‘Interview With the Vampire’ Season 2 Premiere Recap: That Creepy New Monster Explained

[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for Interview With the Vampire Season 2 Episode 1, “What Can the Damned Really Say to the Damned.”]

Interview With the Vampire Season 2 is worlds different from what we saw in New Orleans both figuratively and literally. Our vampire family is far from home in the long-awaited season premiere, which began with a four-year time jump that landed Louis (Jacob Anderson) and Claudia (Bailey Bass) in war-torn Europe during World War II.

Their “four years of grim wayfaring,” as Louis’ guilt-induced hallucination of Lestat (Sam Reid) said, were done in the hopes of finding more of their kind. Romania was the latest leg of their search, and it was in this bleak land that they finally found what they were looking for. Sadly for the desperately lonely duo, meeting the old world vampires didn’t go as well as they had hoped. They met two vampires unlike anything ever seen in the series, and they put the horror in gothic horror. But what were they?

One of the two vamps looked like a true monster. Claudia encountered it in the woods while Louis was relaxing with English journalist Morgan Ward (a book character whose plot was tweaked, played by The Gilded Age‘s Blake Ritson). Its skin was gray and decaying, it had thinning hair, and a terrifying screech. It didn’t speak, but it could hear Claudia speaking to it through telepathy. Her excitement to meet was met with defensiveness; it didn’t want Claudia taking its food (a Russian soldier that was part of the occupying forces in the area).

It took some convincing to get Louis to join her in the woods to find the creature again. Louis, exhausted by years of travel and the painful emotional distance between him and Claudia, had a hard time believing that she actually found a vampire after all this time coming up short. When they returned to the woods, they found not one vampire, but two. A more recognizable vampire, this time a woman, helped defend the decaying vampire. But Claudia being Lestat’s daughter, she viciously fought their attack by ripping out the creature’s eyes to get it off of Louis. Its screeches are nightmare fuel.

The woman vampire, whose name was later revealed to be Daciana (played by Diana Tofan), cried out as she killed the creature that was writhing in pain. Without its eyes, it couldn’t hunt, which would be no life for a vampire. Daciana revealed to Louis and Claudia the creature was a “child,” which is a fascinating development given what this kind of creepy (but still pretty cool) vampire is in Anne Rice‘s books.

The decaying vampire is called a revenant, a word that’s long been used to describe creatures that return from the dead in real-life folklore and other literature. Rice’s revenants are humans that are bitten and then buried, thus preventing a proper transformation into the dark gift. They become a mindless creature; think of of them as vampire zombies. It’s also said to be what becomes of vampires when they don’t have enough blood. (Tom Cruise‘s Lestat was seen as a decaying, rotting version of his former self in the 1994 film adaptation, the result of drinking dead blood and a lack of proper sustenance.)

It seemed that Daciana was beginning to decay as well. The “blood was bad” in Romania, as Louis told her of his theory, making it nearly impossible for vampires to feel warm and satisfied from feeding. Claudia was hopeful that Daciana would come with them to America where they could live together as a coven, back where the blood was plenty and Daciana could revive herself. It was a warming thought, but a fantasy. After painting a picture of what their lives together could be like, Daciana said “we own nothing” and threw herself on the fire inside her home as Claudia watched in horror.

The revenant was the last vampire in Daciana’s undead life. She kept on trying to make new vampires (baby ones are called fledglings) to stave off her loneliness but constantly failed. She chose death over starting anew away from her homeland. Louis and Claudia, traumatized by what they had just witnessed, left Romania behind and set off for Paris. During their travels, Louis made an important promise to Claudia that’s going to be referenced throughout the season. (Get a full breakdown of the scene with Anderson, Reid, and Hayles here.)

“If you were the last vampire on Earth, that would be enough,” he told his daughter, adding that as long as she walks the earth, he’ll “never taste the fire” and that it will be “you and me, me and you” from then on out. Paris will put Louis’ promise to the test.

The aforementioned book character, Morgan, had his plot changed some in this episode. In the book, Morgan meets Louis while on his honeymoon in Europe with his wife, Emily. She’s bitten by a vampire and he’s scared of what the locals will do to her. In the Interview With the Vampire Season 2 premiere, Morgan wasn’t married to a woman named Emily. Instead, he was in love with and hoped to marry a local woman named Emilia who gave Louis and Claudia food and shelter.

The locals in this area were extremely suspicious of vampires; they strung garlic on their front doors along with hanging crucifixes to ward off the creatures. We also saw soldiers opening coffins pulled out of graves and shooting the bodies in them, which must have meant that they knew something about the existence of the revenants and were attempting to make sure they couldn’t return from the dead.

Emilia (played by Stephanie Hayes) was bitten while out hunting for food for everyone, causing an uproar among the terrified community. Morgan insisted that she needed medical care, but the townspeople became a mob driven by their superstitions. Terrified that Emilia would become a bloodsucker, they said that the only way to solve her bite would be to cut off her head. Morgan begged Louis for help to no avail.

If you’re still wondering what that Lestat ghost was all about, here’s all you need to know: “Dream-stat,” as the cast called him, is a projection of Louis’ grief and guilt that came to be after he and Claudia conspired to murder Lestat in the Season 1 finale. This specter is more Louis than he is Lestat, so whenever you see him remember that he’s Louis’ memory of his former lover. How he looks and how he talks is entirely decided by Louis’ tortured subconscious.

Anderson previously told TV Insider that Season 2 is a “slow descent into hell.” If what Louis and Claudia saw in Episode 1 wasn’t hell, we’re terrified (and thrilled) for what’s next.

Interview With the Vampire, Sundays, 9/8c, AMC, Streaming Sundays on AMC+