Remember last week when I predicted that Louis was about to leave his abusive relationship with Lestat and take off with Claudia? Yeah, so clearly I was wrong about that. In fairness to the show, it’s common for victims to stay with their abusers, even after violent incidents, for a variety of psychological reasons. “Like Angels Put in Hell by God†is still largely a drag, but I am no longer quite as put off as I was. Louis insists that vampire relationships are more intense than human relationships, so this isn’t like a real abuse situation, it’s different. Molloy’s characteristically glib commentary counters that everything Louis is saying right now is like classic abuse-dynamics — and it’s not the first time he’s said so. There will be no glamorizing of abuse as mere excesses of passion on Molloy’s watch. Nor on Claudia’s, for that matter.
After nursing Louis back to health, (side note: Can we get some clarity on how quickly vampires are supposed to heal in this universe? Louis doesn’t even feel a bullet wound, but it takes him over a month to recover from Lestat?) Claudia spends the next six years helping Daddy Lou rebuff Lestat’s apologies. Louis says that over that time, he and Claudia burned more gifts than bodies, a wise move that I attribute entirely to Claudia because Louis is soon pondering Lestat’s earnestness and vulnerability. “This silence is cruel,†says Lestat, a manipulative jerk who has just given Louis and Claudia new cars. “And you were never cruel, Louis.†Claudia keys her new car with her fingernails. Louis reflects on “the modesty of the gesture.†Inevitably, there comes a day where Louis gives.
The apology present that breaks the camel’s back is a plaintive love song written and recorded by Lestat, but featuring vocals by his mistress Antoinette — the same mistress Lestat had once promised to “kill soon.†Even Lou acknowledges this is like a seven-layer dip of fucked-up trickery, but it does work. In his haste to confront Lestat, currently en dishabille with the offending Antoinette, Louis swims across the Mississippi (side note: What?) and just like that it’s back on like Donkey Kong.
Louis welcomes Lestat back to the house over Claudia’s objections (and much better judgment), but not without some caveats. There will be ground rules, and one of these is for Lestat to kill Antoinette. In the spirit of mutual compromise, Louis also agrees to hunt humans rather than animals so as not to make Lestat and Claudia feel silently judged for their lifestyle choices. I was a little surprised that Louis would abandon the one principle he’s stood by for his entire vampire life and demand the murder of a woman they both know as proof of Lestat’s loyalty, and also agree to eat people, but I guess I’ve never been under Lestat’s thrall.
Claudia has only hostility and profound distrust, but Louis is ready to accept whatever Lestat is ready to offer, even if it’s lies. “No more lies†was another one of their ground rules, but who was shocked that Lestat immediately broke it? Not Claudia, that’s for sure. Lestat says he’s followed through on his promise to kill Antoinette and tosses them a severed finger to prove it, but then Claudia brings Louis to the dingy apartment where Lestat and the very much not-dead Antoinette are nakedly shit-talking. But to Claudia’s dismay, Louis isn’t even going to call Lestat on it, much less pack up and leave. Nor is Louis swayed by her constant telepathic pleading, which gets to the point where she’s still psychically begging Louis to leave with her even while he and Lestat are mid-bang.
Another condition of Lestat’s return was that he now treat Claudia as his sister rather than as his child, and she reinforces their new sibling dynamic by harassing him over antagonistic chess games. Primarily, she enjoys challenging Lestat’s supposed commitment to honesty with sensitive, personal, and bad faith questioning. Who was your maker? Why did your first love kill himself? Did you love him more than you love Louis? Meanwhile Louis, from the couch, is begging Claudia via vampire mind-meld to give it a rest and get along. And he does not appreciate Claudia’s telepathic mockery likening him to an Uncle Tom sucking up to master. That Claudia is somehow capable of torturing Lestat, playing chess, and arguing telepathically with Louis all at the same time feels impossible, but I wouldn’t want to make Lestat’s mistake of underestimating her abilities.
In any case, for as much time as she spends reading Louis’s mind, Claudia still hasn’t grasped that he is not yet capable of leaving Lestat. Instead, to spare her any more heartache, Louis tells Claudia to go away without him. She shouldn’t have to “endure†Lestat any longer and plus, she doesn’t need him anymore, he says. Unfortunately, Louis still needs Claudia, which is why Lestat intercepts her train out of town and hauls her back to the house amid a torrent of threats.
This may be a decision he’ll come to regret. Maybe. Back at the chessboard, Claudia is simultaneously sending Louis an idea over brainwave. While Lestat is busy snarking at Claudia’s weird gameplay (honestly, I would have no way of knowing if it’s weird or not), she’s suggesting to Louis that Lestat has lied about how his maker, a vampire named Magnus, really died. Claudia thinks Magnus didn’t die by suicide as Lestat claimed. She thinks Lestat killed him so that he would not be bound, like a slave, to his maker. Claudia also thinks that she and Louis are now slaves to Lestat, who is their maker. She thinks they should kill Lestat. What’s more, she knows Louis secretly wants to kill him, too. And that’s when she checkmates. Kaboom. Kaboom. Kaboom? I said, “kaboom!â€
The reason Louis’s bombshell moment isn’t having the desired effect on Molloy is that Molloy has fallen asleep — which leads into one of Interview With the Vampire’s patented tonal whiplash moments. Suddenly we’re in another flashback, to the moment Lestat and Molloy first met at a gay dive bar in San Francisco. Molloy introduces himself as a different kind of journalist who likes to interview the real people in the city (I told you he was insufferable), and Louis obviously knows he’s really there to score drugs. But Louis is also cryptic and intriguing, so Molloy decides he would be the perfect “real person†to interview for his bootleg Joan Didion writing project.
Suddenly Rashid, Louis’s human assistant in 2022, appears and Molloy wakes up. It looks like he’s just been inceptioned by Louis. Is this significant? The sudden cut to black certainly wants us to think so.