Interview With The Vampire recap: “When I am a vampire, will I like my food?”

We probably shouldn’t start with talk of that evocative, thrilling final image (a familiar face returning finally, being shot from a mirror, their vanity and our gaze being implicated into the performance they’re about to give). Which is why we won’t. But know that said shot, not to mention the events in those final minutes of this sixth episode, will have us talking and on edge until next week’s episode comes around.

But first, let’s go back to the events in Paris that led to Claudia’s last journal entry: “Fuck these vampires.”

It’s a fair sentiment for a vampire who’s starting to grow tired of what’s required of her in the coven (Lulu and all that) and who is beginning to imagine a life outside such confines. This is all aided by her growing acquaintance with Madeleine Epavier, the dressmaker she’d met the year before and who still haunts her mind—and proves to be quite a good friend to her now. Funny how outcasts end up finding one another. Madame Epavier, as we’ve seen, was labeled a Nazi for dating a German officer during the occupation, and hasn’t yet lived down that kind of betrayal. All her neighbors still look at her with disdain.

Not Claudia, though, who proves she truly cares about Madeleine when a trio of neighbors goad the dressmaker into crashing her own window and then intend to assault her in her own home. Thankfully, having a vampire on your side comes in handy in such moments of alarm: That’s how we got arguably the goriest scene this gothic story has offered up this season. Claudia does love to make a mess (a pair of scissors to the throat holding up a Parisian girl against a wall who was all too happy to have Madeleine be sexually assaulted seems both intense and fitting, no?) but she also cleans it, especially once she mollifies the terrified seamstress who doesn’t flinch as much as the vamp had anticipated when learning of Claudia’s real form.

“Don’t run,” Claudia implores her, and there’s such tenderness in the way Delainey Hayles delivers the line that you can almost feel how famished she’s been for a real companion. For someone she can call her own. It’s why she seems so keen on nurturing this friendship even as it violates one of those revered Great Laws Armand so assiduously has his coven maintain.

But that’s nothing compared to what Claudia soon devises: She wants to turn Madeleine. Heresy, of course. And while Louis is supportive, Armand soon puts his foot down. He interviews Madeleine and has a testy tete-a-tete with her (“When I am a vampire, will I like my food?”) all in the hopes of being open to the idea of Claudia making her newfound BFF. But it all feels rather performative. As soon as he says he won’t allow it, it becomes clear to Louis that he never entertained the idea in the first place. For Armand has never turned anyone (not one!) into a vampire, a tidbit that continues to create friction even in the present, as the two once-lovebirds have become all too familiar bickering partners, combing over the days that led up to a fateful night at the Theater des Vampires.

So what if Armand won’t allow it? Louis agrees to help Claudia. He knows a companion will soothe her. It’s what she needs. The ritual, so serene in comparison to other such moments we’ve witnessed, is quite lovely, proof that Madeleine, given everything she’s seen in the war, was ready to embrace a whole new life.

That life requires both she and Claudia to leave Paris altogether, which after Louis and Claudia drain her blood as she stares into the light above her, Madeleine does. And if you’re saying to yourself, Oh look, Interview With The Vampire has given us a lovely and beautiful happily ever after, you clearly have just stumbled upon this series.

For while these two women do have a few brief weeks of a happy life together, that will all come crashing down on a night they come to visit with Louis and Armand. This is the evening that will change everything. On its surface, it looks like two couples catching up but soon we see that Armand has sold out his three companions when Santiago and the coven arrive to take them away, ambushed as they’ve been.

If you’ve been wondering what Santiago and the coven have been up to while they’ve made Armand feel somewhat at ease as his leadership had been clearly waning, it’s this: a one night only spectacle that’s nothing like what they’ve been rehearsing (some vampire play they’ve all been fighting about given that it’s more abstract than usual) and is, instead, a trial of sorts.

Or, a real trial, apparently: TRIAL! The Treacherous And Unnatural Crimes Of The Vampiers. (And it’s likely the best performance of Santiago’s career, as he so relishes being the emcee of the evening.)

The prosecuted will be the now bloodied Louis, Claudia, and Madeleine, all who now stand in front of an audience there gathered to witness a play but who, as always, have no idea that what is happening onstage is more real than they could have first thought.

Which brings us to the guest star of the evening, and the man whose presence in the episode’s final shot had me audibly gasping: Lestat de Lioncourt is making his triumphant return to the Parisian stage. Lucky him. Who else gets to witness the trial of his own killers? Talk about stunt casting!

Stray observations

• “I wanna get out alive” is Daniel’s only plea. Simple yet increasingly unlikely, yes?
• A vamping vamp was always going to be a scene-stealing role but let’s give it up for Ben Daniels who is making Santiago a delicious and vicious villain, equally at home playing the wounded actor and the wounding orchestrator.
• We’re on episode six, and I haven’t yet had time (so much plot to get through!) to sing the praises of the behind-the-scenes folks working on season two of this show. In particular, I wanted to single out the art direction and production design (led by Mara LePere-Schloop and Kimberley Zaharko), which, in between the minimalism (near brutalism) of the present-day and the ornate post-war Parisian quarters (not to mention that theater!), manages to highlight the stark differences between then and now, there and here, in subtle but always surprisingly welcome ways.
• Speaking of the art direction and the spaces created for Armand and Louis, is living forever, as these two suggest, all about buying and selling art and constantly deciding how to best decorate your apartments? (You can almost see why Louis might have been bored with such a life back in ’70s…is the same happening now?)
• In case you were wondering, yes, Claudia was reading How To Win Friends And Influence People (which was published in 1936) while hanging out with Madeleine.
• I do wish I were more invested in Madeleine…but her character feels very much built too neatly to fit her role (even her backstory feels rather thin and convenient) but maybe if we’d spend more time with this jaded seamstress we’d have grown fond of her?
• I love that the vampire play they were workshopping was basically Waiting For Godot (only here it was Guido!).
• Where do we lie on whether Louis asked Armand to erase his own 1973 memory? Is it another lie by the centuries-old vampire who keeps pulling the strings even while seeming so aloof and indifferent to how things turn out? Or is it proof of his undying love? Perhaps a mix of the two? Who can we trust anymore anyways?