Interview with the Vampire (Season 1), Episode 5 Recap & Ending Explained: Episode 5 of Interview with the Vampire features an explosive ending that can potentially carve a new direction for the story. Until now, the love affair between Louis and Lestat went at its own pace. The exploration of their lives together was the contrast between a vampire’s and human’s instincts. The conflicting nature caught them both at an impasse. But Claudia’s introduction completely changed the tone. It brought an exciting disturbance in the relationship that Lestat detested and Loui embraced for the sake of old memories. Read our recap and ending explainer of episode 5 of AMC’s Interview with the Vampire season 1 below.
Interview With the Vampire (Season 1), Episode 5 “A Vile Hunger for Your Hammering Heart” Recap
For the fledgling vampire, the ending of episode 4 was a difficult thing to process. It was perhaps the first realization for her that she is something else now. Her human frailties have been taken away but along with it, her ability to form human connections is gone too. Claudia is still devastated by what she inadvertently did to Charlie. For a moment, her teenage fantasy was coming true as she had found a young love. But it all came crashing down for her with the end result. A surprise awaits her “dad”, Lou, who mistook her nightly sojourns out in the town killing mercilessly and relentlessly for the heartbreak blues. Claudia starts spending less and less time with her procreator and adopted father. She is doing the exact opposite of what she was taught.
She has gone rogue in some senses. Lestat is a tough cookie and we all know he does not take anyone’s nonsense. He is harsh on Claudia but is able to get the information he wanted about the location of the bodies. Her killing spree has a damning impact on the vampire community at large. Lestat learns that Claudia has buried the bodies without taking the appropriate care and doing it recklessly. The worst fear for Lou and Lestat was that some calamity in the form of heavy rains or floods would expose their identities and put them in trouble.
Come the next few days, their fears are realized, when the rains hit the town, and as many as the bodies of six people Claudia devoured start surfacing. This attracts the attention of the authorities and the police start looking into the matter. They were also mindful of the missing policeman from the last episode and that plays a part as well in their investigation. The Vampire home was only one of the places that they searched and broke into. But they keep well after themselves and the police are unable to find any evidence that links either of the three to the murders or anything even remotely to do with it.
This obviously bothers Lestat, who is again the harsher on Claudia. She needs a telling off and he does exactly that. The two have an ugly exchange of words, as Lou stands by and wonders how he will ever be able to reconcile the emerging differences. After the heated fight, Claudia leaves the house indefinitely despite Lou’s best attempts to stop her and convince her to stay. This is exactly what Lou was referring to as “the darkest era” in their lives at the end of episode 4. He once again feels the pain of a father whose daughter has deserted him. His life once again becomes empty. We have a flash-forward, almost seven years, into the future where we see the changing dynamics of their relationships. It has been this long since Claudia left a gaping hole in Lou’s life and he hasn’t been able to cope.
He looks terrible and has slowly lost his appetite for vampire life. The renewed sense of purpose after Claduai entered his life is gone and he is drifting deliriously into oblivion. Through her own experiences, Claudia met Bruce, a similarly suffering vampire. But he is nothing like the vampires she had met before in her life. Bruce is a vicious creature of the night, hunting without remorse, and certainly comes across like the vampire villains we have all loathed in vampire movies. In episode 4 we saw how Lou taught Claudia to use her psychic abilities and connect with her thoughts without even being near her. He has been trying to do the same for all this time but has been unable to establish any connection that would help him seek her out.
Claudia has blocked him like young ones do other young ones on social media to prevent them from “hearing their thoughts”. A big revelation that is about to come next will certainly be a jolt for fans of the series. Claudia did unblock him at times and was able to hear his thoughts. One time, she followed Lou to his mother’s house. Now, of course, it is Grace’s, as Lou had signed it off in her name in the last episode. Grace, who now has no use for Lou, abandons him and refuses to meet him. All female presence has deserted him at this point in his life and Claudia, who was watching on from hiding, realizes this is her purpose. In any capacity, she must return to Lou’s life and ensure that the struggling vampire can have a semblance of the love and warmth he had from his sister and daughter before the met Claudia and before he lost them.
Now came the litmus test for Lou and Lestat’s bond. Claudia, post this realization, comes back and her appearance causes quite the ballyhoo in the household. She beseeched Lou to abandon his lover, Lestat, and journey on with her. She tries to convince him that they will be happier together and Lou can finally have his sister back in the form of Claudia. Lestat, who is holding a grudge, is incensed when he hears the words come out of Claudia’s mouth. He viciously attacks her and with all his might, tries to neutralize her. Lou intervenes and then these two old chaps begin fighting.
Claudia failed to stop the fight and witnessed Lestat flying off with Louis into the sky. There, Lestat asked Louis why he could never love him the way he loved Louis. Then Lestat left Louis in the middle of the air, following which Louis fell to the ground. However, Louis was not dead yet, but Claudia was furious with rage and wanted to kill Lestat at that moment.
Interview With the Vampire (Season 1), Episode 5 Ending, Explained:
What Is The Reason For Lou And Lestat’s Fight?
Of course, Claudia is the immediate reason the two vamps are fighting. But the answer to this question lies in a deeper understanding of Lestat’s background. Lestat was a very intelligent vampire. After meeting Louis, he became more human in the way he became reckless and prone to committing faults in his otherwise perfectly measured strides as a vampire. It is fair to call the change a “human” one that aroused in Lestat when he met Lou. He became more vulnerable and open to the rushing of feelings. Lou, however, could never reciprocate the passionate manner in which Lestat loved Lou. This has been a recurring motif in the series until now.
We all witnessed Lou’s attitude towards killing and the nature of being a vampire change. Initially, he was enchanted with his newfound superpowers but felt increasingly shut off and disconnected from his human core. The meaningless existence for him changed when he found Claudia and realized that he had lost his humanity when he became a vampire. She was perhaps the cause of his guilt-ridden reaction to starting riots in the city when he murdered the Elderman in episode 3. He saw Lestat as the emblem of being a vampire and how he stood for everything he came to detest.
Claudia came as a breath of fresh change for Lou and he was smitten with her presence. Lestat promised to remain with Lou as a faithful partner and he kept his promise until Lou meets Claudia once again after all these years. He was reminded of all that was wrong with his relationship with Lestat and the change he felt with Claudia. So, when Lestat sensed that Claudia was aggressively contacting Louis through their psychic abilities, he was furious. Lestat was obviously blocked off from Claudia’s communications with Lou. This happened in episode 4 as well when Lestat tried to guess that something was cooking between Lopu and Claudia.
He felt excluded, somehow, and didn’t feel he had the control he always focuses on. The ambiguity of the truth here is defiant and we can not say for sure what exactly happened. He acted like a person in love, who couldn’t share his “possession”. That got to him and he attacked Claudia. She was threatening in a way that everything could be taken from him just at a moment’s notice. So, it is two against one. The odds are decisively against Lestat unless he manages to whip up some old vampire magic and overpower Lou and Claudia.
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INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE (SEASON 1), EPISODE 4 SHOW LINKS – IMDB
CAST – JACOB ANDERSON, SAM REID, ERIC BOGOSIAN, CHRIS STACK, BAILEY BASS, KALYNE COLEMAN
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