This article contains spoilers for Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire on AMC.

The premiere of Season 2 of Interview with the Vampire may not be as bloodsoaked as previous entries in the series, but the show still has a keen understanding of when to take its gory shots and when to, shall we say, set the scene. This first episode kicks off with a hell of a lot of introspection, and even has the presence of mind to call out its own exposition, but the heaviness still looms large in a way that the lack of gore isn’t super important.

Here, it's the blood — including the "bad" blood — that is connected to the changes our characters are undergoing in the wake of last season's finale. And it’s the wounds that don’t bleed that matter the most. Even when it comes to feeding.

When we left the main trio at the end of Season 1, Lestat (Sam Reid) had just met his fateful “end” after being poisoned by Claudia (Bailey Bass). However, though Louis (Jacob Anderson) understood that their abusive maker had to die and supported the cause by slitting Lestat’s throat, his heart would not let him burn the body. While this moment only confirmed what Claudia had already known — she had left Louis out of the loop on the plot to kill their sire because of his feelings — her brother’s refusal to finish the job or to allow her to do it herself drives a considerable wedge between the two of them.

By the Season 2 premiere, Claudia (now played by Delainey Hayles) and Louis make it safely to Poland. “Safely” is, of course, relative, as they land in Poland at the height of WWII. But the series makes it immediately clear that it has no interest in entangling its vampires with the troubles of humanity. The exception here being when it relates directly to their survival and, while bullets can’t do anything to harm them, tainted blood has been a longstanding concern for vampires in Anne Rice’s universe. What’s new here, however, is that perpetual trauma and despair evidently have effects on human blood and how it nourishes vampires in the AMC series.

Hitler eating a bullet (or chomping a pill, depending on your history book) comes and goes, making way for Soviet occupation across Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania. Turns out, this has such a devastating effect on the people of the region that their “blood is bad.” Louis attempts to explain to Claudia as they sit trying to warm themselves at the fire, but she’s still so furious over his slight — now six years prior at this point — that his words fall on deaf ears.

The pair had made their way to Romania as yet another effort to find more of their kind. Where better to find more vampires than their birthplace, after all? But the people are so downtrodden that their blood doesn’t fill, so the vampires who feast on them cannot get warm and get a literal taste of their victims’ despair. It’s a curious effect, one not explored in Rice’s novels, but acts as a welcome companion to Louis’ own misery (over Lestat, over the blood, over life, death, whatever…). What is explained, at least briefly, in the books is the concept of revenants. Braindead, fledgling vampires turned and then trapped in a coffin, unable to feed.

We meet what I can only assume is the series’ version of a revenant in this Season 2 premiere. At first, we’re not sure what it is. We only know that it’s ravenous, killing off the few survivors, and broken in a different way than Louis and Claudia’s deep emotional wounds. It’s very strong, but otherwise it’s more zombie than vampire. We only learn of its age when its mother kills it after Claudia gouges out its eyes to stop it from attacking Louis again. “How would he hunt?” Daciana (Diana Gheorghian) asks in misery while standing over the corpse of the last of her kin.

The introduction of Daciana is an important one, not because of any potential for her lingering as a recurring character, but because her fate ultimately returns Louis and Claudia to the same page.

Before meeting Daciana and her youngling, the two protagonists were oceans apart. But when Daciana chooses suicide, throwing herself into the open fire rather than leave her homeland in search of better blood and believing in Claudia’s many promises, something in the young vampire breaks.

Early in the episode, she screams at Louis that there must be others, because the only ones she has met are, and I’m paraphrasing here, tremendous assholes. Discovering Daciana was the hope that Claudia so desperately needed. Having it ripped away mere moments after their introduction broke the girl in a way that we haven’t seen yet in the series despite her many challenges in Season 1. Lestat never had the power to hurt her in the way that he hurt Louis, but Daciana choosing to end it all rather than believe in the promised future presented by Claudia destroyed the girl’s dream that she could find a future with her own kind.

The aftermath is a great equalizer between the two protagonists. Claudia falls to the emotional depths that Louis had been occupying since slitting Lestat’s throat; Louis claws himself out of his haze long enough to give Claudia some hard and soft words (the soft words are the ones that are important: he promises he will not make the same choice that Daciana did so long as they are by each other’s side) and to decide their next destination.

Claudia and Louis will make their way to France, and undoubtedly the Théâtre des Vampires to show the beginning of Louis and Armand’s (Assad Zaman) relationship. The real question of what awaits them in France centers on Claudia, given the fate that she is to meet there (at least in the books). But will the series elect to keep her alive instead? With Louis and Armand still partnered in the present, it seems that, at the very least, Armand’s involvement in her death will be shifted somewhat. Only time will tell, though.

In the meantime, it seems that bad blood has restored the troubled little vampire family for now. Still, here’s hoping there’s a brighter day awaiting the two of them in France, at least for a time. Lestat is still very much alive and extremely particular about being abandoned, so his presence in the series will undoubtedly change from haunting Louis’ mind to chasing down his traitorous companions and seeking his revenge.

Amelia is the entertainment Streaming Editor here at IGN. She's also a film and television critic who spends too much time talking about dinosaurs, superheroes, and folk horror. You can usually find her with her dog, Rogers. There may be cheeseburgers involved. Follow her across social @ThatWitchMia

Streaming Wars is a weekly opinion column by IGN’s Streaming Editor, Amelia Emberwing. To read the last entry, check out It’s Time For You To Watch Interview with the Vampire.

Recently, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery made the announcement that they would be teaming up to create a bundle that brings viewers Disney+, Hulu, and Max. They shined it up real pretty to ensure consumers would feel like it was a big win, and made sure to highlight that both ad and ad-free options would be available for the bundle. They did so, of course, while notably leaving out just how much the new bundles would cost. Weird move when your whole release is tied to the word “value” (one that is used four times in a brief, 246-word press release, but hey I’m just an editor). But the partnership and the subsequent announcement are actually interesting to me for a different reason: catalogue curation. Especially while both companies’ existing curation has only gotten worse with the addition of Discovery+ and Hulu on their core platforms

And yes, before we get into the meat of the issue, all of the plucky jokes about sprinting back towards what is basically cable all over again are very funny and relatively true. Still, at least cable told you exactly when and where you’d be able to watch your favorite show. When something used to move time slots, it’d be a big deal! You’d have 40 commercials leading into the premiere telling you when and where to watch your shows. Now? Things just get added to the database to die. And maybe, just maybe it’ll end up at that top carousel to remind viewers that it’s happening.

It’s not that they’re reinventing cable, it’s that they’re squishing together all the worst parts of both. The ability (or inability) to find titles when they drop is one thing — one, big, annoying thing — but it gets even harder after the fact. Why? Because curation on most streaming apps is abysmal (get it together, Max and Prime Video), and even platforms that do an OK job like Disney+ could also do way, way better. If you specifically know what you’re after, you can spend time painstakingly typing it out on your remote — gods help if you if it’s Apple branded — or hope it’s big enough to end up somewhere on the main page without digging too deep, but that lends absolutely nothing to discovery, which has half the fun of digging in and finding what to watch. The key here is that viewers don’t have to dig too deep, and shoddy curation is a surefire way to end up in an endless scroll or giving up all together.

Cable definitely shares the same curation issue, sure. But the problem that it does not share is volume. Disney+ which, as mentioned, does an alright job with curating its platform compared to competitors, struggled a bit with the addition of Hulu to its platform. Meanwhile, HBO Max — whose curation was all but unusable already — became notably worse after becoming “Max” and absorbing all of Discovery+’s content (except for, of course, all of the shows and movies it wrote off or cancelled). And that change didn’t just break the carousels and overall curation. I don’t know about you, but new episodes of shows I’ve already been actively watching don’t just not show up now, but the show itself is inexplicably removed from my keep watching carousel entirely. Which takes us right back to the dreaded search function. And no, I won’t be buying a keyboard for my TV/PlayStation just so I can easily use my damn streaming services. This is my line in the sand!

And sure, maybe those issues are limited to a few people! Or maybe people don’t mind digging through a bunch of Discovery’s reality swill while trying to find their stories. The point is, merging content catalogues hasn’t looked too pretty so far. How bad is it going to get when it’s two completely separate companies (and three services) trying to collaborate, and how deep are we supposed to dig into our pockets for what will undoubtedly be a worse user experience for an indeterminate amount of time? Will they fix their current curation issues, or will all of their content just remain on separate apps?

The “separate app” solution seems the cleanest way to go, and would give them time to fix their existing curation issues. But it also feels like it kinda defeats the point of the partnership?

I don’t know, y’all! The “reinventing cable” tidbit is certainly annoying — especially while we don’t know the price point on all of that “value” just yet — but for now I’m more worried about no one being able to find anything on any of the platforms and the overall user experience going down the tank thanks to too much content in one system and two companies with different goals trying to fit square pegs into round holes.

What do you think of the partnership news? Is your outlook brighter than mine? Let’s talk about it in the comments!