He wrangles Akasha and casts Lestat out. Sheila Atim is amazing in this brief scene as Akasha and I cannot wait to see what she does with the character next season.

The show ends with a scene of Armand compelling TVL guitarist Larry to walk unto the subway tracks For Some Reason. The camera then lingers on him looking cvnty and disassociated and already inspiring memes.

NOTES:

• The episode begins with Lestat describing some of his past coffins, including his first one from his days as an orphan vampire in Magnus' lair. I am still bummed we never saw more of this. We have not even seen Magnus go into the fire.
• In his voiceover Lestat says "I, Amel digress." This is very interesting.  Amel is the spirt that animates the vampires and was residing in Akasha for millenia. In the books, it ended up with another vampire at the conclusion of Queen of the Damned. It does not end up in. Lestat until much later. It makes me think they are streaming things here and ending QOTD in a different place.
• TC refers to Gabriella as "Yoko Mirren"
• "I'm finally going to talk about the Queen." Because he has previously been so reticent to bring her up until now.
• "I don't like being alone,"says Lestat when Marius goes off on vacation or wherever he goes. Great line reading by Reid and also just a huge theme of this version of the character. 
• Marius when Armand is mentioned: "Rotten boy." Armand is the Rodney Dangerfield of the Immortal Universe.
• Enkil back of head blown out and missing fingers. Marius seems to suggest this is from his accidental exposure to the sun but...um, wut?
• "There's not enough of us to make it profitable," Louis lamenting about how serving vampires is not economically feasible and offering a financial justification for the Great Conversion.
• Dan's daughter attended "Rice University"
• Armand describes Louis as "calculating to the core. Methodically cruel." Um, project much?
• "You do not need around you what does not need you anymore." Gabriella's justification for abandoning Lestat. It's a little twisted and roundabout but coherent and kind in its own way.
• "You don't have to do the accent. It's hard. The Yat." The irony of these two British actors having this conversation.
• The cheap reproduction Tiffany lamp keeps taking me out. Can we get a better lamp and wig budget next season. Mind you, one of the reasons I used to watch Gotham was because the lamps and light fixtures were so good.
• "Why is her tongue cut out?" This is the only line from Akasha's ramblings that seems directly related to the events of QOTD, famously the witch-turned-vampire Makare has her tongue removed on the orders of Akasha.
• In the next episode Lestat and Louis apparently enlist a witch to help them with their Claudia problem. This is essentially the plot of the vampire chronicle Merrick, featuring Talamasca member and Mayfair witch, Merrick Mayfair who helps them exorcise Claudia's ghost.

Patrick Garone Will Be Attending G-Fest 2026

 

Did you know the original version of City of the Gods was a Mockumentary?

City of the Gods: The Return of Quetzalcoatl had an odd path toward its publication. When I was first working on the story, I naturally thought it would work best as a movie. After all, the kaiju genre is primarily a movie genre. Aside from occasional novelizations, there really have not been a lot of notable kaiju novels. I worked on it as screenplay for a while but the whole thing felt a little flat to me, the characters really didn't pop the way I would have liked them to.

At the time (in the aughts) I was very involved with sketch comedy and improv here in Chicago. I had a lot of comedy friends. I was also in school for Media and was looking to do a final project so I combined the Quetzalcoatl idea, with my comedy friends, and we got a camera and equipment and shot The Making of Quetzalcoatl: The Defender, a short film embedded above. The film is a send up of the very self-important "making-of" documentaries that were included as DVD special features at the time (especially "The Beginning" doc included in The Phantom Menace.) I had a notion of releasing it on a DVD as a special feature to a movie that was essentially just two hours of green screen with a commentary track. Still not a bad idea.