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Spoilers follow for The Vampire Lestat Season 3, Episode 6 - “Montreal,” which is available on AMC and AMC+ now.
Season 3 of AMC’s series formerly known as Anne Rice's Interview With the Vampire has raced along like Lestat’s tour bus on nitrous. “Montreal,” the penultimate episode of this season, is an emotional roller coaster ride. For “Loustat” shippers, this episode gifts viewers with Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid) and Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) being on the same page, sharing emotional intimacy like we’ve never seen before. On the flip-side, the witch Merrick Mayfair (Sarah Afful) summons Claudia (Delainey Hayles) back to this earthly plain to metaphorically rip everyone’s hearts out in a devastating sequence that ranks as one of the show’s best.
For everyone who’s been holding out for a romantic episode for Lestat and Louis this season, they certainly get their wish with “Montreal.” Executive producer Hannah Moscovitch tells IGN that the writers’ room asked themselves what might it look like if they gave the pair their own version of Before Sunset, and voila!
“It started with the image of Lestat and Louis rambling around Montreal on the eve of Lestat’s concert,” Moscovitch says of how it unfolded on the whiteboard. “From there, came Louis’ restaurant and a joint interview for Daniel Molloy [Eric Bogosian] with Louis and Lestat, rehearsal for the concert, and the release of the sex tape. Through it all is a slow finding their way back towards each other. The slow negotiation of their flaws, their failures of each other, and of course, of their biggest joint failure and grief, the killing of Claudia.”
Their joint guilt at Claudia’s terrible fate at the vampire trial in Paris at the end of Season 2 has certainly plagued Louis to almost distraction. So, he brings the powerful witch Merrick Mayfair to Lestat’s Montreal residence to conjure Claudia’s spirit back to the mortal plain. Using Claudia’s diary and dress, they drag her back for the emotional unloading of all-time.
For readers of Anne Rice’s books, this confrontation will be familiar as a similar event happens in Merrick (2000), the seventh book in the author’s The Vampire Chronicles series. So, the series is reaching far forward into Rice’s library to bring this incendiary moment to life.
Moscovitch says they fast-forwarded so deep into book canon because they built the architecture of this season around Louis’ 2025 surge of grief for Claudia. “We were talking about it as early as Prague,” she says of their story-breaking while they were shooting there in Season 2. “[Showrunner] Rolin [Jones] brought the idea of the Merrick seance into the room from the get-go. We moved it around in [this] season but it felt climactic, these last moments with the actual ghost Claudia after having imposed or imprinted her on Regina. We knew we’d arrive at it late and it would close this chapter of grief for Louis (and Lestat).”
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What Louis and Lestat don’t expect from Claudia is the blinding rage and then utter desolation she reveals to them during their electrifying reunion. Delainey Hayles gives a raw performance that flares with anger, disappointment and then shattering sadness when she shares that she hasn’t been able to find the love of her life, Madeleine (Roxane Duran), in the afterlife.
Moscovitch says she was on set in Toronto for the seance filming with “Montreal” director Jane Wu (Blue Eye Samurai). “Delainey’s performance was, and always is, extraordinary,” Moscovitch says. “Delainey is fearless and nuanced and so strong as a performer, but I had not seen Delainey arrive at this level of grief and rage and heartbreak before. This was one level deeper. The writing called for that here, and I was jaw-dropped at the monitor.”
Asked how they all helped Hayles navigate that day on set, Moscovitch says Wu made sure to give the actress space. “There was space built into the shooting day for Delainey to get the number of takes that were right for her. And Sam and Jacob admire and respect Delainey a huge amount. I watched them support her, hold her up, whisper to her how beautifully she was doing, and they never left the set. They were always there with her, even when the camera was pointed away from them, which was most of it. Aside from their talent, they are some of the most generous men I know.”
Louis and Lestat (and the audience) are left emotionally stunned in the wake of their goodbye to Claudia. The episode ends with Louis and Lestat thoughtfully, and for once humbly, seated on a bench mulling their possible future together. And then out pops Daniel and Armand (Assad Zaman) who decapitate the pair in the cliffhanger to end all cliffhangers.
Moscovitch confirms this was their intended ending of “Montreal” for a long time. “Everything is a little blurred at the beginning of the [writing] process but we know we have these scenes we want to include, and over time they land somewhere. We move them around a lot. But we knew it would be an episode ending.”
In explaining Armand’s actions, Moscovitch says he had lost his lifeline in the wake of Dubai, losing Louis and turning Daniel. “He wanted some complicated combination of atonement from Louis and Lestat, and to take a pained form of revenge on them,” she explains. “And that was winning Daniel over to him and fucking around on the edges trying to find his moment. We knew a part of the end of the season would be a taking back of the joy Lestat and Louis found, and a big ugly confrontation between our characters and within our characters, in their souls…”
Be sure to check back at IGN every Sunday for post-morts of The Vampire Lestat!
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