‘The Vampire Lestat’ Episode 6 Sees Daniel And Armand Commit The Ultimate Betrayal

Daniel’s Duplicitious Dinner with Lestat and Louis

“Montreal” is set during Halloween two years after The Vampire Lestat became a band in the aftermath of Lestat learning about Daniel’s book. In that time, he’s wrestled with his past, produced an album informed by it, and found his way back to Louis through the shared loss of their daughter, Claudia (Delainey Hayles).

He intends on starting anew, complete with an alias that distances himself from his own name. Either the Canadian Sheridan Blackwood or the American Clarence Oddbody. He only has three loose ends to tie up—dinner with Daniel to give him an ending for his documentary, a séance to bring Louis closure over Claudia, and a concert to further the agenda of the Great Conversion as Gabriella wishes.

Lestat and Louis think all three are bad ideas, but they set off on the Devil’s road to complete them anyway. Their first stop is Sangsue (leech in French), Louis’ human-vampire restaurant that’s conveniently within walking distance of Lestat’s home. They’ve agreed to meet Daniel there in a private room, but they arrive with coordinated fanfare by Louis as he walks Lestat through a dining area of vampires in awe of the rock star who’s come to mean so much to them.

Daniel clocks the admiration, noting Louis and Lestat’s celebrity status by referring to them as Travis and Taylor and asking them if they’ve set the date yet. It’s a layered bit of sarcasm as it acknowledges Louis is known for his physical abilities as a vampire (re: his skill with “dispatchment”), Lestat has become famous for his music, and that Daniel’s aware they’re on their way to reuniting romantically. But while they believe they’re finishing off the documentary, he’s actually using the dinner as an opportunity to assess their relationship and what Louis knows about Gabriella.

His line of questioning and lack of journalistic push back would give his hand away if Louis and Lestat weren’t so distracted by each other. Daniel asks about the exchange between the two during Hurricane Odette. They avoid his question by pretending they hadn’t heard one another that night. It’s Lestat who relents and tells Daniel that it was enough Louis showed up.

The fact that Daniel accepts this answer without trying to dig deeper surprises Louis enough to point it out. When he was the one being interviewed, Daniel dug past the surface until he got to the depth of the truth that was being withheld. Like Louis’ reframing of the narrative of Lestat’s “murder” at the hands of himself and Claudia that initially skipped over Louis’ Hail Mary of putting Lestat in his coffin and sending it off to the landfill where he knew rats would be. He gave Lestat a chance at survival.

Daniel concedes Louis’ point, but his follow-up question isn’t directed at Lestat. It’s directed at him. It’s a question that’s been nagging at Daniel since Lestat disrupted his idea of himself as a “bright, young reporter with a point of view.” Louis implanted the mantra back in 1973 after his grief and desire to see Lestat again nearly took Daniel’s life due to Armand’s anger over once more having to clean up Louis’ mess. Much of his self-confidence and worth is wrapped up in being two steps ahead of people.

Lestat took that from him in The Vampire Lestat episode 4, “The Devil’s Road,” when he mockingly laughed over Armand’s excuse that he didn’t read Daniel’s mind because he was caught in the fog of the vampiric love between him and Louis. He said that he wouldn’t pretend like Daniel’s maker.

Daniel did learn from Armand that it wasn’t Louis that had distracted him. It was Armand’s love for him. He also found out that Armand had stalked him for 52 years and was told that Louis was aware of it. That the vampire he’d developed somewhat of a kinship with had waited at home for the details of his life like it was some kind of show to be watched on television.

Armand described Louis as methodically cruel, ripping away Daniel’s perception of Louis and casting him in a different light. When he asks Louis if it was the fog of vampiric love that kept him and Armand from seeing his gotcha questions, Louis’ answer is a sour note that deepens Daniel’s resentment.

Louis tells him that he tried not to read his mind out of respect. Given what Daniel now knows, the idea that Louis respects his privacy is out the window. But the question also serves as a jab at Lestat, a way to plunge the knife further into him about Louis and Armand’s relationship, which is a sore point for the vampire.

How Daniel Knows He Can Use Lestat and Gabriella’s Secret

With the two of them present and interacting with one another, Daniel sees first hand the way Lestat and Louis seem to get lost in one another. The lingering glances, flirting, and gestures toward a rekindled shared life. This is supported by Louis’ romantic amuse-bouche in the form of a distant descendant of the Lioncourt line by the name of Francine Lucien-LaChapelle who is willingly decanted and described like a bottle of wine by a vampiric sommelier.

Daniel takes this opportunity to fish for information. Right when Lestat and Louis are caught in each other’s eyes, he asks if Lestat is still fanging Sofia (Jennifer Ehle). He purposefully sexualizes his question to frame their relationship in explicit terms, but Louis has no reaction to the question or Lestat’s answer of “I don’t know. Maybe.” As such Daniel now knows Louis is aware of the intimate nature of the bond and is not threatened by it.

Ignoring Lestat asking him why he asked the question, Daniel moves on to inquiring about whether Louis has met Sofia yet. Louis says he thinks he’s meeting her tonight, confirming to Daniel that he doesn’t know that Sofia is Lestat’s mother, Gabriella. It’s here Daniel knows he has both of them exactly where he wants them.

Laying it on a bit thick to cover his tracks, Daniel starts talking about how Lestat and Sofia met in the ‘80s and how he could picture her with the big shoulder pads. It’s meant to goad Lestat and it works. But Lestat and Louis both end up mean-spiritedly teasing Daniel about his sunburn and his new relationship, unaware that the person he’s talking about is Armand.

Louis delivers the likely final nail in the coffin of his friendship with Daniel by toasting him with the words, “To Daniel Molloy, our biographer, our documentarian, our shared ex’s abandoned offspring, all those things at once,” dismissing Daniel from his personhood and claiming him as his and Lestat’s.

Daniel looks directly at Lestat, asking him if he’s ready to eat his own before he drinks the shot of Francine’s blood that’s been prepared for him. It’s a gauntlet being thrown but only Daniel is aware that it has been.

Louis Learns The Truth About Gabriella

On the car ride to the rehearsal space, Louis notes that something seemed off about Daniel at the dinner, but Lestat dismisses it. To him, Daniel is an awkward vamp with a ‘you think you’re better than me’ chip on his shoulder. He sees himself and Louis as Daniel’s betters and Louis does not disagree. They’re underestimating him and it will be to their detriment.

Daniel was trying to get into their minds while speaking to them. Though he didn’t succeed with Lestat, he did manage to slip into Louis’. He doesn’t share what Daniel said or heard. The admittance slips into the background to be forgotten about as Louis and Lestat’s attention is stolen by the latter’s adoring fans who are holding up traffic with their car to meet him.

The pair are the freest they’ve been all season in this scene. They’re laughing, talking about the book that damaged their relationship, recontextualizing the past in a way that doesn’t remove the hurt but makes tentative steps toward Louis finally getting answers on why it happened, and thoroughly enjoying each other’s company. It puts Lestat and Louis on a high that’s pushed higher by the band’s rehearsal.

For the first time in Interview with the Vampire, Louis gets to meet a vampire in Lestat’s life. He’d kept Louis and Claudia separate from the rest of the vampiric world. When they had ventured out on their own and met others of their kind, it ended in tragedy. So Louis is genuinely excited to meet Sofia in what he thinks is a baggage-less, semi-normal situation.

Then he’s serenaded by Lestat in front of everyone as he sings, “Brutal Love,” a song that Louis realizes is about him through Lestat’s vulnerable, earnest, and passionate performance.

But their reconciliation is thrown a massive curve ball when in the hour before meeting the witch Merrick (Sarah Afful) for the séance, Daniel and Armand release what amounts to revenge porn of Lestat and Sofia having a sexual encounter in the studio. They tell the world that her name is actually Gabriella and that she’s Lestat’s mother.

Lemuel (Moses Sumney) had been the one to send Louis the video. He watched it in the car while he was waiting for Lestat.

“Montreal” doesn’t go into why Daniel and Armand make this their weapon of choice, but it can be inferred. They want to humiliate him. Daniel because of Lestat’s trick in episode 3, “Toronto,” where he shared intimate, heartbreaking details about the loss of his first love Nicky (Joseph Potter) but made sure it was done privately and not for the cameras like Daniel thought. Also, for the concert in episode 4, “The Devil’s Road,” when Lestat mocked Daniel’s career, the salacious bodice ripper Interview with the Vampire is perceived as, and Armand with the song “Big Boss.”

Armand’s reason may appear altruistic because he has tried to get Lestat to stop performing and exposing humanity to the existence of vampires. It’s why he came to see him on his “apology tour” with only two stops (Lestat and Daniel). It’s why he killed Larry (Noah Reid) in episode 5, “New York.” It is about the five Great Laws and his adherence to them, with the glaring exception to Daniel.

But it is also about Louis, who left him and who is loved by Lestat. A love he knew but didn’t understand the depths of until he learned how present Louis’ hallucination of Lestat had been in their relationship.

Armand had spent 77 years of his life doing as Louis wanted, shrinking himself into something palatable to him, and keeping Louis contained. None of which Louis asked for nor wanted, but it was done and then Louis walked away without a glance backward, leaving Armand on his own.

Now there is a secret to expose like Daniel did Armand’s when he showed Louis the script that proved Armand wasn’t threatened with death and held captive when Claudia and Madeleine (Roxane Duran) were lynched. That he directed the play that killed them and wasn’t the one who saved Louis from meeting the same fate, Lestat was. A secret that they both likely believed would cause Louis to leave Lestat and render the rock star too devastated to move forward with his concert.

Louis was the catalyst for Lestat’s music career that exposed vampires to the human masses. He is the reason there is an answer to Daniel’s book in the world. If he were to leave Lestat over the secret he’s been carrying, Armand would get what he wants. Lestat hurt, silenced, and unable to further jeopardize the fragile division between humanity and vampires.

But that’s not what ends up happening. Instead, Louis chooses Lestat.

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Armand and Daniel’s Miscalculation

At first it goes terribly. Blindsided and simmering in anger over what he’s just watched, Louis attempts to get an answer from Lestat on who Sofia actually is by confronting him with the video. Lestat evades and calls it a deep fake even after Louis rewinds the video to the beginning where Daniel and Armand expose his secret.

Louis asks if he just met his mother, Lestat says that was Sofia. Louis tries again by asking if Sofia is his mother. Lestat says his mother is dead. Patience gone, Louis crassly asks if Lestat is sleeping with the woman who gave birth to him and when Lestat corrects him on his anatomically incorrect description, Louis wants out of the car immediately.

What comes next is some of the best acting Sam Reid and Jacob Anderson have done as scene partners and it all takes place on a city sidewalk.

Louis is given room to have a frustratingly realistic reaction to a video that’s been decontextualized from the abuse Lestat has suffered from at the hands of his mother since his childhood. It is a secret Lestat has held from him for a century, not just that she is alive, but that he turned her and she has known exactly who Louis is this whole time while Louis has been kept in the dark about her.

It does not help that Lestat tries to downplay what Louis just saw, but he is doing it from a place of justified fear. Lestat has never confronted Gabriella’s abuse head-on and now he’s got to do it as his worst nightmare is being realized, Louis leaving him again not because of something he did but because of something that was done to him.

Lestat carries a deep well of shame over his relationship with Gabriella and now the whole world knows including Louis who is disgusted. The panic from the exposure of the incest led to Lestat vomiting in the car. On the sidewalk, he’s able to hold onto his composure long enough to push back on Louis’ hypocrisy regarding “sickness.”

He calls Louis out on being judgy and has his own emotional explosion when Louis tells him that he needs to seek a professional. Louis, who lost the thread of reality when grief over Claudia held him in its grip so strong that he paid Regina and her friend to pretend to be their daughter and her wife. Louis, who Lestat spent a month and a half talking back to sanity in the aftermath of his time with Regina. Louis, who he opened his home to and who he set the séance up for so he could try to move past the guilt he has over Claudia’s murder.

In Lestat’s devastation over his hidden hurt being so terribly misunderstood, Louis realizes Lestat wasn’t trying to convince him that what he saw was okay because they are “unnatural beings.” Lestat was trying to convince himself. The panic attack that’s triggered is a result of that survival-based justification shattering and Louis’ reaction which Lestat has been avoiding for a century.

Ashamed, and quickly course-correcting, Louis pulls Lestat into his arms trying to calm him down as he kisses his head and repeatedly whispers, “It’s okay. It’s alright.”

In the middle of their fight, Louis had called the reveal about Gabriella and Lestat an “all-time Armand level deceit,” and that’s exactly how Daniel and Armand likely wanted it to be received. But Armand lied to keep his relationship with Louis. Lestat lied to protect to himself from the truth of the abuse he’s suffered. It is not the same.

Escalating to Decapitation

Louis and Lestat take a beat at a bar so they can reset, and Louis can assess when the abuse started. Through their conversation it becomes clear to Louis that it began before Lestat turned her, and Lestat cannot name it for what it is. They reach a middle ground with Louis accepting the story Lestat has to tell himself about Gabriella whilst poking a few holes in it to help him get to the point where he can be honest about how their incestuous relationship is affecting him.

He also asks Lestat if he can put some blood in his beer so it’ll taste better. It’s an important request not only because it further establishes that Louis isn’t disgusted by him or his blood which has been enhanced by Akasha (Sheila Atim) but also because he has a higher chance of living through a beheading. A possibility neither of them knew was about to become a reality as it wasn’t on their minds.

After Claudia figuratively bites their heads off during the ill-advised séance that awakens Louis to her true opinion of him and reveals Claudia “ginned up” her moment on the train with Lestat to manipulate Louis into killing him, the shell-shocked fathers take a walk in a park.

They arrive at a bench where Louis begins to spin a life together in the desert, making the first overt move toward them romantically reconciling. Focused on themselves, they don’t notice the park is unusually empty for a Halloween night. But Louis does see Alex by a lamp pole smoking. Lestat’s grieving band mate is the last person they see before Armand and Daniel decapitate them.

In this moment, Alex’s presence subtly reveals that he’s been spying on them. Armand was the one who took away his addiction after meeting him at AA. The elder vampire has been his source of comfort, and it’s highly likely that he’s been told Lestat was the one who killed Larry.

Alex has born witness to their contentious relationship and how it got worse when they were recording their album. Larry left because he couldn’t rise to the level of musicianship Lestat wanted. But it seems Alex may have fallen for the same assumption Larry had when he thought Lestat killed a sound tech instead of simply firing him for his incompetence.

He is a follower of Armand and likely being used as a pawn. Alex was watching Lestat earlier in the night. He wasn’t responding to the vampire’s enthusiasm when the band was joyfully playing “Dancing with Myself.” Lestat noticed his melancholy after rehearsal and firmly put Gabriella back into her place as a parent by suggesting she show Alex some affection because he could use his mother i.e. his maker.

But Alex wasn’t the only missed warning sign about what would befall Louis and Lestat. During their dinner with Daniel, he asked if Lestat’s new persona Sheridan Blackwood will rest after the concert is over. “Rest” is a calling card for Armand and it refers to death. It’s what he said to Larry before making him jump in front of a subway train.

Death may be on the table as a last resort but for now the beheadings are enough to delay the Great Conversion’s growth. Or at least that’s what Armand and Daniel look to be up to with 50,000 vampires in Montreal waiting for the go ahead to unleash “a great wave of making more” and only Armand’s counter movement to stop it.

New episodes of The Vampire Lestat air Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on AMC and are available to stream on AMC+. Follow Sabrina Reed on Forbes for weekly coverage of the season and news about the business of TV.