The Vampire Lestat Finally Comes Clean About The End Of The World
It’s not the end for Lestat, but he is about to unleash hell.
From the moment we were whisked back into the world of AMC’s Interview with the Vampire, it was clear a reckoning wasn’t far away. By rebranding itself after the next book in Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, The Vampire Lestat passed the mic to its titular troublemaker (Sam Reid), and it did so with an overture that teased the end of the world as most knew it.
At first, the idea that Lestat was the key to the vampire apocalypse felt like the character’s latest attempt to get attention — but as Lestat’s “failures” unfolded before our eyes, so too did the truth. The world has, in fact, been teetering towards annihilation in The Vampire Lestat, and it’s all thanks to the music Lestat has been performing across the country. This season seemed to be heading for an explosive conclusion, one that would answer all our burning questions about the Great Conversion, or the Queen of the Damned, Akasha (Sheila Atim). But that was before Lestat and Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) found themselves beheaded by their enemies at the end of Episode 6. That shock twist pitches The Vampire Lestat’s finale into much headier territory, forcing our doomed duo to face their own mortality and make amends with those they’ve wronged. It seems like Lestat has tempted fate for the last time, but he might have one card left to play whether he wants to or not.
Spoilers ahead for the Vampire Lestat finale!
What happens to Lestat at the end of The Vampire Lestat?
Lestat and Louis are forced to clear the skeletons in their closet.
Our finale picks up right after the Vampires Armand (Assad Zaman), Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian), and Alex (Seamus Patterson) ambush Lestat and Louis in the park. Armand takes Lestat’s body, but Daniel takes his severed head to the bowling alley he’s been frequenting this season. It’s there, in the privacy of a bowling bag, that Lestat’s life effectively flashes before his eyes. The ghosts that have been haunting him all season — like his maker, Magnus (Damien Atkins), his mother Gabriella (Jennifer Ehle), and a handful of other fledglings — become a Greek chorus for his failures. Still, it’s not long before Lestat takes control again.
After a lot of spiraling, Lestat kinda fesses up to the hurt he’s caused. Mostly, though, he does a lot of coping. “I did the best that I could with my blood,” he insists. “I did my vampire duty.” He even reunites with Louis’ brother, Paul (Steven G. Norfleet), who thanks him for loving Louis. It’s impossible to imagine the real Paul saying any of this, but seeing as Lestat is about to go into the Great Beyond, he’s entitled to a bit of delusion.
In between all this introspection, another common thread emerges. Lestat’s Greek chorus continuously brings up the issue of “the soul.” Do vampires have one? Raglan James (Justin Kirk), an agent of the Talamasca, believes as much. While Lestat is caught in his mortality spiral, Raglan visits Daniel and takes custody of Lestat’s head. He reveals that most vampires usually don’t survive a beheading, much less for hours after the event. That, to him, is proof that Lestat’s soul is persisting. But he doesn’t elaborate for long: there is work to do, specifically when it comes to the final phase of the Talamasca’s secret plan.
The Talamasca planned the Great Conversion
The “secret order” really wants Lestat to “make more.”
This has long been obvious to fans who also tuned into AMC’s short-lived Talamasca: The Secret Order, but the titular agency has been behind the “Great Conversion” for some time. Raglan and his associates actually want the vampire population to overrun human society: they’ve been pulling the strings to accelerate it for a year, and using Lestat as a puppet to speed their agenda along. “‘Make More’? We came up with that!” Raglan reveals, referring to the song Lestat writes that galvanizes the vampire world to spread the Dark Gift.
From the start of Lestat’s North American tour to the very end, the vampire population has bloated to inconceivable numbers. Per Raglan, there are now nearly 300,000 vampires roaming the world — and seeing how often these reckless newborns need to feed, those numbers are climbing rapidly. Frustratingly, he doesn’t reveal why the Talamasca wants this disorder, but he insists that Lestat’s final concert is the key to tipping the world into chaos. By the end of this episode, we also learn that he’s working with Gabriella to save Lestat and bring about his destiny as the vampire messiah.
The truth about Regina
Kismet wasn’t responsible for Regina — Armand was.
After a shocking confrontation with the deceased vampire Claudia (Delainey Hayles) in Episode 6, Louis has seemingly healed from the grief and guilt he feels over her demise. He’s broken off contact with Regina (also Hayles), the Claudia doppelgänger he met in New York — but the pair reunite against their will when Armand captures Louis.
Armand is in peak form as a scorned ex-lover in the Vampire Lestat finale. With Louis’ head severed from his body, he has no choice but to listen to Armand as he tries to make amends for their failed relationship. When Louis refuses to apologize for his faults, Armand brings out some insurance: Regina, tied up as a prisoner in a meat locker. He also reveals that Regina was more or less an invention of his own making. While she’s a true ringer for Claudia, Armand found her in London with the help of advanced facial recognition software. He spent a year orchestrating her fateful meeting with Louis, and now he threatens to murder her if Louis doesn’t fess up to his sins.
It takes a lot of threatening, but Louis does eventually acquiesce. In a touching heart-to-heart, he apologizes for the “coldness” he showed Armand. He also brings up the past that connects them: Louis as a former pimp, and Armand as a victim of trafficking. It’s the closest The Vampire Lestat gets to exploring the hidden tragedies in their lives — and no, it doesn’t go quite deep enough, but there’s a chance we’ll see more in a potential season to come.
What about Akasha?
The Queen of the Damned might not be as crucial to this story as we thought.
Akasha made her debut in Episode 5, but fans of the Vampire Chronicles knew that wouldn’t be the last we saw of the Queen. In Rice’s novels, Lestat’s music awakens her once more, but she unleashes a kind of hell on the vampire population when she regains her strength.
Unfortunately, we don’t get the confrontation that the books promised just yet. This story remains Lestat’s for better and worse: in the finale’s last moments, Lestat gets a second chance at life. He finds his head haphazardly resewn onto his body, his tour bus parked outside the venue of his last show, and thousands of rabid fans (vampire and human alike) waiting for him to perform. He argues against performing for “the now infamously catastrophic gig,” even calls Gabriella a monster for suggesting it. That said, we all know he performs anyway. Maddeningly, though, The Vampire Lestat withholds the moment we’ve all been waiting for, instead jumping years into the future to a remorseful Lestat recording his “Failures” from his Montreal apartment.
The Vampire Lestat ends with an abrupt cliffhanger rather than a bang. As Lestat gazes out to the abject wasteland outside his door, he fully fesses up to his role in the vampire apocalypse. It wasn’t the Queen who pushed humanity to the brink, he says: “The fault was mine. All mine.” We’ll have to wait and see what Lestat truly means by that, but The Vampire Lestat has ensured that we’ll hang on its every word when it does return for a new season.
