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island-in-the-shadows · 6 months ago

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The Finale, the Devil, His Minion & His Turning

Before I begin, let me state with clarity that I am not an expert in book lore. I’m, at best, semi-pro. I, however, do my due diligence when it comes to my passions and my hyperfixations and this has been one that has stuck around for most of my life. So, I wanted to weigh into the whole Devil’s Minion situation as pertains to how S2 ended as well as implications for the future of it combined with the bits and pieces of things we’ve heard RJ etc say regarding it. I know this is all a big kerfuffle one way or the other. I’m writing this mostly for myself, but I wanted to share with anyone who wants to read because fandom metas are fun even if we disagree with parts of them or even the whole of them. So, disclaimer aside, strap in for this very long post…

Let's talk about Devil's Minion and the implications of the Season 2 finale.

First things first, let’s discuss Daniel Molloy. He’s a difficult guy and I get why there’s a bunch of people who dislike him even though I can’t relate. I love him. I love that he’s a sassy loudmouth who has even louder opinions and can be horribly inappropriate. I love that, when he’s doing his thing, he’s like a dog with a bone and he won’t let go. I love that he has suffered for it because the consequence of being a dog with a bone, of having an addictive personality, of having sarcasm and sass as a defence mechanism, and of having a truly atrocious sense of self-preservation is that he got fucked up by vampires, blew up his life, “destroyed two marriages,” and “fucked up two daughters.” He’s not the character that people who want to black/white moralise this show can point to as a bastion of “goodness,” even if he was, until recently, the only human main character. In fact, it’s precisely because he was human that it made sense that he was a fucked up person. After all, all humans have their good and bad aspects.

And then, he was turned (offscreen so that people like me can shout manically into the void). I LOVE that he was turned. I’ll get into the larger implications of it later but, for now, I want to explain why I enjoy Vampire Daniel.

For a bit of background, here’s what we know about his book counterpart in broad strokes: he smokes, he interviews Louis in San Francisco, he published Interview with the Vampire anonymously, he went to NOLA searching for Lestat but found Armand instead, cue here everything that has to do with the 12 years in which he and Armand were what they were together, he’s an ash blonde with violet eyes, he’s an addict, he’s a sarcastic loudmouth, he’s morbid, he went mad, he liked building miniature cityscapes, he spent most of the years of his madness (and some after he regained his sanity) with Marius, he and Armand reunite after +- 25-30 years of separation. That’s it. There’s a lot about him that you can certainly infer in the limited page amount where you can read about him, but that’s about it. We especially don’t get to know much about him after he is turned aside from when he got the vampire zoomies at Lestat’s concert and Maharet’s compound, his madness, Marius, his cityscapes, and his reunion with Armand.

Seeing Daniel Molloy be a vampirically amplified version of himself BY himself is, to me, extraordinary. Here, he’s, technically, unconnected to any of the other vampires and is standing on his own two feet. He chose to publish the book with his name on it (which is fucking insane when you think about it), he’s the one choosing to “call” Louis every week to check in on his bestie, he’s the one choosing to comment on some guys headphones before he eats him. In scant minutes we were presented with the vampire Daniel as an individual. This, in many ways, outdoes how he exists as a vampire in the books where he is never truly disconnected from one of two well-known vampires: Armand, and Marius.

Secondly, we seldom, if ever, get a vampire in live-action film or TV who looks 60+ in mortal years who, by design, is a sexy swaggering sarcastic menace who wears a leather jacket, an AC/DC tee, and cunty sunglasses. I racked my brain trying to find other vampires who look “older” in human years and even asked friends to help me and, ultimately, came to the following list of best examples (but feel free to tell me more): Gary Oldman in Dracula who is made to look creepy before he gets de-aged in order to be “sexy,” Bill Nighy as Viktor in Underworld, who looks great and powerful, but he’s the villain and he’s not technically designed to inspire anything more than loathing, and Viago’s long-lost lover in What We Do in the Shadows, Katherine ( from which we get the fun Viago being a cradle snatcher meme). This is all my opinion, but it’s fantastic to have a man in his 70s with wrinkles and grey hair be turned into a vampire and be framed as desirable and powerful. Personally, I want to see more vampires who are adults and older adults vs consistently seeing teens and people in their early twenties.

That being said, as much as I love Daniel being a man/vampire in his seventies, this fact alone upends one of the major beats of the relationship between him and Armand as written in Queen of the Damned. The part that is irreparably changed has nothing to do with Daniel’s age because that is irrelevant to Armand who, in book canon, wanted Daniel to live a mortal life, much to Daniel’s chagrin. He even tells Daniel, “Don’t you realise that any one of us would give it up for one human lifetime?”

Daniel doesn't believe him but their arguments regarding mortality only have a level of resolution in 1985 when Armand turns a dying Daniel. What changes here is twofold: the first is that Akasha did not wake from her sleep (which tracks with the timeline of the show thus far, as she wakes up because of Lestat’s music and she ruins the world tour). The second is that, presuming that Daniel and Armand had a past in the 70s and 80s, which is very likely, Armand let Daniel go. Armand letting Daniel go is a HUGE change. Yes, part of him likely let Daniel go because he was still involved with Louis whereas in the book he didn’t have a partner at the time. However, presuming that Armand and Daniel’s relationship in the 70s and 80s was as codependent and obsessive as it was in the source material, letting this one mortal boy go was arguably one of the most emotionally difficult things Armand has ever had to do. It changes a whole host of things in their dynamic moving forward.

This is why the fact that so many are turning on it now after 2x8 is a little baffling to me. I am a pessimist at heart, especially when it comes to things like this because I have been burned time and time again. It’s been a shock to me that so many who were rock solid on this after 2x5 are now panicking. And yet, I understand the concerns.

For example, according to Louis and later repeated in interviews by Rolin and sort of by Assad, Daniel was turned out of “spite.” Assuming that this is true, it is devastating. In the source lore, Daniel was turned out of love. Armand tells Daniel he’ll turn him “[…]because I am a coward. And I love you too much to let you go.” Except, in the show’s universe, Armand has already let Daniel go once even if it wasn't because Daniel was dying. Then again do we know if the younger Daniel was dying? If he overdosed once or multiple times? No. But at some point, Armand let him go. At some point, Daniel’s memory of whatever time he spent with Armand was erased. Presuming that something like this happened, that act alone was not out of spite.

Further, it is Louis who said Daniel was “burdened out of spite.” Except Monsieur du Lac has a very particular perspective and is currently quite cross with his ex. Those words, if I may borrow from book Armand, “That’s Louis’ language.” Note that while Daniel retorts, “Make it up to me. We’ll do a follow-up book,” this comes after Louis says “I shouldn’t have left you alone with him.” Daniel neither confirms or denies that he was made out of spite. He’s, to some extent, assuaging Louis’ guilt while segueing to try to get something he wants from Louis. We didn’t see Daniel being turned so we can’t be certain where it happened or when it happened or why it happened.

I know you’re probably reading this and going: but Rolin said they wouldn’t build the Dubai set again! Rolin said we won’t see the turning! Rolin said it was out of spite! Yes, fellow tumblrina, I know. But, like Claudia’s journals, like Louis’ or Armand’s narration of events across both seasons, anyone working on the show would have cause to obfuscate, omit, or lie. After all, was it not Rolin who also said we weren’t getting Rockstar Lestat when we are, in fact, getting Rockstar Lestat? Ah! That, my friends, is an unreliable witness.

Any creator can lie about their work for whatever reason they see fit including marketing or trying to keep spoilers away. To use a recent example, Andrew Garfield consistently and frequently lied that he was not in Spiderman: No Way Home. Oh, there was a set leak picture? No, that wasn’t him it was a double. He kept that party line until the movie came out, regardless if people knew or not. Same thing applies here and it creates doubt. The tricky part of this all is that, because Season 3 is The Vampire Lestat, it’s likely that anything we do see regarding Daniel and Armand will be quite limited.

Another thing that truly frustrates longtime Devil’s Minion girlies, especially those who have religiously read the Devils Minion chapter (really, it’s the only thing we have to go off of because Anne Rice put Daniel on a shelf and never really took him off it except in vague mentions in other vampires’ stories and, I guess, she wanted us to go fuck ourselves because Daniel is basically a negative footnote in The Vampire Armand) is the implication that Daniel wants to know where the fuck his maker is because he has been abandoned. We keep thinking: Armand would never abandon a newly turned Daniel. I’ve seen plenty of posts and some fics fully assuming that Armand turned Daniel in the penthouse and then left him right then and there. Which tracks only if he were being made out of spite. Except, at this time, we simply do not know that that is the case. Likewise, we do not know that Armand immediately abandoned Daniel.

Why are we assuming this? Because Louis says he left them alone? He did but, he also told Daniel to get his things because he’d “arrange a car and a plane to take you home”. With Louis’ money and power, he could’ve had Daniel on a plane to JFK in, tops, an hour. If we want to suppose that it was out of spite, then Louis just left Daniel alone with Armand right away? Louis didn’t change his clothes or pack a bag or grab a wallet to go to NOLA? He had his Amex with him at the hotel and he was wearing different clothes, so there is time unaccounted for in Dubai. Then we have to suppose that a newly turned and abandoned Daniel was alone or eating staff in the penthouse despite being expected on a flight that was probably private, because Louis wouldn’t have done it by half measure if he wanted Daniel out of there ASAP. Then we have to consider the amount of time that Louis was supposedly in NOLA. How long would it have taken him to go to NOLA, have his reunion with Lestat, wait out a hurricane, come back and find a fucked up Daniel in that penthouse? We’re still missing time.

I could present you a different scenario. I could say that Armand stalked Daniel back to NY (which would be on brand, but I digress) and turned him there out of spite or not out of spite. That Daniel remembers or doesn’t remember their past together. That Armand possibly stayed with Daniel some time until Daniel, rightfully pissed off for San Francisco or the gaslighting Armand did to Louis or directing the trial or erasing Daniel’s memories or any of the fucked up shit that Armand did in their shared past (there’s a LOT that this gremlin has done that would make Daniel angry), asked Armand to go away. I could even tell you that in Queen of the Damned Daniel and Armand fought, a lot. I could tell you that Daniel left Armand for months at a time when he was pissed off because Armand wouldn’t turn him. I could tell you that after Daniel was turned, things soured between him and Armand dramatically and, per Armand, Daniel left him.

I can quote Queen of the Damned to state my case:

“Conversations, sparring matches, and downright fights became the rule.”

“Ugly fights, terrible fights, finally, Armand broken down, glassy-eyed with silent rage, then crying softly but uncontrollable as if some lost emotion had been rediscovered which threatened to tear him apart.”

“And the wandering started, the escaping, and Armand did not follow him. Armand would wait each time until Daniel begged to come back. Or until Daniel was beyond calling, until Daniel was on the verge of death itself. And then and only then, Armand would bring him back.”

I can quote The Vampire Armand for you in the parts relevant to Daniel to show you the contentious separation that also reeks of Armand’s self-loathing and his desire to complete his self-fulfilling prophecy even though it’s painful for me:

“…the boy, who had been my faithful mortal companion, and only sometimes an intolerable nuisance…”

“Daniel, though alive and wandering, though civil and gentle, can no more stand my company than I can stand his. Equipped with my powerful blood, he can contend with any who should be foolish enough to interrupt his plans for an evening, a month or a year, but he cannot contend with my continuous company and I cannot contend with his.”

“I pushed his face into the flesh of the first young innocent he had to slaughter for his inevitable thirst, and thereby fell off the pedestal on which he’d placed me in his demented, over imaginative, feverishly poetical and ever exuberant mortal mind.”

“[…]when gaining Daniel as a fledgling, I lost him as a mortal lover and gradually began to let him go.”

“[…] I rejoined the world in a way which I had not done since my fledgling, my one and only fledgling, Daniel Molloy, had left me. My love for Daniel had never been entirely honest, and always viciously possessive, and quite entangled with my own hatred of the world at large, and my confusion in the face of the baffling modern times which had begun to open up to me […] Daniel himself had no use for the world […] Heaping every luxury upon him, I only sickened him with mortal sweets so that finally he turned away from the riches I offered, becoming a vagabond. Mad, roaming the streets in rags, he shut out the world almost to the point of death, and I, weak, muddled, tormented by his beauty, and lusting for the living man and not the vampire he might become, only brought him over to us through the working of the Dark Trick because he would have died otherwise.”

“[…]he loathed me in his heart for having initiated him into Living Death, for having made him in one night an immortal and a regular Killer. As a mortal man, he had no real idea of the price we pay for what we are, and he did not want to learn the truth; he fled from it, in reckless dreams and spiteful wandering.”

The last sentence in the quote above fucking bullshit, by the way, because Daniel actively asked to see Armand kill and Armand told him no but, whatever.

“and so it was as I feared. Making him to be my mate, I made a minion who saw me all the more clearly as a monster. […] There was never any chance, no matter how beautiful the twilight gardens in which we wandered. Our souls were out of tune, our desires crossed and our resentments too common and well watered for the final flowering.”

But for all those quotes, for all the extrapolating, and for all the suppositions, we simply do not know. We weren’t given concrete answers to anything. Which, yes, is frustrating as all fuck. Because, if we read into it at face value, if we follow that this trend would destroy two characters and a core relationship and what it means to them both in the long run, then we have to accept defeat. We have to admit that the writers of this show don’t actually care about this pairing or these characters as individuals. We have to admit that something that we have wanted (and some of have wanted this since Queen of the Damned came out in 1988) is never going to happen. That we, like Louis, have been gaslit and taken advantage of.

We’d have to reframe all the charged looks, the oddly sexual “yeah,” Armand knowing how to make drinks to Daniel’s exact tastes, Armand de-escalating Louis’ humiliation of Daniel (I know some of you think he was making it worse but, neither the tone of Armand’s voice or his facial expressions read that intention to me, sorry), the overly elaborate courses of food served to Daniel (which, to book readers, is a nod to when Armand ordered everything in a restaurant for Daniel), the brief announcement of a Night Island spinoff, Armand feeling the need to justify himself directly to Daniel in 2x6, putting Assad and Eric/Luke together for press stuff, etc. are all some sick trick. That they either want to make it into enemies to lovers (which it never really was) and forfeit its true meaning or, worse, that it’s all been shipbaiting to keep us on the hook when Devil’s Minion girlies already know that this is the Lestat and Louis show.

I get it. This is not what many of us wanted. We wanted to see the turning. We wanted to see it be about love. We wanted to see Daniel get even a hint of who he and Armand had been to each other in the past, because they definitely had one. We wanted confirmation that, once upon a time, Armand found some of his humanity through a mortal he loved and that, after 30+ years apart, he broke the rule he withheld for nearly 5 centuries because of his love for this boy. We got none of it. All we know is that Armand turned Daniel, that Daniel doesn’t know where his maker is, and that Daniel’s pissed at him. That’s it.

It leaves us, essentially, with nothing. Frankly, it’s more of a nothing than I thought we were going to get. Again, this is the Lestat and Louis show. They are the protagonists and it is their stories (apart and together) that are the A plot. So all that we can do, if we want to see a good version of Devil’s Minion, is wait and hope. Hope that the good writing that has been done in sections of the show holds true to this also. Hope that, given that the plot hole we ALL noticed in 1x2 was explained in 2x8, all of the subtle hints we have been given are actually going to pay off. Hope that this team, that has put a lot of love and care into this show, doesn’t massively fuck over two characters. Hope that someone gets Eric violet contacts in S3 (unless it’s like the theory @cbrownjc has regarding body swapping which would be very interesting---also if you haven't already, follow her, her blog is incredible and has fantastic insights) because if they can give Jacob green ones, there’s no fucking excuse.

(Yes, this is a nitpick. As an aside, the established vamps do change shades of eye colour, because Louis and Lestat have had at least 2 shades of green and blue respectively in S2, and Armand had 3 shades of amber/brown/reddish orange in 2x8 ALONE. The weird bit with Daniel’s eyes specifically is how dramatic of a colour shade change it is, how quickly the change happens, and that, say it with me kids, NONE OF THE SHADES ARE VIOLET.)

Listen, this hasn’t really had a thesis statement but I’ve ranted enough that it could be an actual term paper. But I want to end this by saying that what gives me hope is that, thus far, the quality of this show, in every aspect, is fantastic. Heck, I get hope in the fact that the Loustat girlies have been DEEP in the trenches for two seasons and it’s getting a little better for them. Louis is where he needs to be at this point of the story and we know that Lestat, the real Lestat, is coming. Goodness knows, Sam’s gonna keep fighting to make sure it is the real Lestat, warts and all, even with the changes that most people didn’t like. So, let’s hope. Let’s hope that the showrunner/head writer is, yet again, being a massive troll. Let’s hope that the writing team actually understood what the point of Devil’s Minion was and where its beauty lay and that they don’t diminish it to be something entirely foreign. Let’s hope that the massive holes, the missing time, missing scenes, all equate to a net positive. Let’s not give up yet.

TL;DR Don’t be fatalistic about how S2 ended and what it means for Devil’s Minion, because there’s way too much that is missing to conclusively write it off at this time.

#interview with the vampire #iwtv meta #Daniel Molloy #the vampire armand #devil's minion #the devil's minion #louis de pointe du lac #lestat de lioncourt #eric bogosian #assad zaman #jacob anderson #sam reid #rolin jones #there's a lot more to discuss and speculate and go into #this is not the end all be all of this discussion but it would take me many more pages to go through it all #also please be kind if I missed anything I did re-read the chapter for this and rw 2x8 but im probably missing stuff

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