Interview With the Vampire: How Does the Season 2 Finale Set Up Season 3?

Lestat will take center stage in Season 3.

By Nicole Drum

Interview With the Vampire concluded its second season Sunday night on AMC and while in some ways the series drew to a close Louis' chapter of the story, it opened up a brand new one: that of the vampire Lestat. With AMC having already announced that Interview With the Vampire will be back for a third season, the Season 2 finale did quite a bit to set up for what's next for Anne Rice's iconic vampires — here's how it went. Warning: spoilers for the Season 2 finale of Interview With the Vampire beyond this point. Read on only if you want to know.

The season finale of Interview With the Vampire saw several major events. First, Louis (Jacob Anderson) finished telling his story to Daniel (Eric Bogosian) by revealing what happened in the wake of Claudia's death. Specifically, Louis ended up killing pretty much everyone involved with the Paris coven — especially Santiago (Ben Daniels) — leaving only Sam (Christopher Geary) and Armand (Assad Zaman) as survivors. However, it's also revealed that Armand has been lying for seven decades when Daniel exposes to Louis that it was Lestat who actually mind controlled the audience jury and spared his life and that Armand had been an active participant in Claudia's death. It's revealed that Armand directed the "play" and would have let Louis die and the revelation leads to a violent confrontation between the two vampires — and the end of their relationship. In the aftermath, Louis returns to New Orleans to seek out Lestat while Daniel not only ends up turned into a vampire by Armand but publishes his book — titled Interview With the Vampire.

The publication of Daniel's book is a major part of the setup for Season 3. As fans of Rice's novels already know, the second book in her The Vampire Chronicles series — The Vampire Lestat — saw Lestat awakened from a decades long sleep by a rock band and, through them, discovers the novel Interview With the Vampire. He decides to respond the Louis' account of things with an autobiography of his own (and by also putting out a rock and roll album and going on tour.)

AMC has already somewhat confirmed that aspects of The Vampire Lestat will inspire Season 3. Here's how they describe the new season: "In season three, resentful of the perfunctory portrayal in the trashy bestseller 'Interview With The Vampire,' the Vampire Lestat sets his story straight in a way only the Vampire Lestat can—by starting a band and going on tour.  Gabrielle. Nicholas. Magnus. Marius. Those Who Must Be Kept. They join Louis, Armand, Molloy, Sam, Raglan, Fareed and others we can't tell you about yet on a sexy pilgrimage across space, time and trauma. No Auto-Tuning. No Trigger Warnings. All Feels Amplified."

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Showrunner Rolin Jones also told TVLine that Season 3 will have a distinct shift in perspective and feel — it really will be Lestat in the driver's seat now.

"Lestat [will be] front and center, which means the show should feel like it was hijacked by Lestat," Jones said. "Aesthetically, you should be ready for what a Lestat version of the show feels like and looks like."

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