Tag: vampire romance

Interview with the Vampire Season 1 Episode 2: …After the Phantoms of Your Former Self Recap

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Episode 2 picks up where the pilot left off, not long after Lestat finishes turning Louis into a vampire. Lestat spends the rest of the night cleaning up bodies and giving Louis his first lessons on how to live as a vampire. In the months and years that follow, Louis attempts to juggle being a vampire and maintaining his human lifestyle, with continued input from Lestat. As their lives become more entangled and their power dynamic more complicated, it leads to a more volatile relationship between maker and fledgling vampire.

Recap

On Day 2 of the interviews, Daniel (Eric Bogosian) examines a painting in the dining room while he waits for Louis (Jacob Anderson). Rashid (Assad Zaman) enters and tells him the work is by Venetian artist Marius de Romanus, an obscure painter with few surviving pieces who was a contemporary of 16th century painter Tintoretto. He explains that Louis “covets the rare.”

Daniel doesn’t pause to consider whether his Pulitzer Prize and previous Interview with the Vampire experience make him rare enough to collect.

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Interview with the Vampire Season 1 Episode 1: In Throes of Increasing Wonder… Recap

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This is a spoiler-filled recap of season 1 episode 1 of the AMC TV series Interview with the Vampire. My review of episodes 1 and 2 (with minimal spoilers) is HERE.

Interview with the Vampire is based on Anne Rice’s 1976 novel of the same name and follows the misadventures and twisted affections of two vampires, Louis de Pointe du Lac and Lestat de Lioncourt. Louis narrates the tale via the framing device of the titular interview, given to ageing investigative journalist Daniel Molloy. The series alternates between their discussion in the present day and depictions of the past as Louis describes it.

Present day Louis lives in a customized penthouse in Dubai with a staff of devoted servants and a fabulous art collection. Now that they are both older and wiser, he invites Daniel to visit and have a second go at the disappointing interview they did together almost 50 years ago.

Louis begins the new version of his story in 1910, when he was the human owner of several brothels in New Orleans, which he maintained in order to support his elderly mother, engaged sister and mentally ill, religion-obsessed brother in the style they’d enjoyed while his father was alive. He was a Black Creole business owner in the Jim Crow south, which meant his business options were strictly limited. He’d kept from his family how close they’d already been to financial ruin when his father died a few years earlier.

Louis had to alter the way the family made its money because their sugar plantations (changed from indigo plantations in the book) no longer supported them due to restrictions imposed by the racist Jim Crow laws. Rather than accept the truth, his family believed that he preferred the low life and fast money of the red-light district and had willingly chosen this life over their genteel lifestyle.

As the story begins, the vampire Lestat arrives in town, fresh off the boat from France, and discovers New Orleans is a town that very much suits his tastes.

And that Louis is a man who very much suits his tastes.

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Interview with the Vampire Season 1 Episodes 1 & 2: Review

~ Metacrone ~ 1 Comment

The updated TV series adaptation of Anne Rice’s novel “Interview with the Vampire” and its many sequels is finally here. I’m trying to find ways to sound like a grown up about it, but I first read the novel when I was 16 and that girl needs to gush and scream for a minute: Aaaaahh!!! It’s so good!!! I love it!!! Louis and Lestat are perfect! They are the people I’ve always imagined and interact in the ways I envisioned when I read the books over and over. They have so much chemistry. And it’s gorgeous, so lush and beautiful to listen to and watch. ❤️❤️❤️

Okay. Moving on. Now for a more adult review.

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A Discovery of Witches Season 3 Episode 6 Recap: In Which Diana and Matthew Attempt to Settle Old Scores

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Discovery of Witches S3Ep6 Sarah & Diana Cast a Spell

In episode 6, Matthew leaves for Poland to find Benjamin and punish him for being a de Clermont –acting exactly like Matthew – not getting the message that the de Clermonts don’t harm witches any more since Matthew met Diana. And for stealing his grandfather Philippe’s watch. While Matthew is gone, Diana and Sarah set out to retrieve the Book of Life from the library now that they have all three missing pages.

Recap

As Ruelle’s song Genesis plays, Matthew (Matthew Goode) and Diana (Teresa Palmer) say an emotional goodbye, then he drives to Poland, where Benjamin (Jacob Ifan) is holding witches hostage and waiting for Matthew to find him.

Diana informs Marcus (Edward Bluemel) that she and Matthew agreed she’d go to Oxford and retrieve the Book of Life while he was gone. In an out of character moment, Marcus tries to talk her out of it. He thinks they should all sit at Sept-Tours and wait for Matthew to come home.

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A Discovery of Witches Season 3 Episode 4 Recap: In Which Diana And Matthew Welcome Twins

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In episode 4, Diana and Sarah seek the help of a local coven to perform a locator spell to aid in their search for the last missing page. Now that they have more blood samples to work with, Chris and Miriam’s research yields some disappointing results, which Miriam shares with Matthew in New Orleans. Everyone returns to London just in time for Diana to go into labor.

Recap

Diana (Teresa Palmer) sits on her bed, weaving a spell using the knots Goody Alsop taught her in the 16th century, with her grimoire and a pregnancy book beside her. After a minute she stops to take a break, then heads downstairs, where she runs into Gallowglass (Steven Cree). He watches her with affection as she takes a cup of tea from Fernando (Olivier Huband) and greets Phoebe (Adelle Leonce) and Sarah (Alex Kingston). The two women have been sifting through the hundreds of potential TJ Westons who might own the third page from the Book of Life and are getting frustrated.

Diana wonders if the TJ with the page doesn’t want to be found, so she’s been creating a locator spell. Sarah is intrigued by Diana’s idea, but realizes they’ll need a coven, since it takes several witches to work that type of spell. Phoebe, Gallowglass and Fernando worry that working with a coven will alert Peter Knox (Owen Teale) to their activities, but Diana has come too far to let Peter scare her off.

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A Discovery of Witches Season 3 Episode 2 Recap: In Which Diana and Matthew Have Unexpected Family Reunions

~ Metacrone ~ 1 Comment

In episode 5, Matthew and Diana continue to work with Chris and Miriam to analyze creature DNA. Father Hubbard returns Jack to them, with mixed results. After Benjamin reappears, Matthew agrees to form a scion.

Recap

The episode begins with modern day Father Andrew Hubbard (Paul Rhys) kneeling in his church while doing a little light devotional reading. Hubbard recognizes Benjamin Fuchs’ (Jacob Ifan) footsteps as he approaches from behind. He says he told Benjamin never to darken his door again. Benjamin won’t leave until he gets what he came for (not “who,” though he’s referring to a vampire). Andrew says he hasn’t seen the person in question in months. Benjamin is sure he’ll show up sooner or later and orders Andrew to inform him when that happens. As Benjamin walks away, Andrew whispers, “Why can’t you just leave him alone, Benjamin?” Since Benjamin is a vampire, he hears the whisper, but ignores it.

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A Discovery of Witches Season 3 Episode 1 Recap: In Which Diana and Matthew Return to the Present

~ Metacrone ~ 1 Comment

Fellow creatures, it’s time to travel back to 21st century France and Britain for the 3rd and final season of A Discovery of Witches. After their sojourn in 16th century Europe, Diana and Matthew timewalk straight into Sept-Tours and find themselves in the middle of several crises- as usual. Before long, Matthew’s brother, Baldwin, arrives to stir the pot further.

Season 2 Summary

At the end of season 2, Matthew and Diana had spent almost a year in Elizabethan London, with a side trip to Prague in search of the Book of Life. While there, they spent time with Matthew’s vampire nephew, Gallowglass, and fostered an orphaned human boy, Jack. Before they left, Diana secretly asked the vampire-priest who ruled the creatures of London, Father Hubbard, to watch over Jack for her. On their way to Prague, they stopped at Sept-Tours and stayed with Matthew’s vampire stepfather, Philippe, who sanctioned their mating and marriage, then adopted Diana as his blood-sworn daughter using a vampire blood vow.

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Farewell, Anne Rice: Interview with the Vampire, the Monster Within and Surviving Emotional Apocalypses

~ Metacrone

Plus, a Revisit to My Previous Post “A Brief, Non-Exhaustive Tour Through My Favorite Romantic Vampire Media“

Rest in peace, Anne Rice, 1941-2021.

As I note below in my vampire romance essay, my love of vampires didn’t start with Anne Rice. But my lifelong love affair with romantic vampires was brought into full bloom by her first book, Interview with the Vampire. I read Interview with the Vampire as soon as it came out in paperback when I was a teenager. I haven’t read all of her books, but I’ve read most of them, including some from each of the genres she wrote in. The vampires will always be my favorites, but I also love her witches, mummies, Servant of the Bones and Exit to Eden.

Perhaps due to the amount of suffering and loss she went through in her own life, Ms Rice has a way of expressing the emotional imperatives of her stories that are rivaled only by apocalypse and war stories. Her monsters, whether human or supernatural, are sympathetic because she knows that, no matter what our lives look like to others in the moment, many of us live our internal lives in an emotional apocalypse which requires the strengths and weaknesses of a monster to survive.

We are put through the emotional wringer in Rice’s introduction to her vampires – there is no mistaking what is most important to them, and it’s not blood. These vampires have deeply passionate feelings about everything, especially each other. The beauty and intensity of a vampire romance (or any monster romance) lies in admitting that we are the monster and can also love the monster in another, that opposite extremes exist in us at the same time and we can love, or at least accept, both ends of that spectrum.

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A Discovery of Witches Season 1 Episode 6 Recap: In Which Diana Is Kidnapped

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Disc of Witches S1Ep6 Diana & Parents

In episode 6, the de Clermonts search for Diana after she is kidnapped by Satu and Gerbert. Satu attempts to torture Diana’s secrets out of her.

Recap

After abducting her from Sept-Tours while she was on a morning run, Satu flies Diana to an abandoned castle owned by Gerbert. The vampire waits for them there with Meridiana in her box.

When they arrive at the castle, Satu drops Diana into a courtyard and joins her there. Diana tries to escape, but is met by Gerbert, who is delighted to have seen a flying witch for the first time in many years. He examines Diana, noting that her scent is mingled with Matthew’s. He wonders if Matthew is attracted to Diana for herself, as well as for the Book of Life. “Women, after all, are his weakness.”

And apparently everyone knows it. But then Gerbert knows Matthew so well that he successfully created a vampire lover tailored exactly to Matthew’s tastes. Diana isn’t aware of Juliette yet.

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A Discovery of Witches Season 1 Episode 5 Recap: In Which Diana and Matthew Break the Covenant

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Matthew and Diana are separated for most of episode 5, with him back in Oxford investigating the break in at his lab while Diana stays at Sept-Tours with Ysabeau and Marthe. Ysabeau takes the opportunity to test Diana by informing her about the realities of vampires and of Matthew’s romantic past. Matthew informs Gillian that it’s not a good idea to mess with vampires without backup. The various factions within the Congregation continue to huff and puff about the Covenant and the Book of Life.

Recap

Diana soaks in a luxuriously deep tub, recovering from her spontaneous witch water spell, while Ysabeau and Marthe look on to make sure she doesn’t flood the bathroom. Marthe brings her a towel and comments that the ability to produce witch water is a rare power these days. Diana says that she can’t control the elemental magic that she’s producing, like witch water and witch wind. Marthe thinks she just needs time, but Diana wants to visit her aunts to see if they can help her.

Ysabeau insists that she made a promise to Matthew, so Diana isn’t allowed to leave yet. Right now, they’re going hunting.

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