What actually happens
A brothel owner meets the wrong Frenchman
In 2022 Dubai, Louis begins telling journalist Daniel Molloy his life story. In 1910, Louis runs a successful brothel in New Orleans and is pulled between his disapproving younger brother Paul, the limits placed on him as a Black man, and his attraction to Lestat, a rakish Frenchman. After Louis and Lestat sleep together, Louis swears off him. Paul then dies after jumping from a roof, and Louis, hearing his mother blame him, confesses his sins in a church. Lestat shows up and slaughters the priests, then makes Louis a vampire. Lestat teaches him to hunt, but Louis cannot match his casual cruelty. Six years later they own a saloon renamed Azalea Hall. Louis suggests they feed only on bad people and ends up feeding on animals. When Alderman Fenwick tries to push Black owners out of Storyville, Louis murders him and hangs the body in public. White citizens answer with fire, and Louis rushes into a burning boarding house after hearing a girl's thoughts.
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Claudia joins the family business
The girl in the fire is Claudia, who is badly burned, and Louis persuades Lestat to turn her. She is impulsive and eats more than either of them. She falls for a man named Charlie and accidentally kills him, and Lestat makes her watch his body burn. She goes on a secret killing spree, and a storm washes the bodies up. Claudia leaves, returns after seven years of studying vampires, and wants to take Louis away, so Lestat attacks Louis and beats him badly. Lestat disappears in shame, then spends six years trying to win Louis back. He tells how the vampire Magnus kidnapped him and turned him, but nothing changes. Claudia concludes that she and Louis must kill Lestat, and Louis agrees. At a Mardi Gras ball she poisons the guests Lestat feeds on, Louis cuts his throat, and they leave him in a trunk. Louis later tells Daniel that Rashid is actually Armand, the love of his life.
Paris has a vampire theater company
In the second season Louis and Claudia reach Europe at the end of World War II. In Romania a vampire named Daciana ends her life in a fire. In Paris they meet the Théâtre des Vampires, a coven led by Armand, with a portrait of the co-founder, Lestat, on the wall. Santiago, a coven member, is Claudia's idol. Armand and Louis grow close and kiss, and Claudia is hazed and cast as a baby for the next fifty years. She befriends a human dressmaker, Madeleine, and Santiago starts plotting a mutiny. Back in the present, Daniel is given files by a Talamasca agent, Raglan James. He and Louis rebuild the first interview, in San Francisco in 1973. Louis tried to end his life in the sun that night and Armand saved him. Armand then manipulated what both men remember.
A trial held as a matinee
Armand refuses to turn Madeleine, so Louis does it, and then Armand lets the coven ambush the three of them. This is the scene people dread most, so here is what happens. They are put on trial before a human audience in a theater, with Santiago as ringmaster, Claudia's diary read aloud, and Lestat, who turns out to be alive, as the witness. The coven cripples their feet. Claudia and Madeleine are sentenced to death, and Louis is shoved into a coffin full of gravel and locked in a crypt. A shaft of sunlight then executes Claudia and Madeleine. Armand frees Louis, who burns the theater and kills most of the coven, though one escapes. Louis chooses Armand over Lestat. In the present, Daniel reveals that Armand directed the trial and that Lestat actually saved Louis. Louis leaves Armand, goes to New Orleans and makes peace with Lestat. Daniel becomes a vampire and publishes the interview as a book.
Lestat starts a rock band
In the third season it is 2025, and Lestat tours with a band while Daniel films a documentary. A local coven attacks him, and the band learns he is a real vampire. Lestat's mother, Gabriella, is also his fledgling, and she rejoins him. Louis kills Bruce, the vampire who hurt Claudia, along with Bruce's whole coven, and meets a waitress named Regina who looks like Claudia. Lestat is shot by a man trying to prove vampires exist, and Armand drives the bandmate Larry to suicide. Louis and Lestat then meet the witch Merrick Mayfair, who summons Claudia's spirit. She is full of rage at Louis and tells them to burn her belongings. As they sit on a bench, Armand and Daniel cut off both their heads.
The ending, explained
In the final episode, Daniel takes Lestat's head to a bowling alley, where Lestat will slowly die without his body. Lestat's subconscious fills with Magnus, Gabriella and his other fledglings, who make him face his failures until he reaches self-acceptance. Armand holds Louis's severed head and demands that he admit fault for the end of their relationship, and he reveals that he hired Regina to manipulate Louis. Louis apologizes for not being able to love Armand truly, and Armand relents and restores Louis's head to his body. Raglan takes Lestat's head back from Daniel and says the Talamasca want the Great Conversion to happen as population control. Lestat is restored and reunited with Louis, and he confronts his mother and refuses to play the concert. A flash forward shows Lestat looking over a ruined city, thinking about his part in Akasha's rise and the mass death that followed.
The post-credits ruling
There is no post-credits scene in the episodes. You can leave when the credits start.
✓ Spoiled safelyDog status: not fine, though viewers disagree on whether a dog dies.
Questions people ask at 1am
Is Interview with the Vampire scary?
Somewhat. Interview with the Vampire is a 4 out of 10: a gothic melodrama with graphic vampire violence, few jump scares, and a lingering sadness about one character.
How does Interview with the Vampire end?
Armand restores Louis's head to his body and Lestat is restored too, so both survive. Lestat refuses to perform the concert, and a flash forward shows him over a ruined city after a mass death.
Does the dog die in Interview with the Vampire?
Reportedly yes, though viewers disagree. One dog is said to die in Interview with the Vampire: Lestat's dog is killed by wolves off screen in the third season. A cat also dies when Louis feeds on it in a dark scene, where the sound is the upsetting part.
Is there a post-credits scene in Interview with the Vampire?
No. Interview with the Vampire has no post-credits scene in its episodes, so you can leave when the credits start.
Who is Claudia in Interview with the Vampire?
Claudia is a girl whom Louis rescues from a burning boarding house and whom Lestat turns into a vampire. In Interview with the Vampire she grows frustrated at being an adult in a teenager's body, helps plan Lestat's poisoning, and is executed in Paris.
