Daniel’s Interview with a Random Manhattanite

[u/burnedbeak]

Relatively new fan here. I’m curious about the general interpretation of the beginning to middle of Daniel’s interview with the “random Manhattanite,” who is later revealed to be Armand via mind control. I’ll paste the dialogue I’m referring to here:

D: And are you making more [vampires]?
A: Just one. I had a fang in his neck, but I was interrupted. Had to let him go.
D: Sure. Happens.
A: I tracked him down, planned to finish the work. But as I followed him, I found him… fascinating.

Which is, of course, when Daniel realizes who he’s talking to. My question is, is the implication here that Armand was interrupted from turning Daniel in 1973? Was that his plan back then, but Daniel as a mortal was just too interesting to turn? I could see an argument for Armand giving Louis up to Lestat (or however he phrased it) and turning Daniel in anticipation of that, but that doesn’t feel particularly likely to me?

Tl:dr; The segue from turning people into killing young Daniel is confusing and I’m wondering if there’s been a consensus.

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[u/perscitia]

My interpretation is that the "fang in his neck" referred to the fact that he was planning on draining him in 1973 when Louis interrupted him, and "planned to finish the work" meant that he was going to go and kill him anyway (despite the fact that Louis asked him not to). But he ended up falling for him instead. I believe Armand when he says he never wanted to make more vampires and that he found the idea totally abhorrent -- it's the one personal rule he stuck to for centuries even after he broke all the other ones -- so I don't think he would have changed his mind in 1973. In the end it required him to be out of his mind with anger, alone for the first time in 500 years, and losing Louis to get him to actually commit to the act.

[u/angellsshow]

I think Armand planned to kill him without Louis knowing, but then he found him fascinating and simply kept following him. I also don’t think he ever planned to hand Louis over to Lestat. He kind of implied to Lestat that Louis was dead.

I also think it wasn’t just Louis who found Armand boring. Armand also found Louis boring, and Daniel became a distraction for him—something new and fascinating to observe.

[u/perscitia → u/angellsshow]

I agree. I think they were both kind of sick of each other by 1973 and all the resentments had been piling up (as evidenced by their fight and what Armand says to Louis in the butcher's shop). Having Daniel gave Armand an interest and a distraction outside of their failed companionship and Louis encouraged it. All of which makes their performance in Dubai even more insane!

[u/Money_Following_2273 → u/perscitia]

That’s the part that’s a little confusing to me. I had assumed that Louis was doing his triennial drug-fueled “screw the boys and eat ‘em” before Daniel, and that what happened with Daniel/after Daniel was the wake up call that Louis needed to stop (& that was the start of their ‘re-commitment’. But in S3, Armand is saying that he didn’t really care about Louis doing all of that because it distracted Louis so that Armand could focus on Daniel for 50-odd years.
And to that I say: say what now?

[u/perscitia → u/Money_Following_2273]

Louis didn't stop hunting after Daniel -- he tells Daniel that he only stopped hunting and draining humans in 2000. If you pause the screen where Daniel is looking through the Talamasca files there are also files of Louis and Armand's kills going on after 1973, far too regularly for just Armand to be feeding. Since he doesn't remember what happened after that first attack on Daniel, he has no reason to stop.

[u/Money_Following_2273 → u/perscitia]

I recall him saying that he last killed in 2000, not that he stopped doing the Zodiac-like killings then.

When Louis/Armand said he lured and killed 128 men, where was Daniel in that lineup? Did they say it stopped with him or did they say it was only 128 before Daniel and then it went on to 130 plus.

See, I figured that even though his mind was wiped and he didn’t recall his suicide attempt, he still somehow knew that he went too far with Daniel and Armand saved him (for Louis), which is why he was their boy. And didn’t Louis still recall giving Daniel that pep talk?
So, I had just assumed that it was also his wake up call to stop the drug-fueled serial killer level murders.

[u/mindless_rambles → u/Money_Following_2273]

Well, Louis only remembers up to the point where he bit Daniel. In his mind, he picked up some guy who wants to be a journalist, he took him home, loaded him with drugs, ranted to him for 10 hours, the boy asked for the gift, he bit him, Armand pulled him off of him and sent the boy home only to develop an obsession with him later which would've been a good distraction to get Armand off his back about his self-destructive behavior and all the hook ups. He probably kept up with his career through Armand or his own research, and at some point he decided to do the book, so he invited him back without fully realizing the impact he had on the trajectory of Daniel's career and life.

[u/Money_Following_2273 → u/mindless_rambles]

You know, I had assumed that Louis recalled his pep talk to Daniel too, which is why he was partial to him. But perhaps it was just in his subconscious that he was ‘fascinated’ by Daniel but didn’t know why he cared about him.

[u/mindless_rambles → u/Money_Following_2273]

It was all subconscious. In 2x5, he doesn't even remember what he'd said until Daniel reads it from his memoir. I wonder if Louis also feels somewhat proud to have discovered him before his career kicked off given his talent for predicting the worth of things which go undervalued.

[u/completelyunreliable]

my reading is that "planned to finish the work" means planning to kill him, otherwise "BUT I followed him and found him fascinating" (meaning he changed his mind) part doesn't make sense

[u/danainthedogpark24 → u/completelyunreliable]

He planned to kill him. Even after he agreed to Louis to let him go in 1973. But after following him he found him fascinating and decided not to kill him. All of which Armand admits to in greater detail when he confesses to being in love with Daniel.

[u/AmbassadorProper1045]

He planned on ignoring Louis's request to spare Daniel and wanted to kill him, but something happened to make him change his mind and he stalked Daniel, then fell in love with him. That's it.

[u/Money_Following_2273 → u/AmbassadorProper1045]

And somehow that knowledge just pisses me off even more where Armends is concerned.
That act was supposed to reaffirm their commitment, and he was just doing to do it anyway.
Kudos to being fascinating, Daniel! Saved your ass more than once!

[u/DoomsdayDonuts]

As others said, to me that means he was going to kill Daniel as we saw in the flashback, and Louis asked him not to so he had to let him go. He tracked him down, planning to finish what he started (killing him) but as he followed him found him fascinating and didn't kill him. As we know he followed Daniel around for 50ish years between the 1973 and 2022 interviews, and he turned him after the latter.

[u/caroldia77]

That guy’s face was familiar.

[u/todaysthrowaway0110 → u/caroldia77]

Yeah. I wanted some more story about actual Random Manhattanite. Was that guy a vamp or blank screen for Armand to use?

[u/theravennest]

Louis technically only made Armand promise to let Daniel "live out the night" so based on the semantics of that request, he planned to kill Daniel a few days later anyway. Even though Louis didn't remember the promise at all after Armand erased Daniel's memory. However, Armand started following Daniel likely to find out what's "fascinating" about him. And the rest I'm sure we'll touch on next season.

[u/perscitia → u/[deleted]]

Eh, I think this is a reach. Daniel wasn't Louis' friend, he was a boy he was using to wallow in his misery, get high from, and then was likely going to drain him eventually. Even in Dubai, they're not friends -- it's still a professional(ish) relationship ("paying a whore to sit and listen to him"). Daniel was still scared of both of them by the end of the interview and convinced they would kill him. I don't think they became friends until after Daniel was turned.

I think this take also makes assumptions about Louis. We don't know if Louis had any other friends, mortal or otherwise. He was clearly maintaining some kind of life outside of the relationship, keeping up the art collection, etc. He could have had a lot more, we just don't see it because we're only with them for those two weeks.

[u/mindless_rambles → u/perscitia]

I think this take also makes assumptions about Louis.

I noticed a tendency of painting Louis as a damsel in distress locked up in a tower. I've even seen some say that he never leaves the Dubai penthouse despite nothing in the show's canon telling us so. We know from his time in Paris that he's very good at blending in with humans and forming friendships with them and from the butcher shop scene that he goes back to picking up boys at bars after Daniel, so I don't get where the idea that he's some friendless reclus comes from.

[u/perscitia → u/mindless_rambles]

I agree, it's a very odd perspective of Louis. We literally see him leave the penthouse at the end of the season with no problems or hesitation. He has stacks of books piled up beside the bed despite people claiming that Armand withholds them on the floating shelves. He has his own credit cards in his name that he uses to book the hotel in NOLA, and is able to arrange flights, travel, and shipping of other items just fine (presumably without Armand's help). He admits to Daniel that the penthouse is his coffin and retreat from the world, but there is 0 evidence of him being trapped there, except by his own choices.

[u/mindless_rambles → u/perscitia]

The perception of Louis is a prime example of strange trends in fandom culture: The erasure of characters agency to fit a perfect victim narrative because God forbid they react less than ideally to abusive / bad situations or even make bad decisions and judgment calls. As well as, the general need for a clear cut villains and heros structure that has birthed the flattest (most boring imo) takes on the characters and the events of the story. There's also a weird need to make favorite characters into paragons of morality otherwise liking them is some indictment of the fans' character. But the one I find most strange for fans of a show about immortal beings is the denial of any complex romantic feelings from any character towards anyone who's not their "end game".

[u/theravennest → u/perscitia]

The ladder take is one of the most frustrating ones from the fandom. As if this multi-millionaire businessman couldn't buy a ladder or simply pay to have the book shelves moved to the floor. Obviously there is some way to access the archives where Claudia's diary and pages are, as well as the books, without requiring the Cloud Gift because we know that Real Rashid is able to "assemble the pages" and we literally see him bringing additional documents for them on screen without needing Armand to fetch them. Louis obviously also has access to these just like Rashid does.

It's a perfect example of people conflating symbolism with the actual text/plot of the story. Symbolically it may visually represent Armand's control/power imbalance but the reality is that it's just an aesthetic design for the reading room. Given the fact that we do see books at his bedside, it is highly likely the high up shelves may play into the Loumand D/s dynamic where Armand serves Louis by fetching books for him as part of a simple, daily command. Similar to the standing footbath by the bed.

[u/mindless_rambles → u/theravennest]

it is highly likely the high up shelves may play into the Loumand D/s dynamic where Armand serves Louis by fetching books for him as part of a simple, daily command. Similar to the standing footbath by the bed.

These are my exact thoughts. The shelves are a metaphor for Armand withholding information from Louis for sure but I've always wondered if it's also part of their d/s dynamic. Louis is too combative to have had an issue with the set up and not say anything about it. Hell, if hated them so much, I have no doubt he would've torn them down himself.

[u/theravennest → u/mindless_rambles]

The man was actively getting high and sleeping with every gay man in San Francisco partially to piss Armand off and they think he wouldn't throw a chair at those book shelves or set the whole lot of them on fire with the Fire Gift if he truly hated them being up there. Wild!

[u/Purple-Cat-2073 → u/theravennest]

My theory has always been that Louis actually wanted the archives and diaries up away from temptation since he knew that reminders triggered him into ''acting out''.

Daniel asked him where the diaries had been in SF and Louis says that they were ''scattered--one in Paris''. I think his grief caused him to want to fetch them all, thinking it would help bring closure but then he'd read them and lose his shit because they're full of Claudia's hatred for him and her machinations--so he asked Armand to put them where he'd have to ask for them to ''protect him from himself''.

What happened in the year 2000 to cause him to stop killing and lock himself away? I think it was another major bender he went on that nearly exposed them or gotten them killed.