‘The Beauty’: Success Only Skin Deep?

The crowd inside New York Comic Con’s Main Stage erupted as AMC unveiled an extended first look at The Vampire Lestat, the highly anticipated third season of Interview with the Vampire. For those who have followed Louis de Pointe du Lac’s tortured journey from New Orleans to Paris to some semblance of truth in Dubai, this new chapter promises something bolder, stranger, and far more drug-fueled.

I was in the audience as the footage rolled — a feverish blur of the past and present, blood-soaked intimacy, and Lestat’s unmistakable presence as the new frontman. I also had the chance to speak with the cast and creators earlier that day during a press conference that made one thing very clear: we are not ready for what this season is about to unleash.

The press conference deserves its own breakdown (believe me, there’s plenty to unpack there), but for now, let’s focus on the three-minute first look that completely shifted the trajectory of what I thought this story could be. In just a few breathless moments, The Vampire Lestat redefined the boundaries of Anne Rice’s world on screen, showing us a story that is visually richer, emotionally riskier, and vibrating with a dangerous kind of beauty that only this series can pull off.

“They Want the White Guy”

The footage opens with a familiar sight: Daniel and Louis, once again locked in conversation. But what’s different now is the gravity between them, the silence heavy with everything we know. Daniel, holding the now-published Interview with the Vampire in book form, tells Louis he’s been approached by Hollywood executives who want to adapt his story into a documentary.

The catch? They don’t want Louis. They want “the white guy.”

They want Lestat.

It’s a moment layered with irony and sting, a meta critique that speaks to visibility, race, and narrative control. If this clip is any indication, The Vampire Lestat isn’t shying away from those themes. It’s leaning in.

Louis and Daniel’s body language speaks volumes about where their relationship now stands. Daniel leans in, elbows pressed to the table, searching for some kind of reconciliation. Louis, on the other hand, sits back — spine straight, shoulders tense — a rigidity that had melted away during their earlier interviews but now returns with quiet fury. He’s upset with how the book turned out, how he’s been portrayed in its pages. “Passive, selfish, and a fucking liar,” he says. That word “passive” carries history. Anne Rice herself often described Louis that way, admitting that writing him was difficult because he represented the lowest point of her life. The show’s choice to bring that discomfort to the surface feels deeply intentional, transforming a meta-textual critique into a raw, human confrontation between two men bound by memory, resentment, and truth.

But Daniel clings to one word. Liar. He laughs, a dry, knowing sound, and flips open the book in his hands. That’s when we realize the copy he’s holding isn’t just any edition; it’s Lestat’s. The camera lingers on a page, the infamous train scene from Season 1 Episode 6, now defaced with furious handwriting scrawled across it: NEVER FUCKING HAPPENED. It’s one of those moments that perfectly encapsulates the show’s blend of humor and heartbreak.

The Screen Goes Black — And Then, All Hell Breaks Loose

What follows is a rockstar, drug-fueled, sex-drenched, and downright horrific montage of excess and resurrection. The imagery hits like a fever dream: flashes of neon, bodies in motion, sweat, glitter, blood. It’s Lestat unbound, alive in every sense of the word, the world bending to his appetite. The sequence feels like both a rebirth and a reckoning, like a sensory overload that reclaims the opulence of Rice’s novels but injects it with something raw, and modern. As the screen goes black, it’s not just the beginning of a montage, it’s the beginning of a whole new sound. An original track 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 Superstar. The song doesn’t just accompany the visuals, but possesses them. Every cut hits like a cymbal crash, every image moving in sync with that feverish beat, heralding the arrival of The Vampire Lestat as both a character and a force of nature.

It’s too much to describe frame by frame (believe me, I tried). But this is the kind of sequence you’ll want to rewatch at 0.25 speed, because every blink hides something outrageous, beautiful, or horrifying. It’s visual excess as storytelling — and it works.

Blood, Dirt, and the 1700s: Origins of the Man, the Monster

Before we get completely lost in the modern madness, the montage flashes back to the 1700s, grounding Lestat’s chaos in the trauma that made him.

We see him as a child, wide-eyed, fragile, and human. Then, as a grown man, still mortal, still breakable, sunlight washing over him, his eyes a normal blue instead of the electric blue or violet they possess in his vampiric form. Around him, his family, made up of his cruel brothers, his abusive father, and his mother Gabriella (played by the stunning Jennifer Ehle), trapped in her own quiet rage.

There are dogs, horses, the rifle, the hunter’s life — all the bones of the myth being set in place. And then, the terror starts creeping in.

Nicki — yes, that Nicki — appears again. His return on the screen since last seen in Interview with the Vampire Season 2 (“No Pain”) is nothing short of nightmarish: bloodied wrists, no hands, dragging wounds across a mirrored surface. And if you think it can’t get worse, then comes Magnus, Lestat’s maker, finally on screen for the first time.

In the blink of an eye, we see human Lestat being dragged — maybe across his Paris bedroom, maybe across Magnus’s tower — clawing at the ground, fighting against the transformation that will end his life and begin his eternity. It’s horrifying and I fully believe no one is ready for what’s to come when that is on the screen.

And just when you think it’s over, we catch a glimpse of a towering, ancient presence lifting Lestat’s caked-in-dirt-and-blood body and dropping him back onto the earth’s surface — rebirth, rejection, damnation all in one gesture. While the footage doesn’t explicitly identify him, it’s clear from the sequence and context that this is Marius, one of the most pivotal figures in The Vampire Chronicles. Even in this brief, indirect appearance, the character radiates power and menace, promising to expand the mythology in ways that could reshape the entire series.

Sex, Fame, and the Vampire as Performance

The modern day is just as chaotic — if not more so — than the past.

Hate Me shoes. Tour buses. Blinding lights. Lestat on stage, drenched in sweat and glory, a god and a monster rolled into one. We see him playing violin for a crowd — a perfect echo of his human life, transformed into a performance for the damned.

And then that image — the image — of Lestat falling backward into the crowd, arms outstretched, lit from all sides. Hands reaching for him from above and below. It’s divine and demonic. It’s religion.

But the montage doesn’t stop. There’s a car crash. Raglan James. Real Rashid. Louis and Lestat strutting in impossibly high-fashion looks (no one’s surviving that). Claudia in her dress from Season 1, Episode 7, her hand burnt. Lestat’s face dragged across drywall until it crumbles to dust. A strip club with mama. Baby Jenks getting bitten under the stage lights. Gabriella kissing a woman.

Somewhere between all of it, Lestat glimpses two specters: Magnus cloaked in shadow, Louis bathed in golden light. Past and present collapse. Lestat’s own hallucinations this season erupt in multitudes of hurt and love, horror and happiness, despair and desire.

And finally — Louis, sexier than ever, covered in blood, finger to his lips, shushing what looks to be Bruce. Just the thought of Louis (and maybe Lestat?) hunting him down is enough to alter my brain chemistry.

Litigation and Jealousy: Louis and Lestat, Round Infinity

We also (finally!) got a clear look at that scene — the one that went semi-viral in grainy SDCC footage this summer — Louis and Lestat in some kind of litigation setting. It’s electric. Even fully clothed, seated a full table apart, surrounded by lawyers and legal jargon, the chemistry between them is suffocating. The conversation inevitably turns to Armand, a name that still hangs between them after everything that went down in the first two seasons. What unfolds is jealousy, hypocrisy, heartbreak — all at once. Lestat’s possessiveness is infuriating and deeply human; he’s jealous of what he himself once destroyed. And Louis — deliberately — brushes his very handsome lawyer’s arm mid-discussion, a small gesture that makes Lestat’s face flicker with pain and longing. It’s devastating and intimate in a way only Interview with the Vampire can manage.

It’s also ungodly funny. Lestat is so easy to ragebait, and Louis? He’s an expert at pushing those buttons. No one is doing intertwined souls, ego, and eternal love like these two.

Final Montage from Hell: Blood, Hallucination, and the Punchline

The footage closes with a supercut from hell, a final, rapid-fire montage that practically demands to be watched in slow motion (I did…several times). We see Lestat bathing in blood — or something close to it — and it’s an image that might just top anything the show’s ever dared before. Dr. Fareed and Nicki appear in some type of hallucinatory image. There’s a big ol’ blunt in play. Then, Louis, in that same blood-drenched look, gets splattered with even more crimson across his perfect face, all before ending as Lestat backstage turns with a flourish, blood soaking his hair, flinging droplets straight at the camera. Daniel’s voice cuts in with one final line: “Fucking asshole.” It’s hilarious. It’s chaotic. It’s perfect.

The Gospel of Lestat

When the screen finally cut to black, the crowd at NYCC was buzzing; half laughing, half stunned, all collectively feral. The Vampire Lestat isn’t just Interview with the Vampire Season 3; it’s the series breaking its own boundaries, exploding into something operatic, terrifying, and deeply personal. This footage was messy, gorgeous, and impossible to look away from—a fever dream of fame, guilt, immortality, and art. What struck me most wasn’t just the spectacle, but the emotional clarity underneath it: the show still understands that at its core, this is a love story. A brutal, obsessive, world-ending love story. And if this first look is any indication, we’re about to witness it burn brighter — and bloodier — than ever before.

If this is just the first look, God help us when the full thing drops.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=videoseries