The Vampire Lestat Finally Introduces Lestat’s Maker

The third episode of The Vampire Lestat is kind of — well... a mess. But a lot of that is by design, like the obnoxious hookup between the Vampire Gabriella (Jennifer Ehle) and the hapless Jarda (Sam Reid). That Jarda happens to be the doppelganger of Gabriella’s son, Lestat (also Reid), makes their copulation all the ickier. It doesn’t help that it all goes down while Lestat is regaling Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian) with the long-contested details of his origin story — or that literally everyone can hear every second of it.

Mentally scarring as that tryst is, we’ll soon learn that it’s just a drop in the ocean where Lestat is concerned. After a lot of obfuscating, the eponymous vampire finally comes clean about his early days as a creature of the night, and the skeevy bloodsucker from whom he inherited the Dark Gift. But thanks to the scattershot nature of The Vampire Lestat, it’s hard to discern truth from farce, much less to organize the events of Lestat’s life in a cohesive thread. So here’s everything you need to know about his maker, Magnus (Damien Atkins), and the parallels to another fraught dynamic in the Immortal Universe.

Warning: Spoilers ahead for The Vampire Lestat Episode 3.

Who is Magnus?

Magnus is the oldest vampire we’ve met in the Immortal Universe thus far. Born in the 1400s and turned toward the natural end of his human life, he’s got none of the glamour and joie de vivre that seems innate in other bloodsuckers. The Vampire Lestat consciously depicts him as decrepit, almost rotting from the inside out — even if his introduction romanticizes his leery abuse of power. Lestat frames the story of their first meeting like a cheesy music video, taking major cues from Eminem’s “Stan.” Magnus is the obsessed fan watching the mortal Lestat from just outside his bedroom window, enjoying a candlelit dinner with a framed portrait of the young stage star.

The true horror of their dynamic only presents itself after more prodding from Daniel. By the time Lestat meets Magnus in 18th-century Paris, the ancient vampire has been alive for over 300 years. His very existence is notably a breach of age-old vampiric law: the original leader of the Paris coven, Rhoshamandes, refused to turn Magnus for fear of throwing nature out of balance. Magnus eventually took matters into his own hands, forcing an exchange of blood with an underling of Rhoshamandes. His immortality then, slowly but surely, drives him mad — but after accumulating impossible wealth from centuries’ worth of human victims, he wants to pass the Dark Gift on to an heir. He “gifts” the Blood to Lestat in the same way he took it: by force.

There’s no sugarcoating the truth of Lestat’s turning. Magnus abducts him one night after weeks of watching him — either in plays or just outside his home — and holds him for weeks in his tower just outside of Paris. The Vampire Lestat depicts it as the assault it is, but it goes even farther to make the subtleties of vampiric behavior unmistakably clear for us. While Lestat recounts the story of his turning to Daniel, Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) is busy confronting Bruce (Damon Daunno), the vampire who kidnapped and assaulted his surrogate daughter Claudia (Delainey Hayles) centuries prior. Before setting Bruce (recently returned from his wedding with Baby Jenks) on fire, he reads a few torn pages from Claudia’s diary recounting the harrowing event, and it’s painfully similar, almost identical, to what Magnus put Lestat through.

There’s no question that Lestat inherited his immortality against his consent: even if he owns it in the present day, he’s still visibly haunted by Magnus. It’s a difficult thing to come to terms with as an audience, and The Vampire Lestat doesn’t give its anti-hero an easy way out, either. He still sees the ghost of Magnus, and of countless figures from his past, hundreds of years later. It’s partly the reason why he started his band — if not to exorcise the demons of his old life, then to sand down the harsh edges they left in their wake.

The Vampire Lestat is streaming on AMC+.