#i don't have a ton of armand thoughts yet because there's so much left to shake out but i'm sure i will when that happens

[licncourt]

I swear it's not for starting discourse or anything of the sort. But I'd love to hear your thoughts on the show now that the first season has ended (and we have a more global view of the first season) regarding the plot, the reveals at the end, the characterisation of our fang family, the themes etc. I find your book metas very interesting and what you shared so far has been well structured and refreshing.

thoughts on the finale?

Oof, apologies for the wait, but I think I've gathered myself sufficiently. Thank you so much for reading my rambling!! It's so flattering to know that people care about what I have to say! I'll throw out everything I can think of now, but I'll rb with more if I think of anything else later.

I also want to preface this by saying it really seems like we're missing a lot of context and plot developments from s2 that will affect everything we saw in s1 quite a bit, but I'm just going to take this season at face value for now.

I thought the costuming, SFX, and cinematography was wonderful in the finale. It made me sad that my enjoyment of the show has been so ruined because it was stunning and really scratched the period drama itch I'd been missing with the era change. Claudia in particular looked gorgeous and the gore was really fun and well executed.

Overall, I'm very disappointed in Lestat and Claudia's relationship portrayal/arc. Like I've mentioned before, the tragic impact of Claudia's attack on Lestat is so lessened if they never had the bond of father and daughter in the first place. It rings so hollow when we never saw Lestat LOVE Claudia, adore her and want her with his whole soul before slowly succumbing to his own trauma and perpetuating the cycle of abuse. Book Lestat WANTS to fix things with his daughter, he trusts her without hesitation and that's what makes it so brutal when she quite literally stabs him in the back, but at the same time you feel her pain and her rage. We lose that in the show. They're just enemies, plain and simple. There's no agony of betrayal and broken family without love there first and it does both Lestat and Claudia, originally very complex characters, a disservice. Family, the good and the bad, is at the heart of IWTV and without Lestat and Claudia, that's largely lost.

The pacing of the episode was a bit strange to me. I felt like too much time was spent on the party planning aspect rather than the dissolution of the family dynamic and crescendo of tension. I get that they wanted a longer episode for the finale, but I don't think it justified that extra fifteen-ish minutes.

I think the fucky memory thing was better utilized in ep 7 than it has been up to this point, and given what we know of Armand's mind gift from the books, I think it would make a lot of sense that he had something to do with that. That would be my preference in general because otherwise I feel like we're delving into victim blaming territory with the implications of this take on an unreliable narrator. I thought the implementation of the whole concept was clunky, but this was the best moment it had.

The sort of tableaux of Louis slitting Lestat's throat and then the flashback of crying over his body was also fantastic, so striking and emotional. Again, Sam and Jacob are such good actors with great chemistry, so it's really a shame about the everything.

All my thoughts on ep 5 (and 6) stand. Nothing from the last episode changed my opinions on how that played out and I can't think of anything that would. I won't harp on my issues with the characterization that stem from these episodes, but they definitely carried over into the finale.

I liked the Armand reveal! I think it was fun how they dropped hints and Easter eggs for book fans all season in regards to his identity. Enrichment for the vampirefuckers. Assad definitely captures the Weird Little Guy energy but also the incredibly sinister overtones we expect from Armand. My only concern is that Armand will be treated the same way as Lestat and turned into a one-dimensional monster that they can never properly redeem. If they go the route of making him a new diabolical abuser for Louis who we're supposed to forgive, I'll chew glass.

NO SWAMPSTAT??? Honestly very disappointed. As funny as putting that bitch in the trash is, it doesn't hit the same as Lestat getting gnawed on by an alligator. Lord knows AMC Lestat deserves the death roll.

This is completely inconsequential, but I have to mention how forced that namedrop of Those Who Must Be Kept was. That was so clumsy and stupid that it made me laugh out loud in what was supposed to be a very tense moment.

The handling of the racial aspect of Louis' character was so good in the first four episodes and even in parts of the finale that it made eps 5 and 6 that much harder to swallow. I'm honestly baffled at how horrible and insensitive that was out of nowhere before everything went back to normal. I'm sad that was ruined before it could have its full impact. Louis and Jacob Anderson deserved better.

Daniel had a lot of great moments, but I feel like his dialogue was too obviously viewer insert and on the nose a lot of times. I also found myself soured to him after his comments about Claudia in ep 5. Still, he has good chemistry with Armand from what we saw and I'd like to see more of them together going forward.