Okay Let’s Talk About Lestat’s Oedipus Complex on ‘The Vampire Lestat’

The Vampire Lestat is leading into the vampire incest storyline. And while it is definitely making a lot of fans uncomfortable, I do think that it is unfortunately very important to talk about. Let’s get into our Oedipus and his centuries long relationship with his mother.

Lestat (Sam Reid) admits at the end of “Detroit” that he is a mother lover. In “Toledo,” we get to see more of his dynamic with Gabriella (Jennifer Ehle) as she goes by the name Sofia and joins Lestat on his tour. Through his retelling of events, the two form a pact to not sleep together anymore but there are hints that Gabriella continues to push the boundaries of their relationship.

In a flashback to Auvergne, Gabriella is even a little too flirty with her son after he kills the wolves that doned him the “Wolf Killer.” When Lestat says that sex is not as good as the blood, she begins drinking his blood without a second thought. When he is singing in French, she is lounging on him and controlling his reaction to her even when he is mad she brought up Claudia.

These moments don’t paint Lestat as someone who is happily in a relationship with his mother but instead reads as Lestat telling us these things so someone will finally say “Hey so this isn’t okay.”

Lestat clearly wants an out

Part of what makes Lestat’s narration so fun is that no one is checking him. He just recounts his side of things without a single question provided, unlike Louis’ (Jacob Anderson) side of things that was questioned by Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian). Instead, Lestat gives us hints to how he truly feels about situations and people.

He says to those listening that they probably like a little “dirt on their sandwich” in the first episode when Gabriella is revealed. He has shame when talking about their relationship. So why wouldn’t he tell this story in hopes that someone can tell him that it isn’t okay?

The thing about Lestat is that he’ll never outright ask for help. The one person he does ask for help from is Gabriella and she uses it to her advantage. That much is made clear in the first episode and seeing how the two were as he was growing up makes it that much clearer.

Lestat is a victim when it comes to his relationship with Gabriella. Even if she is his fledging that dynamic does not instantly become a sexual one. A parental fledging/maker dynamic is possible as we saw with Lestat and Claudia.

But even when Lestat was a human, his mother blurred lines with her son that clearly affected him.

Can someone please give Lestat the out he needs?

When Louis de Pointe du Lac shared his story, he could understand aspects of his making and his relationship with Lestat with clarity that came from time and space. For Lestat, the abuse that he has endured throughout his life is something he clearly pushes down to ignore later. But The Vampire Lestat is forcing him to come to terms with it.

Bringing Gabriella into the fold isn’t to show how he loves her. I don’t think that he does at all. I think she manipulated him as a child to be her one “ally” within their family. She is the one who convinced him to kill his siblings and his father. And I think that if given the chance, she would ruin him.

I don’t think Lestat sees her as someone he wants to love but she has convinced him that he needs her too much to let her go. So he does whatever she asks to keep her in his life. That’s not a healthy relationship. She’s using her son’s desperation to her own advantage and that includes sleeping with him or manipulating him when he made it clear he doesn’t want a romantic relationship with her.

Lestat is telling us this because he feels the guilt of it. He wants us to know and I do really think it is because he wants someone to help him out of it. And hopefully that happens sooner rather than later.

(featured image: Sophie Giraud/AMC)

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