Well, when it came to predicting how Season 1 of The Vampire Lestat would end, I was way, way off.
Show creator Rolin Jones went way off-book from Anne Rice’s source material, crafting a fascinating, mind-bending finale. While the decapitated Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) had to face his ex-lover Armand (Assad Zaman), Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid) had to face the long table and its Failure Finders.
Thankfully, both survived their brushes with death. But in the finale’s final scene, Lestat reveals the ravaged world sparked by the concert that the episode skipped over.
We’ve got burning questions. But in an interview with Mashable, Reid dropped some hints on what’s next for the Interview with the Vampire series.
What’s coming up in The Vampire Lestat Season 2?
Over a video call with me, Mashable Entertainment Editor Kristy Puchko, Reid noted that the next season of Interview with a Vampire will move beyond Anne Rice’s second novel, for which this season was named, The Vampire Lestat.
“The way that [the show’s writers] pull from the books,” Reid explained, “we’re not necessarily just doing The Vampire Lestat. We’re looking at multiple books here in the overall arc — particularly those next three books.”
Those would be The Queen of the Damned, The Tale of the Body Thief, and Memnoch the Devil. In the first of these, the central narrator conceit is abandoned, as Rice took on the perspective of a variety of characters, including Baby Jenks. The focus of the overall story is the rise of Akasha (Sheila Atim) and the devastation she wreaks upon the world of mortals and immortals alike.
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The Body Thief is a body-swap narrative, in which Lestat exchanges his immortal form with that of a mortal named Raglan James — who has been a part of this TV series since Interview with a Vampire Season 2. In the next book, Lestat is back in his vampire form and meets the titular character from Memnoch the Devil.
While Reid didn’t get into details of what would come next, he did say, “The overall arc is [Lestat] understanding that even though he keeps rising from the ashes, he’s actually a failure and should accept failure.”
The Vampire Lestat star also noted, “There’s a lot left unresolved with Gabriella.”
Indeed. At the end of The Vampire Lestat Season 1, we witness the Brat Prince push back at the long table, recognizing the abuse his mortal mother put him through. Then, once his head is back on his shoulders and he’s again with the living, Lestat yells at his mother — in her Sofia mode — refusing to play the concert, and even calling her a “monster.”
It seems a potential point of change. But as Lestat says in his narration, he failed to stop what was coming.
Reid said of this moment, “He’s still fundamentally failed because even though he’s woken up, and he’s like, ‘I’m going to start again. I’m not going to go on stage. I’m not going to do these things. I’m not going to be your puppet, Gabriella.’ But, you know, as we cut to at the end, he still has failed because the world has been destroyed, which we just haven’t seen yet.”
When can we expect more from the Vampire Lestat? That’s a question we’re waiting for AMC to answer.
The Vampire Lestat is now streaming on AMC and AMC+.
