The Vampire Lestat Season 1 Episode 2 “Toledo” is a great hour of television, but it’s one with enough major story beats that it feels like, maybe, it’s ever so slightly too ambitious. As in, with more time to breathe, what’s currently great could be excellent. Quite a lot happens in nowhere near enough time, meaning some pieces of Lestat’s backstory—his autobiography, his documentary, his recorded narration of “The Failures,” or whatever else you want to call it—feel rushed in a way that Interview with the Vampire rarely did. If ever. And yet, in what feels like the biggest contradiction possible after writing that kind of criticism, the execution is still impressive on a level that defies logic.
The hour includes so very, very much! In the present timeline, before the band’s next tour stop, The Vampire Lestat loses a band member, who can’t handle actually realizing he’s working with a vampire. Lestat throws a wildly entertaining tantrum. He performs for his mom’s benefit, showing off like, “look what I can do, Mommy!” before, ultimately, crooning in that crowded venue for Louis’ ears only. Oh, and Lestat slips Louis his, uh, heavily-edited version of Daniel Molloy’s book. The episode also features a fascinating meeting between Louis and Daniel that includes multiple major developments.
But that’s not all! As the tale of their origins unfolds in some distant past, Lestat and his Gabriella explore the city in a way that seems like all the Savage Garden is simultaneously theirs and theirs alone…and nothing but a mere backdrop to what is their special bond. Or maybe it’s just that she is, always has been, the center of her son’s everything. Some twisted combination of both, as viewers learn.
Then, there the flashbacks. And here is where, if anything is less than perfection, The Vampire Lestat Season 1 Episode 2 takes a slight slide. Lestat de Lioncourt’s youth and his two failed attempts at escaping that boring, meaningless life of his may be rushed through and glossed over for the sake of modern-day melodrama well enough. But Lestat’s battle with the wolves doesn’t quite feel like it gets the weight it deserves. It’s pivotal for the character, a key to who he eventually becomes…and yet. The series doesn’t even set the massive struggle in the right season.
Still, “Sam Reid” (if that even is is real name and not Lestat de Lioncourt) does a fabulous job with what he’s given, looks great in 18th Century garb with the glow of the sun behind him, and utterly slays the bloody, exhausted, traumatized aftermath. So, it’s not perfect…but it’s still very, very good. And, if the goal of this hour—in Lestat’s own words—is “illuminating the why and how” he became what he is “in the light of said…Oedipiphany,” then mission accomplished. Because, above and beyond anything else, The Vampire Lestat Season 1 Episode 2 makes both what made Lestat and his mother close, and all the ways they’re as distant and can be, clear.
He adores her, and she loves him back—to a point. And that, of course, is the most overly-simplistic summation of everything on screen and in Lestat’s Anne Rice’s books. Jennifer Ehle and Sam Reid have a super, twisted sort of chemistry. When all the world’s Gabriella and Lestat’s stage, they’re like two best friends, two lovers, two co-conspirators who neither immortality nor distance can ever separate. But the walls are still there when and how they need to be, her withdrawing here, non-committal about sticking around there, poking at his broken, bleeding heart at yet other times.
Lestat pushes back when he can, using his (hated) father’s French language as a shield, even as he serenades his unrequited love with a haunting, contemplative sort of quality. At one point, he challenges her—some knowing in his tone and gaze—on how long she’ll be here this time. Elsewhere, he looks on, tortured, as she seems to flirt with some random or another. But it always comes back to some irresistible them.
This relationship is key to understanding this character and all his worst acts, up to and including everything (at least the truthful parts—f*** that train bit) Louis has already shared to Daniel about him. Because underneath all that showy, bratty armor that Lestat de Lioncourt wears so well (and so entertainingly), there’s that infinite longing for a mother he wishes could love him back even an ounce as much as he adores her.
…and fears her…and, sometimes, maybe even can’t stand her.
Still. Not adapting the full trauma that led to Gabriella actually coming to her son’s room and sharing her dreams with him feels a little like a missed opportunity. And, to go back to contradicting myself, I also can’t imagine cutting anything, whatsoever, out to make room for it.
MORE: Read our The Vampire Lestat series premiere review!
The negotiations
When Lestat’s not busy sharing bits and pieces of his backstory with viewers (eh, listeners if they’ve got a copy of “The Failures”) or pining after Gabriella even as he’s having the time of his (after) life with her, The Vampire Lestat Season 1 Episode 2 gives him a chance to reconnect with another ex-lover. It feels like a messy AF divorce, but the extremely heated negotiations turn out to be about damage done to Mr. Pitt’s hotel. The thing is, Mr. Pitt is actually a very calm, measured, oddly well-adjusted Louis. And oh, it is so good to see Jacob Anderson here, having a much larger role than he would in the most strict page-to-screen adaptation.
(Which, again, may make the places where I nitpick other differences and/or feel disappointed by them feel contradictory or hypocritical. But. Well. We connect to stories how we connect to them.)
I almost wish this lovers’ quarrel hadn’t been in pre-season clips. The particular way Reid sits there in those dark sunglasses, never breaking the stare across the table that we can’t even see behind the frames but know he’s not breaking, tuning out all the talk of damages while he appears every bit the spoiled child who had his favorite toy taken away is too good to spoil. And, as he’s swiveling in his chair one minute, that moody twist to his expression pretty much never leaving, I’d like to say we know exactly who we’re going to see on the other side before we actually do. But, I mean. We do know, whether the delightfully over-the-top performance from Reid gives us all the right context clues or not.
…because we’ve already seen the clips.
Still, this is personal for Lestat in a way that any random hotel owner’s presence wouldn’t be, so it’s probably easy enough to figure it’s either Louis or the loathed Armand. Thankfully, it’s Louis because as Anderson maintains a supernatural amount of control over his portrayal of Louis, that allows Reid to unravel in a way that actually lines up with some of Louis’ more negative descriptions of Lestat, even as he’s hilariously butt-hurt over exactly that unfair—in his mind—characterization. (It’s not that it was ever wrong, exactly…just incomplete. Well. Except for the one wrong part in the TV show…)
When Louis mentions hearing Lestat’s song, and Lestat claims it’s not about Louis, that’s where Anderson lets a little bit of Louis’ amusement at pushing his maker’s buttons shine through. And then, the energy just builds, and builds, and builds. The more Louis seems unbothered, the more Lestat loses his sh** in a way that is just purely a blast to watch. What a gift.
Then, Louis gets a bit defensive and throws his emotionally unavailable companion in Lestat’s face, asking if he’s also banging his lawyer. Here, Anderson’s genius shines through. Because even if Reid’s at a zillion (out of 10) on the melodrama scale—because Lestat’s all sitting some kind of awkward way to pout, disgusted, cackling at the mere mention of Armand, and rocking himself in his chair, and gods know what else—it’s impossible to miss the places where the restraint Louis holds oh, so artfully still does, indeed, start to crack.
It’s that contrast between the two vampires that’s just about always caused, um, issues. And now, after everything, it still does. But hey, Louis still comes to that concert and—in that understated way of his—enjoys the tunes. He may not, however, enjoy the “notes” in that book quite as much.
“Old friends, talking around the small betrayal that kept them apart”
The Vampire Lestat Season 1 Episode 2 comes with a warning: Lestat de Lioncourt will tell his version of events, how and when he wants to share them, whether he has any clue what actually happened or not. In this case, he presents his listeners with a conversation between Daniel Molloy and Louis that’s fascinating on a number of levels. First, there’s the obvious issue of the unreliable, secondhand (at best), narration. What really happened? No one knows! We may never.
With that put aside, though, the most interesting part might just be how Eric Bogosian and Jacob Anderson play the moment. This isn’t the sassy Daniel from IWTV. He’s learned about vampire loneliness. He gets it now. Not only that, but he’s oddly vulnerable, afraid almost, when he describes how there are times when everything disappears and becomes, only, Armand. As far as the Dark Gift goes—at least in Lestat’s account of events!—he also admits to Louis that he doesn’t possess much in the way of power. “I can’t fly, I can’t start fires, all I get is the Low-Hanging Balls Gift.”
But then, much as most of The Vampire Lestat Season 1 Episode 2 is about the unbreakable bond between Lestat and the one love he’ll never fully have as “his,” Louis has his turn to ache. In what is a quietly grieving, beautifully vulnerable, distinctly confused and troubled few moments from Anderson, Louis describes seeing someone who looked like Claudia in New York. There is a haunting, evidence of a pain so deep inside, it’ll never go away as he discusses following that young woman. And that faraway look, that wrinkled brow as he concludes “chased a ghost, I guess…” and “…it’s not her” is stunning.
This is what it is to lose a child, to wonder what she might have been had she been able to grow up—the way Anderson’s voice shakes on “if she’d’ve made it to her 20s” is enough to hold an audience in the palm of his hand and force us to hang on every single word. Some absences are like a phantom limb, always present, sometimes tricking us. For Louis, that’s always going to be Claudia.
The Vampire Lestat Season 1 Episode 2 ends Raglan James and Real Rashid (who’s actually Rashid!) interrupting Daniel and Louis’ reunion. Raglan asks Louis to clean up a mess. At first, he wants nothing to do with it. But the instant hurt written all over him when Raglan gets to the real point—that one of those vampires is the one who hurt Claudia—the change in Louis is instant. Let’s just say…well. Looks like this job is more of an opportunity for revenge than it is a job at all, huh.
MORE: Everything we know about The Vampire Lestat Season 1.
“Your father’s tongue”
As Louis and Daniel have their (interrupted) meeting that ends the hour with those painful memories of Claudia, Lestat suffers his own loss all over again. The fun and games of spending the evening with Gabriella—Italian restaurant full of bloodied corpses and all—begins to come to a challenging sort of end. Gabriella also mentions Claudia, as a way of rubbing Lestat’s nose in both the loss of her and the loss of Louis. Any doubts about whether Lestat’s mom is simply admitting she understands the allure of Louis are immediately erased with that “I can see why you gave her a daughter…I see why you took her away” and that smug, cat got the canary, expression Ehle wears. Her mocking tone, in response to an obviously-upset Lestat, doesn’t exactly give “supportive, loving mom” either.
As soon as he realizes she’s not backing down, you can see the wheels turning—can understand Lestat’s deciding on a way to get back at her—through Reid’s performance. He begins to sing in French, the language his mom hates, the language of his father and idiot brothers. But it’s also his native tongue, as he reminds her.
…and then, we watch the night a newly In the Blood Gabriella and Lestat took their bloody, violent revenge on the whole family. The swell of the music as Lestat gives Gabriella the Dark Gift, followed by the quieter, more contemplative notes when we see the full destruction the two wrought together, gives an extra power to those memories. And, back in the present day, one of our last closeups on Reid reveals a depth of emotion—some deep, centuries-old sadness, possibly some regret, even, as he remembers hearing the screams of the children when they returned and found that there—that’s just as impressive as every single rockstar moment, every hilariously bent out of shape reaction to those bandmates being upset to learn Lestat’s a vampire, and even the show of drama he puts on when he reveals his wounds to Louis.
This is the vampire Lestat. All this regret, this longing for love and acceptance he’s never had, that constant sense of not being good enough no matter how many wolves he took on singlehandedly, that unhealing abandonment, this push and pull between his adoration for and his resentment of his mommy. All of it. This, plus the musicality, plus the theatre…all of it.
Again going to ask: Are we sure Sam Reid is an actor and not actually Lestat?
MORE: We may never get over Claudia’s trial, so we totally get how Lestat feels when Gabriella brings her up…
More The Vampire Lestat Season 1 Episode 2 reactions
- “If you’re still listening after the…Oedipiphany of the last hour, welcome back.” It’s the bright tone on “welcome back!” and the uncomfortable hesitation before that Oedipiphany word for me.
- “I. Asked. The question.” This is such a moment. Extremely powerful and determined from a woman living, basically, in a cage. All the clownish antics of Lestat’s father and brothers, and she just cuts right through the BS and is the hero in the room to him.
- Another excellent moment from Ehle: “One hour on stage—an hour!—of not this place! Its dampness, and dimness, and your pockmarked wife! And Gregoire, jamming his cock into servant girls like he’s…” The tension in her hand gestures, the way her raging voice just commands the room…so good.
- Mother, just calmly going back to her book while everything erupts into violence and chaos around her. You can absolutely see the seeds of the Lestat we know and love (and all the most boring people and vampires on the planet loathe) in her there.
- …but are we for real supposed to believe that grown AF looking dude then “grew up” more into…Sam Reid? K.
- Every single closeup, all that trauma…wow.
- Is this where I do the side-by-side with the book and say I don’t understand what’s actually gained with the slight tweaks? Like, “dream” and “imagine” aren’t as interchangeable as you might think! Regardless, Lestat dreams about killing them all (and he does get to by the end!), and his mom…dreams about going off, getting drunk, and f**king anything that moves. Valid.
- The way he calls “Mother!” after her with all that desperation…and then, does it again, even more desperately.
- Absolute whiplash, going from that broken young man, bathed in the blood of the wolves and now also having to worry about his mom’s health…to the Brat Prince in all his glory.
- “Do you have the Fire Gift?” Lestat lights Interview with the Vampire on fire…with the Fire Gift. 10/10, no notes.
- He’s a really good leaner, ok.
- “When was the last time you talked to Armand?” Now, why would anyone who doesn’t want their throat ripped out ask that? (Love how offended Reid instantly plays that response here. Meanwhile, Gabriella’s just pure amusement at her son’s expense…until they start making heart-eyes at each other, of course.)
- “It’s Louis, not Louissss.” GET HER.
- “I lived! 54554 days before I met Louis du Pointe du Lac.” Ok, drama queen. It’s giving “I’m totally over him, except I’m not.”
- “…and there was simply no one in the Garden more effortless in killing time than her.” THAT PART. (Especially if you remove the word “time” from that sentence.)
- He is so soft on “I missed you.” Just aching.
- Look at how Lestat sees his mom even now that he’s his own larger-than-life figure. The way the crowd just fades and blurs away as background noise, while she just, oh-so-powerfully makes her way through that club and back to him, is everything. Because she’s his everything!
- “Do you have a lot of sex?” “I’m a rockstar now. Of course.” “Do you like it? Like you do the Blood.” “It’s never like the Blood.”
- “…take that line item, and hold it over your vampire bidet.” If you don’t love Christine, are you even paying attention?
- “It feels. Like. A cry for help. So, I flew in. Because I care.” Mannn, the way Anderson delivered this. Yes. Louis not only choosing his words carefully but also pausing. For. Emphasis. So. Lestat. Hears. And. Feels.
- “Oh, just as you cared in your book.” A child. (I love him.)
- “…the fact that you insulted me, page, after page, after page…” As he mimes flipping through the pages!
- “Santiago, I could understand. At least he had a presence. But. Armand?!” The vamp has a point. Santiago did have a presence!
- “…are you two f**king?!”
- No but seriously, check out Reid’s posture. Everything is so uncomfortable, yet so…sassy.
- Pretty Green Eyes.
- Baby boy is showing off for Mommy and Louis up there! Check out how he’s prancing.
- Really effective use of editing and camera work to have our focus center more and more on Louis as Lestat does the same right on the beat. Talk about a distracted performance from the lead singer!
- “Oh, I…I tried to write you. The prettiest song in the world. But I got distracted. AND HE HOLDS UP THE BOOK. Petty queen!
- “And I know what you’re thinking. ‘He wasn’t there.’ But this is my hour, and when tertiary figures appear in it, I will be speaking for them. Daniel, Mr. du Lac, anyone I feel is important to understanding how I woke the Queen and unleashed her wrath upon the world. I am everywhere. And, rest assured, it comes with less whining than their attempt. Did it happen in a bar with a view? …I say it did.” Wild for Lestat to think he does “less whining” than Interview with the Vampire, when he did…that in his meeting with “Mr. Pitt” and the lawyers.
- “I didn’t like me in it. Passive, selfish. A liar? And not the lying to myself kind. A f**king. liar. The writing’s good. Hard read.”
- “He didn’t like the part about Claudia and him on the train.” Imagine laughing about this. A—hole. Thank you, Louis, for being completely unimpressed by this.
- “I only ever saw the aftermaths. Your slit throat slow to heal, your rotting roof and bathrobe stuck to skin…” So, as bad as she usually is at showing it, Gabriella’s still the woman who loves her son and tossed her jewels on that table to pay for his schooling. We all know who slit Lestat’s throat so it was slow to heal…right?
- That fire in his glare, though!
- Again: Look how powerful, how much of a perfect vampire, Gabriella is in Lestat’s mind. Get you someone who’s in awe of you like Lestat is with her.
- …except for the incest part.
- Oh, that slowwwww way she rises, blood all over her chin, and then stalks toward her husband before destroying him.
- Sorry, not sorry, but all I can think about is “but why the Casey Becker tribute” when I see the Marquis’ corpse hanging that way with his insides on the outside…
- And here, they’re back to being gentle and close again with Gabriella resting her head on her boy’s shoulder.
- “She was dying when she came to see me…ah, f**k it. It’s different for vampires. That’s it.” I laughed. Because, yeah, Lestat spends an hour trying to explain his own F—ed up relationship…and just can’t. It is what it is to him!
- “I have a plane waiting for me.” Wow, the look Anderson has Louis give them here. Also love how that line reading it is very bored, dismissive, and “leave me the F alone.”
- “And three: You are extremely skilled at dispatchment, Mr. du Lac. Paris, Dubai…” Hm. Points made. He did, in fact, show those particular skills in both Paris and Dubai.
- “32 if you count Agent Talbot.” Good job of writing around the distinct lack of David Talbot. RIP to him and to the entire effin’ lore because a certain terrible adaptation omitted him.
- Menacing lean in on “I don’t care.”
- AND THEN.
Agree? Disagree? What did you think of The Vampire Lestat Season 1 Episode 2 “Toledo”? Leave us a comment!
New episodes of The Vampire Lestat release Sundays on AMC and AMC+.
