Interview with the Vampire Season 2: What to Expect

This article contains spoilers for Interview with the Vampire season 1 and the back half of Anne Rice’s novel.

Well that was fun, now wasn’t it?

The first season finale of AMC’s Interview with the Vampire was a bloody good time, as were the rest of the series’ first seven episodes. This adaptation of Anne Rice’s classic first novel in The Vampire Chronicles honored the writers’ spooky Gothic tone while presenting some updates to the canon that help clarify its timeline while providing commentary on the mutable and selective nature of memory.

Also a whole bunch of people got violently, gloriously, beautifully killed. Louis straight up tore a dude’s jaw off!

Truth be told, there wasn’t an ideal stopping point in Rice’s novel for Interview with the Vampire to cut its first season short on, but it found as reasonably good a spot as one could have hoped for. Louis (Jacob Anderson) and Claudia’s (Bailey Bass) sort-of murder of their creator and caretaker Lestat (Sam Reid) occurs roughly halfway through the book and serves as a fitting send off for these seven episodes. Refreshingly, this iteration of Interview with the Vampire makes no attempt to hide the fact that Lestat wasn’t fully killed and will be making a comeback shortly. And now we can only assume that that comeback will arrive in the already-announced Interview with the Vampire season 2.

Just what else can we expect from this now hotly anticipated second season though? Anne Rice’s books provide a blueprint up to a point but the show has already made it clear that it’s able to be flexible when need be. In fact, the season 1 finale already introduced a major character, the vampire Armand, well ahead of schedule.

So let’s figure out some of the most salient questions about season 2 together right now.

When Will Interview with the Vampire Season 2 Premiere?

AMC is ahead of the game on this one, having renewed Interview with the Vampire for a second season before the first season even began. Does this mean that Interview season 2 will get to our screens faster than it would have otherwise? Probably, yeah!

We don’t have any hard evidence to go on at the moment nor has AMC yet announced the official production dates for a second season. But there’s no reason to believe they won’t be able to get it back on the airwaves for a release sometime next year. AMC typically moves quick anyway and Interview with the Vampire has both a renewal already in hand and only a reasonable episode count of eight to accommodate.

Look for Interview with the Vampire to arrive sometime in late 2023, ideally around Halloween once again.

What Plot Will Interview with the Vampire Season 2 Cover?

Just as Interview with the Vampire was refreshingly forthcoming about the fate of Lestat, it was similarly transparent about its plans for season 2. Back when the second season was announced, creator and showrunner Rolin Jones released a statement to the press that mentioned some important upcoming settings for the show:

“Bulgaria. Romania. Paris. (Ah Paris!) San Francisco. New Orleans. Dubai. The writing staff of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire is honored, humbled, and hungry to add more stamps to our vamps’ passport books. All praises be to our fearless network, we shall endeavor not to screw it up.”

Those who have seen Interview with the Vampire might recall that at no point does the show’s narrative travel to Bulgaria, Romania, or Paris. Instead all of the action in the present is localized to San Francisco and Dubai while the narrative of the past stays in New Orleans. But rest assured that those European locales are on the way.

As we said previously, the first season of Interview with the Vampire covers roughly the first half of Rice’s first book. Based on the contents of the second half of said book along with Jones’s comments it seems very clear that season 2 will be enjoying a European vacation. With Lestat off the board (for now) and Louis and Claudia in the possession of some transport cargo ships, the duo will be taking off to the Old World in search of more knowledge about their vampiric cousins.

In Interview with the Vampire, the book, Louis and Claudia come across some primitive and bestial vampires in Eastern Europe before settling with some “civilized” vampires in Paris where the novel’s climax takes place. We’ve already met one of those Parisian vampires – the vampire Armand (Assad Zaman) a.k.a. the helper Rashid, who Louis was trying to pass off as human.

Armand is a member of the Théâtre des Vampires, a group of vampires who like to have a little fun with their kills. Despite Armand’s creative killing brushing up with Louis’s distaste for death, the pair truly hit it off before some unfortunate events intervene. As evidenced by Armand’s presence in Louis’s life in the present, however, it’s already clear that Interview with the Vampire is willing to make some changes to this portion of the story as needed.

It’s also entirely possible that Interview with the Vampire borrows some content from the second book in Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles. That one just so happens to be called The Vampire Lestat. Incorporating some of Lestat’s backstory from that book seems like an easy way to keep the hyper charismatic Sam Reid in the fold when he might not have been included otherwise.

What Will Interview with the Vampire Season 2 Be Called?

This may seem like an odd question at first because why wouldn’t Interview with the Vampire season 2 still be called Interview with the Vampire? Truth be told, it probably will be as the final title card of the season reads “Interview with the Vampire Part I,” which suggests that the second season will be dubbed “Interview with the Vampire Part II.” After that, however, the branding of AMC’s Anne Rice universe really feels up in the air.

Back when AMC first acquired the rights to Rice’s catalogue (including her vampire series and Mayfair Witch series, good for a total 18 titles), the network kind of intimated that the vampire portion of their Rice adaptations would be known by their book series title The Vampire Chronicles. Instead, however, the first Rice TV show out of the gate went with the title of her first book as that likely had some more name recognition due to its 1994 movie adaptation.

But Interview with the Vampire‘s story should be wrapping up, if not by the end of season 2, then soon after that. Will AMC’s vampire stories retain the title of “Interview with the Vampire” even if there is no vampire being interviewed? Will they opt to operate under The Vampire Chronicles header? Or will they take things on a case-by-case basis and have each new book presented as a one-two season miniseries starting with The Vampire Lestat?

Ultimately these questions aren’t that important in the grand scheme of things. AMC will remain in the Anne Rice vampire business one way or another. Still, it can’t hurt to start playing the name game now.

All seven episodes of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire are available to stream on AMC+ now.