Interview With the Vampire Season 2 Episode 8 Recap: ‘And That’s The End of it, There’s Nothing Else’
After the heart-wrenching finale of Episode 7 of Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire, I Could Not Prevent It, we were left trying to pick up the pieces of our broken hearts. It was a very emotionally draining episode, and in all honesty, we’re still recovering from it. The intensity of it all set the bar incredibly high for this final episode, but in true Interview With the Vampire style, And That’s The End of It, There’s Nothing Else, managed to surpass all our expectations.
And this comes as no surprise, this show has been consistently delivering on its promise of emotional depth and compelling storytelling, and Episode 8 (or 15th according to the show’s timeline), didn’t miss the mark. We’re just going to say it, And That’s The End of It, There’s Nothing Else, is perhaps one of the best hours of television we’ve seen in a long, long time. The episode is a masterclass in narrative tension and character development, providing a fitting conclusion to a season that has kept us on the edge of our seats.
In this episode, Louis’ (Jacob Anderson) interview with Daniel (Eric Bogosian) finally comes to an end, and Daniel, being his clever and observant self, drops a major bomb that shatters the very foundation of Louis and Armand’s (Assad Zaman) long-time partnership. The way the show handles this climax is nothing short of brilliant, weaving together past and present storylines with finesse and emotional resonance. The tension between the characters reaches a boiling point, and we’re given a front-row seat to the bitter fallout.
It’s truly an excellent episode from beginning to end, showcasing not just Louis’ tumultuous life in all its glory, but also the broader themes of love, betrayal, and redemption that have been central to the series. The performances are stellar, the writing sharp, and the direction impeccable. So we’ll try our best to do And That’s The End of It, There’s Nothing Else some justice with our recap.
Let’s dive into the details and relive this unforgettable season finale together!
PSA: If you haven’t caught up on the final episode of the second season of Anne Rice’s Interview With The Vampire titled And That’s The End of It, There’s Nothing Else, you might want to hit pause on this recap and come back once you’re ready. From this point forward there will be a lot of spoilers for the episode. You’ve been warned, so tread carefully.
In the Past and Present: And That’s The End of It?
And That’s The End of It, There’s Nothing Else opens with Louis narrating what it was like to be inside the coffin in which the Paris coven had banished him to die from starvation. He knew his would be a quiet death, and he was okay with it, he had no reason to live. He knew Claudia (Delainey Hayles) was dead; he could feel it. He no longer could feel parts of his body due to the starvation and the position in which the coven had put him in, but he could feel his heart pumping slower every night.
Louis shares with Daniel how his broken arm and slashed ankles healed in the coffin. In fact, the flesh in his ankles circled around the insulating rocks of his deathbed, so he still has some of those in his body in the present time. Louis explains that if someone took an X-ray of his ankles, they’d look like little cancers. Armand points out that Louis could have removed them at any time but hasn’t. Daniel suggests that maybe Louis has, and he has been lying to Armand all these years for effect.
Anyway, Daniel, always direct, asks Armand what the consequences of him saving Louis were. Armand says it led to demotion and ridicule. Santiago (Ben Daniels) suspected that Armand had rigged the audience to spare Louis’ life, so he made certain Armand would not forget his insubordination. In a flashback, we see Armand being reduced to a backstage member of the coven, taking care of the victims in the theater’s wet room before the show, and getting rid of them after.
As all this happens, Louis’ screams of agony can be heard from inside the coffin. Louis from the present narrates the nightmare he was going through. He recounts all the scenarios he played in his mind that could have changed the course of his life and made him stronger to resist Lestat (Sam Reid). But in every scenario, he ended up kissing the man on the altar, killing him but not burning his body, and getting dragged off the stage to be buried alive. In all those scenarios, Claudia dies.
Louis shares how he tried to move inside his prison but couldn’t. Armand explains that when a vampire starts screaming from starvation, they don’t have much time left. Louis confesses he had no idea he had been screaming; he had no energy to scream. He thinks that if he had had the energy, he would have used it to ignite the clothes on his body and speed up the process of dying—he had no reason to keep living.
As we flashback to the past, Armand narrates that as Louis withered away, life in the theater returned to normal—the old plays made a comeback, as did the pack hunts, all under Santiago’s leadership. Santiago was mad that Armand had ruined his play by not letting him kill Louis on stage, but found a way to hurt him with what he had done to the man he loved. Armand shares how he played that hurt. His subjugation cemented Santiago’s power amongst the coven.
Daniel asks Armand how he managed to free Louis. Armand says he placed a sacrifice in an old vault coffin and switched that coffin for Louis’. Being the defeated vampire, no one in the coven was watching him closely. In the present, Daniel isn’t buying Armand’s story. Louis wonders if anyone ever asked Lazarus if he wanted to be woken, and Daniel says that he remembers no one cares about Lazarus’ point of view.
In the flashback, we see Louis waking up in the sewers that run below the theater, drinking some of the blood Armand poured into the coffin so Louis could survive. In the present Louis admits that at first, he didn’t see the point; Claudia was dead, and he felt dead too. But his rage and madness took over him.
Louis, driven by his thirst for revenge, finds refuge in a forgotten crypt and immediately starts working on a plan for retribution. Completely deranged, he begins to draw the floorplans of the theater and loads himself with gasoline to burn everything in his path.
As he meticulously plans, he has made-up conversations with some of his victims, and through these conversations, he manages to see things he had overlooked that could potentially ruin his plan. Telepathically, Armand tries to warn Louis about leaving Paris before the coven notices he escaped. But Louis ignores him.
As Louis continues with the preparations for his attack, Armand keeps begging him telepathically to listen to him, to let him explain the events because he thinks Louis would understand why Armand acted as he did. Armand tells him that he knows Louis will never forgive him and that he’s not seeking it, but Louis shuts him up and just asks if he saved him at the trial and pulled him out of the wall. When Armand admits he did, Louis tells him not to be in the theater tomorrow night at curfew.
In the present day, as Daniel continues the interview and asks Armand if he knew that Louis was going to burn down the theater, we see that the journalist is speaking through text messages with Raglan James (Justin Kirk) from the Talamasca, asking him for something. Armand, unaware of what Daniel is doing, says that he didn’t know but could feel the fatalism in Louis’s thoughts.
Daniel tells Louis that he warned Armand, despite the fact that Armand had already betrayed him once, and asks why he risked it. As Louis and Armand are distracted by this question, Daniel strikes a deal with Raglan who apparently is going to give him something that the organization has and that Daniel wants to see.
Daniel points out to Louis that telling Armand could have cost him his life, but Louis says there were 13 vampires against him; he was going to die either way. Daniel redirects the question to Armand, asking if he had no feelings for his coven of hundreds of years. Armand says he had complicated feelings but still, didn’t warn any of them. Daniel points out it was 13 to one, that maybe Armand was hedging his bets. Armand says he had no clue of Louis’ plan, and Louis explains that he shut his mind off to him. Daniel asks Louis then what was the plan.
Louis explains that the plan was to die and take as many vampires with him as he could. In a flashback, we see Louis entering the theater as all the vampires are inside their coffins. He’s pouring gasoline all around the venue, making sure that when he ignites it, it all goes up in flames. Through voiceover, Louis explains that when a vampire gets inside their coffin, all the senses collapse into submission. He could have been a marching band and none of them would have noticed him—until the sun came out, the advantage was his.
In the flashback, Louis sees Claudia’s belongings, her diaries and her yellow dress, and picks them up before setting the place on fire. The moment the fire starts, it’s pandemonium. We see vampires running for their lives, but Louis planned ahead. When one vampire tries to kill him, he slashes his head off.
According to Louis’s recollection of the events, he killed six vampires by fire, two by blade, and another one with the combination of the two inside the theater. Nine in total. With no sign of Armand or Lestat, that meant four vampires had escaped: two out the front, two through the sewers. But again, Louis planned ahead.
Celeste (Suzanne Andrade) and Estelle (Sara Stockbridge) escape using their motorbikes, but Louis had hijacked them. So as they’re riding through the streets of Paris, they, too, blow up in flames. When the two vampires die, Santiago, who escaped using the sewers, screams in frustration.
Telepathically, Louis greets him, using Santiago’s real name: Francis. Santiago is furious. He asks Louis if Armand is with him, but Louis says he and Armand broke up because Armand killed Claudia and his fledging. Santiago tells him not to give Armand too much credit for their deaths, that it was he who planned it all.
Louis, still telepathically, tells Santiago to come to him. Santiago, in his rage, asks Louis if Armand told him what they did with Claudia’s ashes. The bastard then shares that they used them as eyeshadow for the following month of performances, put them in the pepper shaker for the popcorn, and even some nights, he used them to pleasure himself.
Louis doesn’t fall to the provocation and keeps urging Francis to come to him. Santiago loses it and tells him to call him Santiago, but Louis just mocks him. He tells him he just took that name from a Spaniard to forget what he was, to compensate for what God denied him—the tiny thing between his legs. Louis continues to humiliate Santiago, saying that his name change was probably also due to the weak applause Francis received when he finally took the stage in London.
As we watch this brutal verbal exchange, both Louis and Santiago are heading towards the same place, a sewer exit in some alley. However, when Santiago emerges, Louis doesn’t appear to be there. But he is.
In a surprise attack, Louis comes out of the shadows and decapitates Santiago with a single blow. In the present, Louis appears pensive after confessing what he did all while Rashid (Bally Gill) arrives to bring Daniel a pre-dinner martini and the “newspaper” he requested in the morning. Aka whatever he asked the guy from Talamasca.
Louis continues sharing with Daniel that Santiago’s failure to protect his coven filled him with unworthiness and made him an easy target. Louis confesses that after Santiago’s death, all his rage and madness exited his body. In the past, we see Louis and Armand at Louis’ Paris apartment, having a long-overdue conversation. They’re seated on extreme sides of the room, separated by a single line of morning light seeping through the window.
Louis asks Armand when he started lying to him. Armand confesses that it was since the night of Madeleine’s transformation. Armand shares that after they parted ways that night, he went back to the theater to make sure Louis could do his business without being disturbed. But the whole coven was waiting for him on stage and told him they had done a rewrite and showed him the script.
Armand confesses that when they gave him that choice, Louis or the coven, he thought, it’s my coven of 200 years or him, and since he couldn’t count on Louis’ love lasting as long, he picked the coven. Louis asks Armand if he rehearsed the play with Lestat. Armand says that the coven did, he stayed in his coffin when he was in the theater.
Louis then tells Armand that when he stayed at his apartment if he didn’t think about telling him what the coven was going to do, making a different plan with him. Armand just says he’s going to spend his life making it up to Louis. Louis says Armand will never be able to make it up to him and then asks if Lestat is still in Paris. Armand warns him that he will never be able to kill him, but Louis says that wasn’t the question. Armand confirms that Lestat is still in Paris.
Turns out that Lestat is in Magnus’ old lair, reciting the words his maker once told him during his transformation. When Louis and Armand arrive, Lestat sarcastically asks Louis if he enjoyed destroying everything in his path, though he notes Armand’s still there. Louis retorts that Lestat looks small, while Armand explains that Lestat is “home” and shares with Louis that the place used to be Magnus’ lair.
Lestat senses the tension between Louis and Armand and calls it out, but Louis ignores him, asking instead if this is where Magnus kept Lestat. Lestat clarifies that the place was for the disappointments, those before him. He’s just there because he’s come to reflect on his origins and why he does what he does.
Louis interrupts, accusing Lestat of burning his daughter alive and crossing an ocean to rehearse a play that would do the same. Lestat begins to speak of the great laws, but Louis stops him again, demanding to know what laws Lestat has ever followed. Louis conjures fire in his hand and tells Lestat that he’s going to kill him.
Lestat mentions he has the blood of Magnus in him so he can’t die, but Armand points out that Magnus burned. Lestat then reveals that he has the blood of Akasha in him too, which shocks Armand but leaves Louis clueless. Lestat explains that killing him is impossible unless he is willing to die, which he is not.
Louis counters, saying his blood is Lestat’s blood, but Lestat sardonically tells him he is not his equal. Louis reconsiders, telling Lestat that his death will be the fact that Louis is going to be with Armand. He declares he’s going to spend the rest of his life with the ancient vampire, leaving Lestat to find pale imitations of him. Lestat laughs, saying, “Enjoy him, let’s see how long it holds.”
In the present, Daniel finds Lestat’s comment odd and asks Louis what he thinks it meant. Louis explains that Lestat doubted they would make it, but Louis asserts they’ve been together for 77 years, smiling at Armand. After that, Louis shares that they left Lestat there and wandered Paris in silence before deciding to visit Egypt. Armand reminisces about their travels from port to port, settling in New York and San Francisco, then Dubai. And with that Louis finishes the interview, stating that this is the end of his story.
As silence falls, Daniel produces a manila envelope from the newspaper Rashid gave him, and starts reading its contents. Meanwhile, Armand tells Louis that Lestat loved him, acknowledging the pain the French vampire must have felt seeing them leave together. Daniel interrupts them, requesting follow-up questions, noting inconsistencies in Louis’s story.
He points out that during one of his sessions, Louis shared that Lestat told him telepathically that he was scaring the salesman, but Lestat’s telepathic communication shouldn’t have been possible after transformation. Louis suggests maybe Lestat whispered it to him. Daniel then asks about the vampires who escaped the theater, learning that it was Sam who survived and is now a DJ.
Daniel scrutinizes Louis’ account, noting a discrepancy where the same vampire, Sam, appears to be in two places at once during the trial in Paris: with Armand in the box and backstage with Louis. Armand insists Sam was with him the whole time, while Louis admits he might have been mistaken. Louis instructs Rashid to start dinner preparations, and Armand invites Daniel to join them. Daniel insists on one more question about an incident in New Orleans, where Lestat supposedly used his mind to make soldiers leave their townhouse. When asked how many, Louis estimates that there were about 30 soldiers.
Daniel then suggests that more than one person might have saved Louis during the trial in Paris, causing Louis to hesitate about the veracity of what he was told happened. Armand tries to brush it off, but Daniel continues, asserting that Lestat loved Louis and would have tried to save him just as much as Armand did. Armand argues that Lestat would have made his involvement known, trying to steer the conversation to the dining room.
Daniel then reveals the content inside the manila envelope: the original script of the trial play. Armand demands to know how Daniel obtained it. But Daniel just hands the script to Louis, who reads it in disbelief. Flashbacks show Armand directing the play with Lestat reluctantly participating, revealing the true events of the trial. It was Lestat, not Armand, who altered Louis’s sentence to banishment.
Daniel confronts Armand about his lies, accusing him of taking credit for saving Louis. Armand tries to dismiss the script as a forgery, but Daniel insists it came from Talamasca, provided by the vampire Sam. Daniel declares that Louis’s relationship with Armand is based on a seismic lie, leaving Louis stunned.
The tension between Louis and Armand escalates as Louis abruptly leaves the room, with Armand quickly following, desperately trying to justify his actions and reminding Louis of his forgiveness. Meanwhile, Daniel receives a message from Raglan urging him to leave immediately. As he begins to gather his belongings, a sudden explosion shakes the building, sending fragments of the wall and ceiling crashing down.
Daniel rushes to investigate what happened, finding Armand on the floor and the wall cracked from where Louis slammed him against it. Louis calls out for Rashid, but Daniel informs him that Rashid likely left after delivering the newspaper. Louis warns Armand not to touch Daniel, threatening to kill him if he does.
He then tells Daniel to gather his things from his room, promising to arrange a car and plane to take him home and to wire ten million dollars to his account. After a firm handshake, Louis thanks Daniel for the interview and sets the journalist’s computer on fire before leaving.
Louis arrives in New Orleans just as a hurricane is approaching. He seems in good spirits, chatting with a lively taxi driver, and checks into a hotel. He then joins a tour group visiting his old house, now a twisted tourist attraction with inaccurate stories about its inhabitants.
Amused, Louis notices another vampire catching rats nearby and follows him to a dilapidated building. Inside, a disheveled Lestat is playing a makeshift piano. The rat-catching vampire is surprised to learn that the man currently with them in the house is Louis, the Louis, and reluctantly leaves when Lestat sets his jacket on fire.
Lestat and Louis finally reunite after seven decades apart. Lestat, initially nonchalant, asks if Louis is just passing through, but Louis reveals he came specifically to see him. Lestat, who is busy preparing for a tour to replace a retired pianist, is taken aback. Louis asks if Lestat saved his life in Paris. Lestat admits he handed him over to Armand, questioning if that constitutes saving him. When Louis asks why he never mentioned it, Lestat explains he doesn’t like highlighting his virtues and expected Louis to figure it out eventually.
As they talk, Louis realizes that Lestat has been living in New Orleans all this time. Louis, tearfully, confesses that he didn’t understand that being a vampire was a gift and that he had been selfish, trying to make Lestat suffer because he was suffering. Lestat, also emotional, tries to diminish Louis’ guilt by mentioning their mutual wrongs, but Louis interrupts, thanking Lestat for the gift he gave him and for the future he now sees ahead of him.
In tears, Lestat recalls the day Armand called him to share what Louis had done to himself, September 8, 1973, at exactly 11:07 New Orleans time. And he asks Louis if he really hurt himself. Also in tears, Louis admits he was in a dark place, thinking about Paris. Lestat, completely heartbroken, confesses that he can’t stop thinking about Claudia.
Louis reassures Lestat that Claudia’s death is not his fault but Louis’, as he was the one who brought her home and forced Lestat to transform her. Lestat shares how Claudia looked at him like a child to her father at the end, but that he never acted as one. Louis embraces him, and the two finally reconnect. The hurricane is raging outside, but at that moment, they are the only ones who exist—Louis and Lestat, Lestat and Louis together again.
Later, we see Daniel in a TV interview about his bestselling book. Despite its success, many dismiss it as fiction rather than what it is a true story. Daniel, now more confident and stylish, faces a skeptical interviewer who accuses him of ruining his career for cheap fiction. Frustrated, Daniel insists the book is true, that he did interview a vampire, but the news anchor remains dismissive. Daniel loses his temper, storming out of the live interview with a curse.
As night falls in Atlanta (where Daniel is), we hear other vampires criticizing the book and blaming Louis for being so candid. Louis listens to the murmurs and hears Daniel’s voice calling to him, complaining about his royalty checks bouncing back. Louis suggests sending them to Daniel’s editors at the Talamasca.
Daniel, who turns out is now a vampire, expresses his frustration that many parts of his book were edited out and vows no editors for the next book. Louis sternly says there won’t be another book, regretting the first one already. Daniel inquires about Armand, his maker, but Louis shares that he hasn’t heard from him.
Louis apologizes for leaving Daniel alone with Armand, acknowledging his former partner’s spiteful decision. Daniel suggests making it up to him with a follow-up book, but Louis asks what he truly wants. Daniel admits he’s worried about Louis, aware of the other vampires’ hostility. Louis reassures him he’s fine. Daniel urges Louis to leave Dubai, but Louis remains steadfast.
In the final scene of the season, Louis, surrounded by new decor in his home, listens to all the vampires plotting against him. He moves to where his library used to be and, sitting down, addresses them as calmly and lethally as possible. He starts by telling them his name and location, and warns all of them that he owns the night, daring them to come after him if they dare.
As we said at the beginning of this recap, And That’s The End of It, There’s Nothing Else, is one of the best hours of television we’ve seen in a long time. From the first second to the last, it kept us glued to the screen, screaming, gasping, cursing, and crying. Seriously, copious amounts of tears were shed. Few shows manage to evoke such emotions in a single episode, but Interview with the Vampire did it with this finale.
So kudos to the entire team of Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire for another stellar season. We truly can’t wait to see what they have in store for us in Season 3.
The eighth episode of the second season of Anne Rice’s Interview With The Vampire “And That’s The End of It, There’s Nothing Else” is available to stream exclusively on AMC+. Follow us on X and Instagram for all queer stuff!
Featured Image: Courtesy of AMC. Photo Credit: Larry Horricks.
