REVIEW: ‘Interview With The Vampire’ Episode 14 — “I Could Not Prevent It”

Interview With The Vampire Season 2 has been captivating. It offers love, loss, pain, acceptance, and grief. It has moved us through the complicated relationships and the vampires who have them with an expertly crafted pace. Now, with Interview With The Vampire Episode 14, “I Could Not Prevent It,” every plot point has come home to roost.

At the end of the last episode, Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson)and Claudia (Delainey Hayles) are captured—Armand is clearly not innocent in the entire affair. But more importantly, Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid) has returned. We knew he would, but the weight his presence brings is crushing. In this penultimate episode, we see their trial in the Théâtre des Vampires.

In a play that has been scripted and rehearsed, Claudia, Louis, and Madeline are center stage, their Achilles tendons cut and their voices silenced. They have to bear witness to Lestat as he recounts their lives in New Orleans. Their history is retold from Lestat’s bitter and scorned heart instead of Claudia’s private diaries. It’s a flipping of the script that pays off as a penultimate episode.

Jacob Anderson, both in the past and the present, is haunting. His portrayal of watching his maker, his former lover, the man he shares a child with, pull him over coals is powerful in its silence. But more importantly, Interview With The Vampire Episode 14 shows Louis breaking in real-time.

“I could not prevent it” is a helpless plea that may be the episode’s name but is also the solemn grief he carries. Louis begins to change as he recounts how Lestat recounted their love story, their family, and their anger. The anger he held for Lestat from their life in New Orleans shifts down a gear, and instead, he begins to carry the guilt of Claudia’s death in himself.

If he had not dragged her out of the building to absolve his own guilt, she would not have burned. If he had not begged Lestat to break the rules and become her maker, she would not have burned. The weight with which Anderson plays Louis is as a father who has lost his child but is responsible for the tragedy in which it happened. It’s gutting. In fact, as the audience watches the play that is set to be their death, the impact of every line and choice washes over the scene. It’s powerful and somber.

Then, of course, you have Claudia. Since she came into the series, she has been ferocious. However, in the story’s second half, she shows her vulnerability. While she killed and commanded in the first season as Lestat did, she yearned as Louis did in this season. However, in Interview With The Vampire Episode 14, she is her own person. This shows as she stands in defiance of both men. She is forcibly kept quiet but still manages to speak, pushing past their control and astonishing those around her.

The fire in her never collapses in this episode, making its end all the more gutting. Claudia is a testament to resiliency, beauty, and power. But as everyone notes, her circumstances undercut her. But Delainey Hayles plays Claudia with all of the power, regality, and reverence you could ask for. In her final moment, as she turns toward Lestat, his face speaks volumes. As Lestat silently responds with tears, the weight of his role in this gruesome play crashes down on him.

Interview With The Vampire Episode 14 is absolutely gutwrenching. It is simultaneously the hardest episode of the series to watch and the best single episode of television I have ever seen. Sam Reid’s monologues, strained with the pain of loss, are shattering to an audience who has fallen in love with the characters over these few years. Where Reid’s Lestat holds a captivating power as he excises his own guilt and grief on stage, he is only part of the absolute genius of this episode.

Not to detract from Louis and, more importantly, Claudia, but this episode also shows the brat prince in all of his emotions. Continually going off script, Lestat unfurls his list of grievances and oscillates between anger and hatred into longing and despair. He processes all of his rage and grief in one go, and Reid’s portrayal is a revelatory act in television acting. Pain, rage, sorrow, love—there is everything in Interview With The Vampire Episode 14, and it captivates.

Claudia’s death has been the anvil hanging over the story from the beginning, and in Interview With The Vampire Episode 14, it’s adapted painfully well. It captures the beauty and pain that Anne Rice first captured in her novel, but it also adds new layers to it. With that, Claudia retains her agency and her grit. But most importantly, in her final moments, there is also an innocence that radiates at her father, calling to him for once but only in her death.

Interview With The Vampire Episode 14 is a testament to every small moment of storytelling that has appeared in the 13 episodes that preceded it. It is a culmination of the characters thus far, and it strips them bare and gives them nowhere to hide from their guilt or grief. It’s astonishing how much one hour of television can do. As the penultimate episode of the series, the finale is an open book, and I can’t wait to see how the writers have chosen to fill the pages.

Interview With The Vampire Episode 14 is streaming now on AMC+, with the series finale next Sunday.