By Carly Lane Published Jul 5, 2026, 10:20 PM EDT Carly Lane is an Atlanta-based writer and critic who has been with Collider in some form or fashion since 2021. She considers herself a television nerd, diehard romance/sci-fi/fantasy reader, and nascent horror lover. Her fondness of books is only eclipsed by the towering TBR that her shelves can't possibly contain. She is the author of A REGENCY GUIDE TO MODERN LIFE: 1800s ADVICE ON 21ST CENTURY LOVE, FRIENDS, FUN AND MORE , published through DK Books (an imprint of Penguin Random House) and currently available wherever books are sold. Sign in to your Collider account Add Us On follow Follow followed Followed Like Like Thread Log in Here is a fact-based summary of the story contents: Try something different: Show me the facts Explain it like I’m 5 Give me a lighthearted recap Editor's note: The below contains spoilers for The Vampire Lestat Episode 5.
We're closer to the finale of The Vampire Lestat now, so it should come as no surprise that the show is pushing into even more deeply personal territory for its eternally mercurial lead. While Louis ( Jacob Anderson ) has been spending his time with an eerily convincing Claudia ( Delainey Hayles ) lookalike named Regina, Lestat ( Sam Reid ) takes one look at his fledgling's waitress-turned-paid-companion in this week's episode, "New York," and immediately knows that she's not the same person.
Yet in the aftermath of sizing Regina up , Lestat finds himself back in the recording studio where he's been working on his first album with the band to write what might be his most soul-baring song yet about his biggest failure as a maker. As it happens, the resulting Episode 5 track wasn't just tricky to get right from a composition standpoint, but also when it came time to perform and shoot the final emotional number.
When Collider had the opportunity to speak with The Vampire Lestat 's cast and creative team before the season premiere, we had to ask Reid and series composer Daniel Hart about which song was most difficult to pull off — and they both had the same answer in "Stained Glass Eyes," the song that Lestat writes about his biggest memories of Claudia, including the moments leading up to her death in Season 2's penultimate episode , "I Could Not Prevent It." According to Hart, the song was rewritten more than once before he and series creator Rolin Jones agreed on its final iteration:
"... it's the only song of the batch that is in Season 3 where I rewrote it from the ground up three separate times — different music, different lyrics, fully formed demos, fully fleshed out. I turned one in, and Rolin was like, 'I think that's not quite right.' The second version, completely starting over, completely new ideas, completely different music style, different lyrics. I finished it, I listened back to it, and I was like, 'I think that's completely not right.' The third time, I finally found what I was looking for. And then it plays a huge role in Episode 5, which was always the intention. That was a writing assignment that I got from Rolin, was like, 'We need a song about Claudia.'"
Damien Atkins and Joseph Potter discuss Lestat's emotional Magnus and Nicky flashbacks and how much truth lies in memory.
Reid's answer was the same, though we did make a point to ask him, specifically, about which song was hardest not from a performance standpoint, but because of the greater emotions at play for the character. Per Reid, episode director Levan Akin…