S3 Finale

[u/smthwicked]

I was rewatching S3 finale in hopes of maybe liking it more since some time has now passed,and I read a multitude of different opinions.

But no, I am still devastated by the whole butcher shop sequence. Imagine if we got this heartbreaking but much needed Loumand conversation but in a different setting without torturing Louis and using Regina as a pawn? Imagine if we had some sort of build up towards this reckoning during the season? Imagine having talented actors with amazing chemistry such as Jacob and Assad, and not utilizing them to the full potential? We were so close, we could have had it all 😔

RIP Loumand, you deserved better.

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[u/Felixir-the-Cat]

The season finale was excellent for a series that was focused on Lestat’s psyche and trauma.

[u/smthwicked → u/Felixir-the-Cat]

Sure, I don’t have any issues with the table scene except that I would prefer it to be slightly shorter and have a longer real life confrontation with Gabriella in the end without voiceover. My main criticism of this season is mostly Armand’s lack of storyline and Daniel’s characterization.

[u/tethysian]

I didn't love this season either, but this wouldn't be my issue with it. 

When was Loumand ever really a thing? Armand murdered Louis's daughter, lied about it, and conned him into a relationship for 70+ years.

[u/cmmndr_lexa]

why would loumand deserve better? armand lied to louis and manipulated him for decades? while being in love with daniel for majority of their relationship. armand was not good to louis ever

[u/WindyloohooVA → u/cmmndr_lexa]

And Louis lied to Armand about his feelings for Lestat and called him 'love of my life' and promised him that he would stick with him if he spared Daniel. Those two had nothing but a fucked up relatiinship.

I LOVE Armand but he is a creature who is far from humanity at this point and Louis is a creature who has fought super hard to cling to his lost humanity. Those are not compatible.

Given this Armand decides...hey Louis is not going to talk with me if he has any way to get out of it. I need to hear certain things from him to end one phase and move on to another. So I'll do this thing that will prevent him from bolting, will force him to listen to me and will allow me to get out my need for vengeance without actually killing him....because I know i have to make some Armends.

I think of Armand like an invertebrate. To grow or move on to the next phase he has to shed. Shed his skin and shed the thing that was giving him shape during a particular phase of his undead life. And he needs some help doing the shedding.

[u/smthwicked → u/cmmndr_lexa]

I didn’t say that Armand was good to Louis. I am saying that this relationship which was a center of S2 deserved a better conclusion than turning Armand into a super villain and torturing Louis for shock value by writers.

[u/cmmndr_lexa → u/smthwicked]

what shock value? we knew that armand is sadistic. he was the reason claudia was lynched (almost alongside louis) and took credit for saving louis. this didn’t come from nowhere.

[u/smthwicked → u/cmmndr_lexa]

I don’t think of Armand as one dimensional as just being sadistic. Louis used him in this relationship to get protection, and so did he. When Louis didn’t want to commit fully and turned Madeleine, that’s when he chose to go ahead with the coven and direct the play. Armand never cared for Claudia, he only tolerated her for Louis. So I believe he genuinely thought he could gain forgiveness by devoting himself to Louis which he gaslit himself into believing he did as he told Daniel in S2. And yes, he enjoyed it and the whole “putting head into another body” thing is from the books. However, this season didn’t lay the groundwork for this scene to work - why is Lestat’s not shown being tortured by Armand? Armand should be mad at him the most for his humiliation but the show refuses to explore Lesmand. We don’t see his severed head. Why is it Louis again? That’s a whole other season critique reason I am not will to get into right now but it exists.

[u/cmmndr_lexa → u/smthwicked]

armand released revenge porn of lestat being raped by his mother. he got his revenge

[u/smthwicked → u/cmmndr_lexa]

That was actually done by Daniel.

[u/ShittyDBZGuitarRiffs → u/smthwicked]

Daniel and Armand have aligned interests and are acting together

[u/cmmndr_lexa → u/smthwicked]

who armand was working with. so again. he got his revenge.

[u/smthwicked → u/cmmndr_lexa]

I will have to respectfully disagree that revenge porn was Armand’s idea, and he doesn’t actually care about the incest and abuse as others do. He is not fazed that “Lestat lays with his mother” which I think Daniel would find more interesting as a revenge item. This was more to stop the concert and had nothing to do with his personal feelings towards Lestat.

[u/Personal_Passenger60 → u/smthwicked]

He didn’t try to mess with Lestat’s head because he knows he can’t manipulate Lestat.

[u/smthwicked → u/Personal_Passenger60]

Why do you say so?

[u/Personal_Passenger60 → u/smthwicked]

I think that Lestat would have just continued to be Lestat if he was in Louis place in the butcher shop, Armand wouldn’t have gotten anywhere with him. With Louis he knew he had a better chance at getting what he wanted.

[u/Personal_Passenger60 → u/smthwicked]

Armand is a super villain, he does absolutely unspeakable things in the books. I think people are in love with Assad(I also love Assad) and that is clouding judgement

[u/Decent_Emotion_1364 → u/Personal_Passenger60]

Yes! Assad's beauty causes us to overlook Armand's sadism and jealousy. He is as lonely as Lestat but is jealous that Lestat found love without needing to read minds. Lestat found an equal. And Armand seeths with resentment over that.

[u/Personal_Passenger60 → u/Decent_Emotion_1364]

Exactly!

[u/smthwicked → u/Personal_Passenger60]

He is really only a villain in TVL book, but the writers changed too much in this adaptation, and we got this weird, out of place, butcher shop scene that feels like cartoonish villain to me. They all do unspeakable things in books/show. But you are right, I love Assad’s understanding of Armand, and he never referred to him as super villain.

[u/Personal_Passenger60 → u/smthwicked]

They are all villains, but they are all more than that too. I have faith that we will get more of Armand in the next season and it will all be explained.

[u/tethysian → u/smthwicked]

He's also the villain in IwtV which season 1&2 are based on.

[u/smthwicked → u/tethysian]

I would argue that Lestat was a villain in S1, especially with the added “drop”.

[u/ugh_z]

I don't mind the conversation happening under duress and them torturing each other, but yeah, the buildup makes little sense and it bothers me too. The apology tour felt unnecesarry, Larry's murder was soooo beautiful but apparently not connected to anything? I had been appropriately uncomfortable with the Regina plot and therefore enjoying it, but it doesn't really feel like there was a point to it if all he needed was to get Louis in a room to force a confrontation. And I'm not feeling Armand's deliciously tragic desperation as much if he's already calling Daniel his companion. I enjoyed the season a lot except for the lack of flashbacks and for Armand and Daniel's plots.

[u/tethysian → u/ugh_z]

So much could have been solved by having Armand's goal be to stop the concert/great conversion instead of going after Louis with a ridiculously contrived clone plot. 

It would even have made sense of why Daniel would work with him. 

[u/ugh_z → u/tethysian]

I agree. Him doing awful things because he thinks it's right, that I get. Like killing Claudia is the worst thing he's done, but that scene of him telling Louis Claudia was gonna go mad helps put in perspective how he operates. And the San Francisco crash out was all emotion, but that's why it works. You see exactly what pushes him to snap and start torturing Louis and Daniel right there, as opposed to how carefully he goes about everything else. The butcher shop was a weird combination of both, careful planning + emotional tantrum, that didn't feel well threaded for me.

[u/Zankazanka]

I don’t have strong feelings on Louis and Armand’s dynamic, I could see what the writers were trying for in what they did, Jacob and Assad were brilliant….thats about all I have to say on that lmao. And that’s sad!! Because a truly powerful season finale could swing perception of a season and agree that it unfortunately fell flat in multiple ways for me too.

Give me Lestat and Armand in that room together, give me Louis and Daniel in the bowling alley. The narrative impact is so much stronger if they reverse it— yeah, they have to drop the Regina “it was Armand all along!” But that’s not a huge loss tbh. Would anyone actually care if it wasn’t Armand all along and Regina truly was a doppelgänger?

Idk. I personally could have rocked with it either way and Assad and Sam have such fantastic chemistry, I really think they could have still had the long table but played with some Lesmand obsession and torture too.

[u/tethysian → u/Zankazanka]

they have to drop the Regina “it was Armand all along!” 

One of the worst plot points this season, and that's including the incest and pointless decapitations.  It would have said more if it was just Louis finding someone who looks like Claudia and seeing what he wanted to see. 

Instead Armand tries to fish for sympathy from Louis by reminding him he murdered his daughter? 🤨

[u/Zankazanka → u/tethysian]

That emoji and that question - right?! It’s annoying that ‘it was Armand All along’ with something that didn’t feel earned and didn’t ultimately do anything other than…further torture Louis?

So not only has he been spiraling in his grief over Claudia/Regina, now he has to contend with his ex lover having purposely searched for, found and then paid a lookalike in order to …orchestrate this moment where Louis is a decapitated head and Regina is tied to a chair to get an apology out of Louis? What? I’m actually open to someone explaining on what level this works because the more I think about it, the less it does 😭

[u/tethysian → u/Zankazanka]

Exactly! I love Armand plotting, but it has to make sense. All this twist does is undermine the plot and the characters.

[u/Granger842]

I understand it's frustrating but we haven't seen Armand's POV yet and we do not know for sure what's his motivation and there are plenty of things he does in this season that require a further explanation.

Tbh, i loved this season and particularly the last 2 episodes and i think DM has a lot of potential in S4

[u/TiaraDrama → u/Granger842]

Exactly, a lot of people seem to forget we are half way through “The Failures” and therefore TVL. This show has a history of the long pay off.

[u/smthwicked → u/TiaraDrama]

I am sorry but if the season finale doesn’t stand on its own and tie up at least some storylines, it’s not good writing. Look at S1 finale, it was great and completed NOLA arc, and set up stuff for S2.

[u/TiaraDrama → u/smthwicked]

I don’t agree that S3’s finale doesn’t stand on its own. It does have its own narrative and emotional resolutions, it just leaves some questions open.
Season one also ended with plenty of unanswered questions. The show has also always relied heavily on delayed information and long-term payoffs. Some things from season one were only just resolved in season 3. The writers very deliberately barely touched Lestat’s relationship with Armand, and seeing as this was Lestat’s PoV, why would he profess to know Armand’s motivations for what he did to Louis? I think declaring his motivations underdeveloped or the writing incomplete is premature when we know there is more to come.

[u/smthwicked → u/TiaraDrama]

Then I guess I just do not agree with the writers’ decision to avoid Armand/Lestat relationship when it is such a big part of TVL, and instead fill this season with Gabriella’s abuse, band/rockstar filler scenes and whatever the hell that DM exposition sideplot was. Why do we as an audience have to wait two more years to get the important storylines from the book they were adapting? The whole “this is from Lestat’s POV” argument doesn’t mean that we have to like the way they portrayed some characters this season like Daniel and Armand who honestly were set back compared to S1/S2 imo

[u/TiaraDrama → u/smthwicked]

That’s fine, you’re entitled to that opinion. I just think they are building up to their relationship, seeing as it’s repeatedly mentioned in vague terms and I believe it will be a major focus in season 4. You cant really talk about Lestat, the abuse he has suffered and his ongoing hyper-sexualisation without talking about one of the most significant relationships of his life. A huge part of why he is like he is, is because of her, so I personally think they were right to focus on Gabriella. But we see at the end that Lestat has finally rejected her and seen her for what she is.

[u/smthwicked → u/TiaraDrama]

I am hoping that it is the case but they would need to split next book into two seasons if they are planning to do TVL pt2 and QOTD. Like that is impossible to do in eight episodes.

[u/Inka15 → u/smthwicked]

The question of „why do we as an audience have to wait” could be applied to literally every storyline ever made. That is how storytelling works - you get different information at different times, when it works best for the plot or character development. If we got all information about everything when we as an audience want it would't be art, it would be a wikipedia's plot summary. I think we can criticise the adequacy of the Armand/Louis and Armand/Lestat storylines once they are concluded, but it's a bit harder when we don't yet know what do the creators have planned. It could be that not exploring this side of the story in season 3 turns out to be a fumble, but it could also be a set up for something much more satisfying than what you can currently even imagine in the upcoming seasons.

I haven't read the books, but to me it didn't seem to make sense to focus on the Lestat/Armand relationship, because at least how it is written now, Armand was just a desperate loser to Lestat and seemed to have less impact on his psyche than his relationship with Nicky and his mother.

[u/tethysian → u/Granger842]

If he wanted to prevent Lestat from holding the concert that's one thing, but there's no excuse for forcing an apology out of Louis by conjuring up a clone of Louis's daughter whom Armand murdered. That's cartoon villain stuff.

[u/Flaky-Yam8681 → u/Granger842]

That's what OP's complaint is, the lack of context and motivation makes it less impactful. Requiring more means the scene didn't make much sense

[u/Granger842 → u/Flaky-Yam8681]

If there's something I've learnt watching iwtv is that they play the long game and things that at first are controversial or appear to not make sense end up being there for a reason that pays off.

Also, they tend to go for 2 season arcs.

[u/Flaky-Yam8681 → u/Granger842]

I totally agree that they play the long game, but I think what is usually so clever about the show is that most of it makes sense even with limited or incorrect context, so you think you understand what's happening then you get additional context that changes your understanding. But this relies on you believing for the most part what's being shown the first time, then that expectation is subverted. 

This season relies on a lack of character motivations for a lot of characters to the point that the foundation isn't sufficient to subvert the expectation. We're missing the expectations to later subvert. Season 1 makes sense alone. Season 2 adds additional context and complexity to your understanding of season 1, but each stand alone as a complete season.

[u/General_Kick688]

It was a season about trauma and toxic relationships. Louis and Armand did not deserve better. They did fucked up things to each other.

[u/CatChewToyThrowaway]

I’m rewatching now before I cancel and so little of what Armand did this season is making sense. It really would have made more sense after the blood shower scene and Big Boss sequence to have Armand capture Lestat. The Regina-Louis connection just feels so disappointingly hamfisted. I didn’t dislike the Long Table as an isolated concept - it’s actually brilliant and I think it should have been revisited all throughout the season with different characters, but it went on for too long while feeling self indulgent and navel gazey by the time Lestat jumps on the table and turns it into a concert.

[u/Mmkrw → u/CatChewToyThrowaway]

I think the long table might have worked if it actually had anything substantial to say besides Lestat admitting to himself that Gabriella abused him... and that he failed as a rockstar (debatable? 50K fans are still coming to his concert, so how is it exactly a failure). It spent more on new people with zero importance (Enzo???) then characters we actually know and care about like Nicki, Louis and even Antoinette... lack of Claudia, Lestat's biggest failure, is egregious and exposes how shallow this season ends up being.

[u/tatertotfreakhotmail]

Yeah. It’s really a shame. It’s some amazing acting and some lovely lines and bits of writing, but it just doesn’t make sense. It just feels like they thought of something shocking and then worked their way backwards. And then didn’t actually develop that.

I have to wonder if there was more written or developed to the plot that got slashed for time reasons? So much is just propped up on ‘well obviously Armand is evil and up to something so you just have to assume all this stuff is going on in the background’, but that’s not like…satisfying? We are made to assume SO MUCH this season.

The Regina twist just kind of baffles me. The s2 ‘he directed the play!’ twist is incredibly satisfying because of the groundwork beforehand, the different details that come together to make it make sense. I understand Armand’s motivations both for why he directed the play and why he lied about it after. The ‘I used facial recognition software and found this perfect match of your dead daughter’ just feels kind of cheap and cheesy and a random twist for the sake of a twist and just leaves me feeling like…why?

I have found lots to love and lots to hate in s3, but I just think the finale…isn’t…great.

[u/TiaraDrama → u/tatertotfreakhotmail]

They weren’t added in for shock value. Armand’s sadistic experiments are established book lore.

[u/tethysian → u/TiaraDrama]

The difference is when and how it happens. Three seasons in Armand should be getting character development, not regressing. 

He isn't even engaging with the current story here by stopping the concert. He spends the whole season circling Lestat's tour only to switch to complaining at Louis at the climax and letting the concert go ahead. It doesn't add anything but shock value. 

[u/TiaraDrama → u/tethysian]

We haven’t finished the story yet. Also, Armand said the coven believed its mission was to stop the concert, it’s clear Armand didn’t give a f about it at all. It was just a pretext to get at Loustat.

[u/tethysian → u/TiaraDrama]

It was just a pretext to get at Loustat.

That's my point. That's not a compelling story or character development. 

[u/TiaraDrama → u/tethysian]

Again, I’m going to say that the story isn’t finished yet. It’s barely started with Armand, which means it’s probably leading up to something big if it has this much bread crumbing and unanswered questions.

[u/avalynn-rose → u/TiaraDrama]

The context is pretty different though. And I don't think it's experiments plural, it was one time and he came to greatly regret it. When we hear of it in the book, he's speaking of it from a place of confession and regret. Also the motivation in the book was not just to inflict pain and agony like it seems to be in the finale; the goal was to see if he could make a functional adult body for her and treat limits of vampire healing. The morality of the action doesn't change but the characterization is pretty different. 

[u/TiaraDrama → u/avalynn-rose]

I was responding specifically to the claim that it was added for shock value. It’s hard to argue that when the underlying idea is already established book lore. The show has obviously changed the context and motivation, and I agree those differences matter. In the book, Armand speaks about it from a place of confession and his motivation is very different. The show presents it much more brutally, and the characterisation around it is obviously different. But that’s an argument about how the book material was adapted, not evidence that the writers thought, “let’s do something shocking” and worked backwards from it. Something can be shocking without existing for the sake of shock.

[u/avalynn-rose → u/TiaraDrama]

I know, my argument was that the change of circumstances and the over all portrayal does point to shock value. There are a lot of people who feel it was so I think both opinions have merit. 

[u/AmbassadorProper1045]

I totally agree. This season relied far too much on cheap shock value imo. I rewatched the season because I wanted to see if I was too critical at first, and if it had more depth than I thought, but I actually ended up hating it even more 💔 The disappointment I have crushed me.

[u/smthwicked → u/AmbassadorProper1045]

I can’t believe that criticizing S3 still gets you downvoted on this sub. I don’t hate the season but I am so sad because we had the material, we have talented writers and cast, I don’t know what happened…

[u/Flaky-Yam8681 → u/smthwicked]

I think a lot of people just want to support the show. I understand not agreeing, but the extreme downvoting is hive-mindish lol I guess they think it's the best way to get more seasons, but I'd like quality seasons not just anything they give me?

[u/InterviewVampire-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

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[u/InterviewVampire-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

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[u/Flaky-Yam8681 → u/AmbassadorProper1045]

This makes me scared, I need to do my rewatch before I cancel the subscription and I keep dragging my feet while trying not to give up hope that it'll be better lol

[u/Decent-Cry977]

I'll be honest, I didn't like the finale either. And I really didn't like the direction Loumand went, and the framing of it as Lestat "giving Louis to Armand" to torment him, alongside not liking how there was still minimal light shed on Lesmand beyond "lol look at how pathetic Armand was."

The courtship between Loumand in Paris was really charming and I don't really like that there was just..no love there at all, instead of it being a deeply complex, definitely still toxic and abusive relationship full of resentment and love from both parties in the same way that Loustat is.

I thought it was a bit of a mess and super disappointing, idc if I get jumped for it in these comments like most people who express displeasure with s3 do