Interview With the Vampire season 1 finale recap: You're invited to the Mardi Gras massacre

That's season 1 of Interview With the Vampire in the books, and what an episode to leave us with. Let's recap!

Lestat (Sam Reid) has his little family locked together in misery, and the only way out that Claudia (Bailey Bass) and Loius (Jacob Anderson) can see is murrrderrrr.

Louis tells Daniel (Eric Bogosian) that it's possible to kill a vampire. You can starve him. Feed him the blood of the dead. Burn him. Decapitate him. The trick is getting the drop on a vampire who's older, stronger, and quicker. So Claudia gets to plotting and occasionally shares her plans with Louis telepathically.

Rumors about the three weird siblings have gripped the city, and one night a visibly ill man arrives on their doorstep with a letter begging the "angels" in residence to help him. All Lestat helps him to is a quick death, although he can't even enjoy the blood because it's crawling with cancer.

The man's appearance is a sign that they really do need to get out of town. Lestat orders Louis and Claudia to "clean up the mess and come to coffin" so they can plan their exit.

Claudia? She's smart. Her plan depends on an adoring Louis keeping Lestat distracted, but she knows how easily he can fall back under Lestat's spell. "You spend an hour alone with him, and you're breathing in sync together." Louis promises to carry out his part of the plan without losing sight of their goal.

Interview with the Vampire — Alfonso Bresciani/AMC

Later, as Louis decorates their Christmas tree (the vampires have a Christmas tree!!), Lestat muses about Greece as a possible new location. "Sun worshippers. Hot springs. Those who must be kept." *cue book reader freak-out* But no, Buenos Aires is what Lestat wants. Then he drops a line on Claudia that's taken straight from Anne Rice's book: "You irritate me. Your very presence irritates me."

Since the end is in sight, she lets it roll off her back and executes the next stage of her scheme: throw the doors to their home open to the citizens curious about the alleged fountain of youth inside. Starve themselves beforehand. Choose the most beautiful, gluttonous ones to feast on. Leave town as fast as they can afterward.

Please note: this stage of their plotting happens in a cinema showing a newsreel about Hitler's movements in Europe, and when a man objects to their chatter, Lestat telepathically forces him to slap himself over and over. Oh, to have that power over people checking their phones in a dark movie theater!

It's New Year's Eve now, and Claudia suggests Mardi Gras for their feast. So off they go to their political crony Tom Anderson (Chris Stack) to offer obscene amounts of money to disrupt the Krewe of Raj's three years of planning to make Lestat king of Mardi Gras. Anderson scoffs at the idea of Lestat as the king, but an avalanche of bribes does the trick, along with a new boat for Anderson's coffin-shipping business.

In the present, Daniel applauds Louis for plotting to seduce the seducer as he reviews a newspaper clipping about the Mardi Gras murders and side-eyes Rashid (Assad Zaman). As we saw last week, Daniel's memory's been unlocked, and he's trying to unravel the mystery of Rashid, who's maybe not a rent boy after all.

Mardi Gras arrives. Lestat presides over the festivities from the Krewe of Raj float, where he's at his most flamboyant, gleefully chomping on a (thankfully fake) infant in front of the crowds of horrified parade-goers.

At the lavish ball afterward, the trio stalks the crowd to choose their meals. Claudia introduces Lestat to twin brothers who smell delicious thanks to the rosemary garden in their yard. Alas, one of them's about to ingest Claudia's poison and, hopefully, kill Lestat.

Louis' conflicted as Lestat preens his way through the party, both loving him and wanting him dead. But something's off. Lestat's gaze lingers suspiciously, and Louis hears disembodied voices, as if another vampire's around. He chalks it up to the dome that creates a whispering gallery and joins Lestat for a quiet moment on the balcony.

Then they take a last turn on the dance floor, kissing as the whole party watches. It's bold stuff for 1939, and just like that, Louis' heart is entirely full of Lestat again. What Claudia worried about came to pass.

Claudia cuts in to get Louis back in the game. She mind-talks that one of the twins has been drugged. It's time, even if Louis' having second thoughts.

At the after-party, the chosen victims gather to hear their hosts reveal their ages: Claudia is 36. Louis is 61. Lestat is 179. But there is no fountain of youth, only vampires dressed in white and drenched in blood. It's vicious, with Claudia spitting out an eyeball and Louis ripping a man's jaw clean off. No one survives.

As things wind down, Lestat hears the twins screaming and heads upstairs to find one already dead. Claudia says she saved the other lavender-scented twin for him.

And here's where Lestat's own plans unfold. He's secretly made Antoinette (Maura Grace Athari) a vampire, and she's been eavesdropping on Louis and Claudia through all of their plotting. Everybody dramatically hisses —What We Do in the Shadows spoofed it for a reason!—and Antoinette tries to force Claudia to drink from the dead twin.

Second twist! Claudia anticipated Lestat's move and is a step ahead. She knew Lestat would make a point of eating Tom Anderson, so she poisoned him too. "Always the petty slights with you, Uncle Les," she chides.

Claudia shoves a fireplace poker through Antoinette's chest as Lestat vomits up the dead blood and collapses. Louis drops to his knees next to him, holding Lestat from behind in a reversal of their positions during their first sexual encounter in the pilot.

While Lestat used his teeth on Louis's neck then, Louis uses a human weapon now. Remember that Chekhov's sword cane I mentioned in the pilot? He unsheaths it now.

"I have loved you with all myself," Lestat gasps. "I'm happy it was you here with me." And with that, Louis cuts his throat. It's not a decapitation, but Louis and Claudia are free.

Claudia dips her pen in Lestat's blood to record his dying words. They were in French, and in the present, Rashid translates: "Put me in my coffin, Louis, Louis."

Daniel, meanwhile, shows that he deserved that MasterClass, observing that Louis' not telling the full story. Several more pages of Claudia's journal are missing here, but Daniel read enough to have a guess: Claudia and Louis had a fierce argument about whether to burn Lestat's body. The other victims went into the incinerator (Antoinette while she was still alive—never cross Claudia!), but Louis refuses to do that to his former love. Instead they stuffed his body into a trunk and put it out with the garbage.

The garbage that goes to the dump.

The dump that's crawling with rats

Louis and Daniel both know that a vampire can survive on rats, and in fact we see a shot of Lestat's withered arm snaking out of the trunk to grab a four-legged snack from the garbage heap.

So Claudia and Louis skip town on Tom Anderson's coffin ship and head for Europe with the bitter knowledge that Loius once again chose Lestat simmering between them.

Daniel presses for the full details—and while he's at it, he's got some questions about Rashid too, like how did someone so slight have no physical effects after Louis drank from him? Louis refuses to answer, and Daniel taunts that Louis' still a pimp paying someone to sit and listen to him talk, just like their first attempt in San Franciso. Since it's not an honest reckoning, Daniel says he'll settle for a huge payday instead, the kind a good pimp would provide.

The verbal attacks have Louis starting to disassociate, and in the background, Rashid calmly removes his gloves, pulls out his contacts, and starts to float. When Daniel asks what's different in this interview compared to 1973, Rashid replies from midair, "This time I won't save your life."

His eyes glow with vampiric light as he floats to a bookshelf to retrieve a collection of brittle clippings advertising the Théâtre des Vampires, explaining that the sun has no power over a 514-year-old vampire.

Then Louis stands and introduces the vampire Armand. "The love of my life."

Blood droplets

Whew. What a season. As a piece of entertainment, it worked on all fronts, from the exquisite casting of the leads to the perfectly proportioned mix of romance, gore, violence, camp, and humor. Book purists, I hear you, but how much fun was it to see the characters we love grappling with variations on Rice's themes in plotlines that had the ability to surprise us? The queer storytelling, the focus on Louis and Claudia's experience of both overt and direct racism, the deepening of Daniel's journalist character… it all worked to bloody good effect.
Things I'll miss until Interview With the Vampire returns for season 2: The opulent costumes. The cacophony of the opening credits. The different levels Jacob Anderson brings to Louis from scene to scene. Eric Bogosian's weary intelligence. Sam Reid's bratty, sexy, scary Lestat. The lightning bolts of unexpected humor and stomach-churning violence. All of it, really.
Also, can we take a moment to appreciate Lestat complimenting the Nazi's tailoring? How perfectly him, as is the slogan for his Raj float: "Let them eat king cake."

As we head into season 2, we've got so many delicious questions to ponder. What happened to Claudia? Is Bruce still out there somewhere? Would Armand have stayed undercover if the interview had gone well? And where is Lestat, like, RIGHT NOW? Guess we'll find out next season. Until then, blood bags!

Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.

Related content:

Interview With the Vampire season 1 finale recap: You're invited to the Mardi Gras massacre

Related Articles