Interview with the Vampire‘s second season is officially over. The AMC series now heads into Anne Rice’s second vampire novel, The Vampire Lestat for season three’s contents. This season of Interview with the Vampire gives us a finale makes a big change to the narrative of the book. And it is a change that some longtime fans might find themselves shocked by. It’s a fairly big alteration to a pivotal moment in the novel that alters the relationships of Lestat (Sam Reid), Louis (Jacob Anderson), and Arman (Assad Zaman) as we head into future seasons.
Interview with the Vampire the Novel’s Ending
In Rice’s original 1976 novel, vampires Claudia and Madeleine are executed by the Paris coven for the crime of killing Claudia and Louis’ maker, the Vampire Lestat. Or at least, for attempting to kill him. Louis is given a lighter sentence for the same crime, however. (Perhaps it is a worse sentence, depending on how you look at it.) Louis is imprisoned by the coven members inside a locked coffin. That coffin is placed within the walls of the catacombs under the Théâtre des Vampires. He’s meant to die excruciatingly slowly, perhaps over several years, all while going insane from his lack of blood sustenance.
However, in the climax of the novel (and the 1994 film), Paris coven leader Armand rescues him. He tells Louis he could not prevent the execution of Claudia because she’d broken too many laws. Yet he exerted his power over his coven enough to rescue his beloved Louis from eternal imprisonment. Louis then takes revenge on the entire Paris coven by setting fire to the Théâtre des Vampires. Later, he takes a scythe to vampire Santiago, the coven’s second in command, ending his undead rival for good.
Louis then leaves Paris with Armand, both now free of the machinations of the coven. The pair wander the world for decades. Louis eventually confronts Armand with the truth—he knows Armand allowed the Paris coven to murder Claudia. He denied the truth to himself for years, but now realized Armand orchestrated Claudia’s death and his rescue (and the subsequent revenge against the coven) as a way of securing Louis’ companionship.
The film tackles this in a slightly different manner. Louis (Brad Pitt) tells Armand (Antonio Banderas) that he knew he was behind it all immediately after the events took place. Louis then wanders the world alone, and we never discover what became of Armand afterward. Now, the Interview with the Vampire AMC series presents a third version of these events.
AMC’s Interview with the Vampire Season Finale Modifies the Original Ending of the Book
In the series, Louis is freed from his coffin prison, when Armand feeds him his blood, giving him the strength to break free. We never see who the vampire rescuer is, but Louis insists that it was Armand. Louis remains too starved and out of it to really care. The rest of the events transpire much like the book, as Louis takes his bloody revenge against the entire Paris coven, burning the theater to the ground. He then leaves with Armand, who takes credit for rescuing Louis.
Louis knows full well that Armand betrayed him, along with Claudia ( Delainey Hayles), and Madeleine (Roxane Duran). But he believes they forced Armand to cooperate, thanks to a coup within the Paris coven masterminded by Santiago (Ben Daniels). Rescuing Louis was Armand’s way of making amends for letting the coven abduct them and force them into a public court spectacle. The two flee Paris together, apparently staying a couple for decades.
But Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian), via his Talamasca contacts, discovers the truth about what happened decades ago in Paris. Despite appearances, Armand was not an unwilling accomplice in what the coven did. He didn’t just write the kangaroo court/mock trial play. He absolutely directed it. He was perfectly willing to sacrifice Claudia, Madeleine, and Louis to death in order to save his own skin. His vampiric underlings were revolting against him and he needed to prove himself to them (again).
In fact, it was not Armand who saved Louis from death. It was his maker Lestat. Lestat used his telepathy to force the mortal audience to give Louis a different sentence than death. Louis always believed Armand did this. Once Louis took his revenge on the coven and slaughtered them all, Armand happily took credit for saving him. With the threat to his own life gone, he now had everything he wanted. But Louis’ true rescuer was none other than Lestat.
This revelation enrages Louis in the modern day, who beats Armand by throwing him around their Dubai home. He later goes to New Orleans, where he tells Lestat that he knows the truth now. This is all a pretty big change from the original narrative. We always knew Armand was willing to sacrifice Claudia to remove her as an obstacle to his being with Louis. But, in the series, we now know he was also willing to let his beloved Louis die to save his own life. Once the coven was no longer a threat, he took credit for Louis’ commuted death sentence. Louis introduced Armand as “the love of his life” in season one, but it is actually his maker, the Vampire Lestat.