The Vampire Lestat Graced Us With a Release Window. And a Bite Out of Season 3
I'm the girl who called the Mona Lisa "resting bitch face"
We have four months to get our act together. According to IGN, who revealed this news and debuted an exclusive look at the new season as part of IGN Fanfest, The Vampire Lestat will debut in June of 2026.
So much happens in the three-minute scene IGN released that it’s kind of dizzying for IWTV fans. The clip features Sam Reid as Lestat de Lioncourt and Jacob Anderson as Louis de Pointe du Lac in the third season of the AMC series adapted from Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles. Stop reading now if you want to avoid Season 3 spoilers!
First, we learn that Lestat has relocated from New Orleans to Montreal in the present timeline. (Y’all know he’s Canada down!) “Less baggage here,” he says, while also taking a dig at the locals and their, in his words, “mangled” French. There’s a garage band playing in his neighborhood called Satan’s Night Out–which readers will recognize as the name of The Vampire Lestat’s canonical backup band. In the scene, Lestat plays new music on the piano for Louis over Facetime via their respective iPads. His hair is clean and his curls are defined. Overall, he seems to be in a better mental space than we last saw him during a hurricane in New Orleans.
They chat about Lestat’s new neighborhood and whether or not Louis can come visit and sell him a painting for his guest room… among other things. Their back and forth is all very pleasant, cordial, affectionate, flirty and honestly sweet given what we’ve seen so far of Louis and Lestat’s relationship on bad days and good days. Of course, this is not a flashback from Louis’, or heaven forbid Armand’s, point-of-view. It isn’t a ghost or a memory. This is pure, unfiltered Lestat de Lioncourt. He might not be as melodramatic as we were lead to believe.
It’s so tame compared to the rockstar The Vampire Lestat trailers thus far. This is clearly the calm before the storm. This scene plants the seeds for chaos. Lestat gets a notification on his iPad encouraging him to purchase a copy of Interview with the Vampire, the in-universe book written by Daniel Molloy. To evoke a certain Cynthia Erivo meme, he didn’t know that was happening. While Lestat does not immediately erupt, he’s not thrilled that his former companion Louis A) sat for this interview with a mortal B) talked about him C) knew for a month that the book was getting published and failed to mention it. They were doing so well! On the defense, Louis seems convinced that the book won’t make a cultural impact because “no one reads anymore,” which… fair! Alas, I don’t think that’s going to be the case this time.
Then, to add insult to injury, Lestat goes into a bookstore and overhears its employees dismissing the character Lestat completely. They instead thirst over the layered, sexy, mysterious “betaboi” Armand. (Or, rather, the book’s depiction of Armand as conveyed by Daniel’s writing. Interesting…) The salesgirl even boasts that went to the Louvre and pushed past tourists trying to see the Mona Lisa so that she could, instead, take a selfie with Palma Vecchio’s “Adoration of the Shepherd with a Donor.” In the show’s canon, the painting features a young Armand. By the end of the clip, Lestat politely but loudly snaps at the “would smash” Armand-loving clerk. He storms out of the store, paperback in hand. It’s only going to get worse. The brat prince is so back.
What was with that voiceover at the beginning of the clip?
There’s just one thing in that scene that I don’t quite know how to process. (Well, two if you count the book store clerk referring to Armand as a “betaboi.”) The clip opens with some radio static, and a voice that sounds like a bit like Eric Bogosian saying “You’re listening to The Failures: Album 8, Side A.” To tis millennial, it resembles what audiobooks used to sound like when they were on cassette tape. You may have seen a rumor online that “The Failures” is one of the episode titles. But that has yet to be confirmed. If so, perhaps this is the beginning of that episode? We could be hearing some kind of framing device for the season? Cannot wait to find out–and while four months is way too long to wait, at least now we know.
(featured image: Sophie Giraud/AMC)
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