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Blood, glamor, and chaos collide in AMC’s first take a look at ‘The Vampire Lestat,’ a fever-dream resurrection of Anne Rice’s Immortal Universe.
By Kirsten Saylor, iHorror Contributor – from New York Comedian Con 2025
The group inside New York Comedian Con’s Predominant Stage erupted as AMC unveiled an prolonged first take a look at The Vampire Lestat, the extremely anticipated third season of Interview with the Vampire. For individuals who have adopted Louis de Pointe du Lac’s tortured journey from New Orleans to Paris to some semblance of fact in Dubai, this new chapter guarantees one thing bolder, stranger, and way more drug-fueled.
I used to be within the viewers because the footage rolled — a feverish blur of the previous and current, blood-soaked intimacy, and Lestat’s unmistakable presence as the brand new frontman. I additionally had the prospect to talk with the forged and creators earlier that day throughout a press convention that made one factor very clear: we’re not prepared for what this season is about to unleash.
The press convention deserves its personal breakdown (imagine me, there’s a lot to unpack there), however for now, let’s concentrate on the three-minute first look that fully shifted the trajectory of what I believed this story could possibly be. In only a few breathless moments, The Vampire Lestat redefined the boundaries of Anne Rice’s world on display screen, exhibiting us a narrative that’s visually richer, emotionally riskier, and vibrating with a harmful type of magnificence that solely this sequence can pull off.
“They Need the White Man”
The footage opens with a well-known sight: Daniel and Louis, as soon as once more locked in dialog. However what’s completely different now’s the gravity between them, the silence heavy with every little thing we all know. Daniel, holding the now-published Interview with the Vampire in e book type, tells Louis he’s been approached by Hollywood executives who wish to adapt his story right into a documentary.
The catch? They don’t need Louis. They need “the white man.”
They need Lestat.
It’s a second layered with irony and sting, a meta critique that speaks to visibility, race, and narrative management. If this clip is any indication, The Vampire Lestat isn’t shying away from these themes. It’s leaning in.
Louis and Daniel’s physique language speaks volumes about the place their relationship now stands. Daniel leans in, elbows pressed to the desk, looking for some type of reconciliation. Louis, alternatively, sits again — backbone straight, shoulders tense — a rigidity that had melted away throughout their earlier interviews however now returns with quiet fury. He’s upset with how the e book turned out, how he’s been portrayed in its pages. “Passive, egocentric, and a fucking liar,” he says. That phrase “passive” carries historical past. Anne Rice herself typically described Louis that means, admitting that writing him was tough as a result of he represented the bottom level of her life. The present’s option to deliver that discomfort to the floor feels deeply intentional, remodeling a meta-textual critique right into a uncooked, human confrontation between two males sure by reminiscence, resentment, and fact.
However Daniel clings to 1 phrase. Liar. He laughs, a dry, figuring out sound, and flips open the e book in his palms. That’s after we understand the copy he’s holding isn’t simply any version; it’s Lestat’s. The digital camera lingers on a web page, the notorious prepare scene from Season 1 Episode 6, now defaced with livid handwriting scrawled throughout it: NEVER FUCKING HAPPENED. It’s a kind of moments that completely encapsulates the present’s mix of humor and heartbreak.
The Display Goes Black — And Then, All Hell Breaks Unfastened
What follows is a rockstar, drug-fueled, sex-drenched, and downright horrific montage of extra and resurrection. The imagery hits like a fever dream: flashes of neon, our bodies in movement, sweat, glitter, blood. It’s Lestat unbound, alive in each sense of the phrase, the world bending to his urge for food. The sequence seems like each a rebirth and a reckoning, like a sensory overload that reclaims the opulence of Rice’s novels however injects it with one thing uncooked, and fashionable. Because the display screen goes black, it’s not just the start of a montage, it’s the start of an entire new sound. An unique monitor titled “Bang Bang” explodes to life, all drums, snarling guitar, and swaggering rhythm. It’s pure rock spectacle, channeling the glam ferocity of Bowie and Jagger with a theatrical edge straight out of Jesus Christ Celebrity. The track doesn’t simply accompany the visuals, however possesses them. Each reduce hits like a cymbal crash, each picture shifting in sync with that feverish beat, heralding the arrival of The Vampire Lestat as each a personality and a pressure of nature.
It’s an excessive amount of to explain body by body (imagine me, I attempted). However that is the type of sequence you’ll wish to rewatch at 0.25 pace, as a result of each blink hides one thing outrageous, lovely, or horrifying. It’s visible extra as storytelling — and it really works.
Blood, Grime, and the 1700s: Origins of the Man, the Monster
Earlier than we get fully misplaced within the fashionable insanity, the montage flashes again to the 1700s, grounding Lestat’s chaos within the trauma that made him.
We see him as a baby, wide-eyed, fragile, and human. Then, as a grown man, nonetheless mortal, nonetheless breakable, daylight washing over him, his eyes a standard blue as an alternative of the electrical blue or violet they possess in his vampiric type. Round him, his household, made up of his merciless brothers, his abusive father, and his mom Gabriella (performed by the gorgeous Jennifer Ehle), trapped in her personal quiet rage.
There are canines, horses, the rifle, the hunter’s life — all of the bones of the parable being set in place. After which, the fear begins creeping in.
Nicki — sure, that Nicki — seems once more. His return on the display screen since final seen in Interview with the Vampire Season 2 (“No Ache”) is nothing in need of nightmarish: bloodied wrists, no palms, dragging wounds throughout a mirrored floor. And in case you suppose it could’t worsen, then comes Magnus, Lestat’s maker, lastly on display screen for the primary time.
Within the blink of an eye fixed, we see human Lestat being dragged — possibly throughout his Paris bed room, possibly throughout Magnus’s tower — clawing on the floor, combating in opposition to the transformation that can finish his life and start his eternity. It’s horrifying and I absolutely imagine nobody is prepared for what’s to return when that’s on the display screen.
And simply once you suppose it’s over, we catch a glimpse of a towering, historic presence lifting Lestat’s caked-in-dirt-and-blood physique and dropping him again onto the earth’s floor — rebirth, rejection, damnation multi functional gesture. Whereas the footage doesn’t explicitly determine him, it’s clear from the sequence and context that that is Marius, probably the most pivotal figures in The Vampire Chronicles. Even on this transient, oblique look, the character radiates energy and menace, promising to broaden the mythology in ways in which may reshape your entire sequence.
Intercourse, Fame, and the Vampire as Efficiency
The fashionable day is simply as chaotic — if no more so — than the previous.
Hate Me sneakers. Tour buses. Blinding lights. Lestat on stage, drenched in sweat and glory, a god and a monster rolled into one. We see him taking part in violin for a crowd — an ideal echo of his human life, remodeled right into a efficiency for the damned.
After which that picture — the picture — of Lestat falling backward into the gang, arms outstretched, lit from all sides. Fingers reaching for him from above and beneath. It’s divine and demonic. It’s faith.
However the montage doesn’t cease. There’s a automotive crash. Raglan James. Actual Rashid. Louis and Lestat strutting in impossibly high-fashion seems (nobody’s surviving that). Claudia in her costume from Season 1, Episode 7, her hand burnt. Lestat’s face dragged throughout drywall till it crumbles to mud. A strip membership with mama. Child Jenks getting bitten underneath the stage lights. Gabriella kissing a lady.
Someplace between all of it, Lestat glimpses two specters: Magnus cloaked in shadow, Louis bathed in golden mild. Previous and current collapse. Lestat’s personal hallucinations this season erupt in multitudes of harm and love, horror and happiness, despair and want.
And eventually — Louis, sexier than ever, lined in blood, finger to his lips, shushing what seems to be Bruce. Simply the considered Louis (and possibly Lestat?) searching him down is sufficient to alter my mind chemistry.
Litigation and Jealousy: Louis and Lestat, Spherical Infinity
We additionally (lastly!) obtained a transparent take a look at that scene — the one which went semi-viral in grainy SDCC footage this summer season — Louis and Lestat in some type of litigation setting. It’s electrical. Even absolutely clothed, seated a full desk aside, surrounded by legal professionals and authorized jargon, the chemistry between them is suffocating. The dialog inevitably turns to Armand, a reputation that also hangs between them after every little thing that went down within the first two seasons. What unfolds is jealousy, hypocrisy, heartbreak — . Lestat’s possessiveness is infuriating and deeply human; he’s jealous of what he himself as soon as destroyed. And Louis — intentionally — brushes his very good-looking lawyer’s arm mid-discussion, a small gesture that makes Lestat’s face flicker with ache and longing. It’s devastating and intimate in a means solely Interview with the Vampire can handle.
It’s additionally ungodly humorous. Lestat is really easy to ragebait, and Louis? He’s an knowledgeable at pushing these buttons. Nobody is doing intertwined souls, ego, and everlasting love like these two.
Last Montage from Hell: Blood, Hallucination, and the Punchline
The footage closes with a supercut from hell, a remaining, rapid-fire montage that virtually calls for to be watched in gradual movement (I did…a number of instances). We see Lestat bathing in blood — or one thing near it — and it’s a picture that may simply high something the present’s ever dared earlier than. Dr. Fareed and Nicki seem in some kind of hallucinatory picture. There’s a giant ol’ blunt in play. Then, Louis, in that very same blood-drenched look, will get splattered with much more crimson throughout his good face, all earlier than ending as Lestat backstage turns with a flourish, blood soaking his hair, flinging droplets straight on the digital camera. Daniel’s voice cuts in with one remaining line: “Fucking asshole.” It’s hilarious and chaotic. It’s good.
The Gospel of Lestat
When the display screen lastly reduce to black, the gang at NYCC was buzzing; half laughing, half surprised, all collectively feral. The Vampire Lestat isn’t simply Interview with the Vampire Season 3; it’s the sequence breaking its personal boundaries, exploding into one thing operatic, terrifying, and deeply private. This footage was messy, attractive, and not possible to look away from — a fever dream of fame, guilt, immortality, and artwork. What struck me most wasn’t simply the spectacle, however the emotional readability beneath it: the present nonetheless understands that at its core, this can be a love story. A brutal, obsessive, world-ending love story. And if this primary look is any indication, we’re about to witness it burn brighter — and bloodier — than ever earlier than.
If that is simply the primary look, God assist us when the total factor drops.
