If there is one thing I’m becoming more and more sure of, it’s that Louis and Lestat are madly in love, but they also can’t stand the other.
Their relationship is defined by their desire for one another and what they mean to each other as creator and created, but they are two people who couldn’t be more fundamentally different. They approach this version of their lives in entirely different manners, and it’s driving an impenetrable wedge between them.
Interview with the Vampire Season 1 Episode 3 was potentially the last we’ll see of just Louis and Lestat as we know them.
Time is moving rather quickly through this series, which makes sense as we have some one-hundred-plus years to get through and take us to the present day. But you can tell pretty quickly that the ensuing years haven’t been good for the personal side of Louis and Lestat’s relationship.
Lestat is a vampire who relishes in his power. He’s taken the darkness given to him and uses it to enhance his pleasures and get the most out of life. He takes lives, and he drowns in the intoxication of it all. It’s much more than a means to an end for him, whereas Louis is discovering that he feels the very opposite.
Even though Louis makes his declaration here about wanting to switch to an all-animal diet, we know that this won’t stick due to his admission to Molloy about only having been freed from the desire to kill some twenty years earlier.
So, we know this Louis won’t last, and it’s easy to see how as the hour plays out.
One thing about Louis? His emotions will rule him. It seems to be one of the most significant differences between the Louis of old and the Louis of today.
He struggles mightily with giving up certain aspects of his human life, namely his family, and his mindset, in many ways, is still that of his human days. Now, is that a bad thing? I would venture to say no, but at the same time, you have to find some balance, or you’ll drive yourself insane.
You can’t step back into your human life for various reasons, one being the eventual fear that will befall those who don’t know the truth. You’re not aging, and you’re only coming out at night, that’s bizarre, and there’s no earthly explanation for it.
Louis finds out the hard way just how broken his dynamic with his family is when his mother looks at him with pure disdain, peering into whatever soul she can find and calling him out for what she believes he has become.
It’s hard to see Louis so broken in that moment when even Grace has to push him away for the sake of her girls, but it’s something Lestat has been trying to prepare him for.
Is it better to sever ties completely with your past life in the beginning or stay connected until one day they sever ties with you?
It’s all unfortunate and discomforting for Louis, who is spending some of this hour in the midst of a lovers’ spat with Lestat, and the city’s racist agenda, which threatens the business he’s worked so hard to build for himself.
Louis and Lestat love each other, and you can see that love in little ways, but overall, they don’t respect each other. But they are bonded to each other, and that bond will stay with them for eternity.
Louis: I can smell her on you.
Lestat: From time to time, I like a little variety. There, I said it.
Lestat has been undead for a very long time, and he’s been forthcoming about his wants. So, is it shocking that he likes to play the field a bit and sleep around? Absolutely not.
But that doesn’t mean it’s not hurtful to Louis, who feels like he’s giving him everything he could possibly need, so why does he feel the need to seek pleasure elsewhere?
Jonah arrives at the perfect time, a link to Louis’s past that allows him a few minutes to escape into the wonders of his past and get away from the demons of the present.
But it’s one sacred thing Louis can’t have for himself without Lestat injecting his claws into it. Because Lestat is allowed to have his cake and eat it too, but Louis isn’t quite afforded that same luxury, which definitely feels like a precursor for things to come.
“I heard your hearts dancing!” is an insane line. You see Lestat as vulnerable as you will see him at that moment. Devoid of the confidence he wears with such honor, he’s just a jealous man here, for once seeing the one side of Louis he gets to himself shared with someone else.
The thing between these two is that they don’t really try to see the others’ perspectives much. And when Louis tells him they won’t work, what he’s saying is that it’s those core differences that rest deep inside them that they’ll never be able to reconcile.
It will always put them on opposite sides and prevent them from ever being able to live their lives together as equals who understand one another. And I’m not even sure that’s something either of them even wants.
Lestat is ready to celebrate the devastation spurned on by Louis’s actions, while Louis is ready to make right the wrongs he created.
One thing I think is very neat about this version of the story is how they don’t shy away from the horrors of that time and weave them into the fabric of the story.
Louis was able to amass a fortune and became a reputable businessman when it shouldn’t have been possible, and the good old boys couldn’t stand for it and had to develop a way to undermine him.
Fenwick was fine frequenting Louis’s establishments, but when he was more successful than him, it was time to pull the plug.
Driving the black people out allowed Fenwick to establish dominance and get back his property for cheap.
While he pushed his agenda, a weary, hungry Louis let all that anger fester and accumulate inside him. And it exploded in yet another fit of rage when he not only killed Fenwick but made a mockery of it.
The idea that he did it for himself and his people is something he truly believes. A black man in America pushed and pushed and pushed and expected not to break. A tale as old as time.
Except Louis does break, chaos ensues, and we’re left with the little nugget that things are about to change forever. Because this is the night Louis will meet Claudia, and she will alter the plans he and Lestat had in a way that neither of them expects.
Lestat’s plans to coast through life with only Louis at his side are about to change dramatically in the form of a curly-haired young girl. And one can only imagine what that will do to Lestat’s fragile ego when it comes to his obsessive love of Louis de Pointe du Lac.
Extra Thoughts
- Since Paul’s death, Louis’s mom has treated Louis like a pariah and then wonders why he’s stayed far away from the family.
- I loved the imagery of Louis replaying the scene of him and Jonah in the bayou with rain and trying to recall the actual chain of events. Memory is tricky, and I like they explored the idea of re-writing history versus staging a performance.
- Louis is petty when he wants to be, which was out in full force during this episode.
Claudia’s arrival will undoubtedly alter the Lestat and Louis dynamic, and I’m excited to see the following chapters of Louis’s life.
Let me know in the comments what you thought about this hour and what you’re hoping to see moving forward.
If you need to catch up, you can always watch Interview with the Vampire online via TV Fanatic!
Whitney Evans is a staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow her on Twitter.