Devil's Minion

Season 1

What's sort of fascinating to me is that, even in season one when Armand is still pretending to be Rashid, we get some slightly suggestive bits of content. Daniel is lead to believe this twenty-something-year-old guy is just Louis servant, his mind has been pretty much wiped of any memories of Armand and still... something is off. He gets a brief glimpse of seeing Armand in the bar where he met Louis and that's where we first start to see that things might not be as simple as they first appeared to be.

Don't Be Afraid, Just Start the Tape

This is the episode where I think things really clicked for me. While definitely terrifying, the

The last scene between them is definitely the most fascinating. It's hauntingly tender and romantic. The way Armand holds Daniel is so gentle and it seems that in these final moments he really does want to give him a peaceful death. No more kicking and screaming, Armand decides to kill him but not violently despite the way he's been treating him up to that point. This is the only time we see Armand feed on a human on screen and I think that's intentional as well. Daniel has always been special to him, the exception time and time again.

And That's The End of It. There's Nothing Else

The finale is absolutely gut wrenching, what can I say. Daniel gets turned by Armand, something that gets described by Louis as being done "out of spite" but I don't think I'm buying that. Armand has never made another vampire, he says the idea repulses him. I don't think Armand would give up on his philosophy that easily. In my opinion it's much more likely that after definitely losing Louis he can't bear the idea of being alone and he clings to the thing that's left. We've seen that pattern before - he was unhappy leading the Children of Darkness coven and so he let Lestat break it apart. This gets him to have Lestat, later that same thing happens with Louis and Theatre des Vampires. Would it be so crazy to believe that in some way Armand wanted Daniel to find the truth? He could've read Daniel's thoughts a thousand times, prevented the truth coming out in some way... but he doesn't. Because as he himself says: "I was in love."

I do think that after Daniel got turned Armand fled because again this was something he never wanted to do. I would love to see how this all actually went down but I guess I'll have to wait until the next season for that.

"Which could mean nothing"

There are so many of these moments, good lord. I love the part where real Rashid makes Daniel a martini and of course he says that Armand's were better. Even if this is an obvious jab, of course Armand would know exactly how much vermouth Daniel likes in his martinis.

Then there's the whole Alice debacle. It's totally normal to start remembering your oddly erotic hostage situation with a certain vampire when your ex wife gets brought up. The fact that Louis even says that it felt somehow more free to hold her hand in Paris than it did in America, that Alice "couldn't trust him". There are so many hints that either Alice wasn't real in the first place and Armand just fabricated memories in Daniel's head or that Alice was real but the reason she couldn't trust Daniel was because he was seeing Armand at the time.

Book

Here's where I have the most to say because of course the book has the most explicit stuff (so far.) I listened to an audiobook of the chapter (psst you can find it here for free & in a better quality than on youtube) and there are just too many good parts to fit them all here.