Interview With the Vampire finale review: A great twist saves a lame twist
Interview With the Vampire closes its first season with a masquerade, a massacre, a couple twists, and the promise of a complete setting shift. And the finale still feels unfinished. "You've only heard half the story," someone tells Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian), and I think that's an overcount. In the glorious past and the chilly present, Interview lands on a pair of cliffhangers — one meh, one ooooo — that reveal everything so far has been setting up the real story. This is the depressing new norm in genre television. "At long last, the beginning has ended!" is not something I've heard on a TV show this year, but it sums up every recent big-budget prequel. (I guarantee it will be actual dialogue on Andor.)
Interview achieves something grander than 2022's other canon dives, because creator Rolin Jones' adaptation of Anne Rice's novel redefines the relationship between Louis (Jacob Anderson) and Lestat (Sam Reid). On page and screen, the gloomy aristocrat and his fun-loving murder daddy previously modeled teasing erotic possibility, their bitchy-sincere "friendship" suggesting much more. The series rips open the artery of metaphor, and what splatters out is a raucous, paranoid, sensitive queer romance. Louis and Lestat share a coffin and they share hobbies. They have an open relationship, which Lestat likes. They have a kid, which Louis likes. They're living two secrets, this interracial gay couple who kill people for food. (Permissive New Orleans society frowns on their smooching but doesn't mind if they walk with Satan.)
Alfonso Bresciani/AMC Jacob Anderson in 'Interview With the Vampire'
Lestat is initially a savior, rescuing Louis from the cruel expectations of the straight world and empowering him against his era's pervasive racism. But, well, he also makes Louis a nightly serial killer. And what an age gap! Allegory keeps clashing with plot: Vampirism as romantic self-realization that destroys boring old binaries, and vampirism as a serious problem that skyrockets the murder rate. Interview works because the Louis-Lestat relationship is so protean. Reid's a gorgeous Australian with a 7-foot chin, so his Lestat is doubly dominant: a French-poetic sensualist built like a Christian-rock Hemsworth. Meanwhile, Anderson cycles through torment and fascination. Louis feels free in his new life — and then imprisoned by a lover-tormentor. Claudia (Bailey Bass) becomes the resident wild card, an unhinged teen who's also the savvy female voice in a frat house of self-delusive ego.
In the finale, which I will now start to spoil, Claudia and Louis plan an elaborate assassination against Lestat. The party is delightful, and all the killing is gory fun. (The glass is empty? "Not for long, Tom!") But it's clear the Interview writers have a problem. This whole saga has built to the Louis-Lestat showdown, and Claudia's arc depends on her throwing off the shackles of her maker. Months of plotting lead to a brutal battle that even involves the last-second arrival of newly-vamped Antoinette (Mara Grace Athari). And after all that, Louis and Claudia only almost kill Lestat, leaving his gash-necked corpse out for the morning garbage pick-up.
"Where does the trash go, Louis?" Molloy asks in the present. He's not buying this dewy gothic climax, and I think you can sense some adaptioneer frustration in Bogosian's cut-the-bull tartness. How could you NOT kill that guy? is the logical question. (Because we got spin-offs, baby!) Since this first season only adapts half of Rice's book, it has to turn Lestat into, like, a level boss, a minor evil before the greater danger ahead. But it also has to tease his return. So barely any time passes between his overextended "death" and a brief sight of him at the dump, resurrecting himself with help from vermin blood.
I think that's why the finale shifts to a much more interesting twist. Doe-eyed assistant Rashid (Assad Zaman) is a vampire, as Molloy suspected, but he possesses powers unlike any we've seen. The sun doesn't bother him: "What's a mediocre star to a 514-year-old vampire?" Louis smiles as he introduces his mystery man. "I'd like you to meet the Vampire Armand," he declares, "The love of my life." Armand is a major Anne Rice player. Die-hards will appreciate his playbills for the Théâtre de Vampires. (Newcomers will probably look as bug-eyed confused as Bogosian: Excuse me, surprise vampire, why did you hand me these ancient French advertisements?)
I only know a bit of Rice's mythology, so what I appreciate is how this twist zigzags our understanding of the main character's journey. In present day, Louis has seemed rigidly restrained, with Anderson playing him somewhere between ethereal serenity and constant self-checking: a god who needs nightly AA meetings. That marked a contrast with Louis' past self, a "rougher thing" and the submissive half of a troubled relationship. Because Anderson modulated his performance so effectively, code-switching between dreamy-tough Creole locality and Davos Man billionaire placelessness, it seemed like this Interview was the story about one man's complicated transformation. The modern Louis is a man living his truth in a skyscraper that is his coffin. He used to have family, and now he has employees.
Except one of those "employees" is an ultra vampire, the shark to Lestat's minnow. "The love of my life," Louis calls Armand, but Zaman's performance suggests unusual power dynamics ahead. "Louis can sometimes act out," he tells Molloy. "I protect him from himself. Always have." I'm not sure that line reduces Louis — some relationships depend on emotional caretaking — but it does undercut the tycoon-cult authority he's been perpetuating. Is Armand a devoted lover keeping his addict boyfriend on a healthy path? Or is this another more experienced vampire shrouding young Louis in a morally spiraling lifestyle? Does Armand drink human blood? And what an age gap!
On the other hand, Armand certainly seems more emotionally supportive than Lestat. And this revelation thrillingly sets both timelines on a clear course for season 2. Louis and Claudia are heading off on new global adventures — straight, apparently, toward Armand. And the twist could defibrillate the present-day scenes, which turned repetitive despite Bogosian's salty charm. Beyond the central Louis-Lestat relationship, Interview sometimes felt undercooked. (See: Antoinette, a theoretically important person with nothing to do). This finale suggests a complex new romance lies ahead, with tensions both epic and awkward. Will season 2 tell a new immortal love story for the ages? Or will Claudia just have to meet dad's new boyfriend?
Finale grade: B+
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