Prime Video's relationship to its flagship fantasy commissions has proved somewhat inconsistent over the past several years. Last summer, the streamer cancelled The Wheel of Time, citing budgetary concerns for the acclaimed adaptation's tragically early demise. On the other hand, recent statements indicate their plans to continue pouring support into an even costlier epic, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. When it comes to promising genre originals with smaller financial requirements, the streamer has mostly, and thankfully, adopted the latter approach.

Editor's note: The below recap contains spoilers for The Vampire Lestat Episode 1.

Sometimes, it feels like there aren't any new ideas under the sun. Although there's some truth in that assertion, given how the ever-churning IP machine tends to dominate film and television, franchise name recognition has always factored into which projects do and don't see the light of day. The "there's nothing new under the sun" adage has always been true, and that's not always a bad thing. Tropes exist because we can only tell so many variations of a story; innovation often boils down to re-envisioning genres from the ground up.

Interview with the Vampire retitling its third season to The Vampire Lestat is quite an unconventional move for traditional serialized television. The striking shift is, however, perfectly in accordance with creator Rolin Jones' magnificent adaptation of author Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles series. Rice's transgressive material and Jones' transformative interpretation scrutinize how traumatic experiences can frame an individual's perspective and distort their memories — especially when a concept as simultaneously harrowing and freeing as immortality enters the picture.