A review of this week's The Vampire Lestat episode, "Toledo" — with spoilers — coming up just as soon as you're very patient regarding the vampire incest factor...
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Unlike Lestat's audience, I will not be patient regarding said vampire incest factor. Because how can it be avoided? Once you introduce the idea that Lestat is not only Gabriella's son, not only her maker, but also her lover, well... it's hard to focus on anything else. Even in an episode where we catch up with Louis in the present day — and Louis in turn discovers that Claudia's old tormentor Bruce is the leader of the Fang Gang. Even in an episode with a hilarious band meeting where the other musicians barrage Lestat with questions about modern vampirism. Call me old-fashioned, but when a relationship simultaneously breaks multiple taboos, we have to talk about it upfront.
Alan Sepinwall
As Lestat notes, it's different for vampires. But as we see in the flashbacks sprinkled throughout "Toledo," it's especially different for this vampire, whose relationship with his mother has precious little in common with, say, the one Louis had with his mom. In France, they were each other's only ally, flanked by the hostile force of the rest of their family: a loathsome husband for her, abusive siblings for him. But the connection is far stronger for him than it is for her. While he's in the middle of fighting with his brothers as they choke him and try to break his legs on their father's order, she goes back to blithely reading her book. And he believes that she sends him to try to kill the wolves because she assumes he'll die in the attempt. (Even his generous reading that she would rather he die than turn into another "cabbage" isn't that generous.) But she is nonetheless his only sanctuary in what's a nightmarish childhood, so it's no wonder that he would succumb to her touch upon his return from barely surviving the wolf encounter, nor that he would later convert her into a vampire to prevent her from dying.