AVC: Speaking of the catastrophe, we don’t see the actual concert that led to it just yet. Why did you save it for the future as opposed to trying to fit it into season three, or possibly doing an eighth episode? 

RJ: You’re always juggling budget as you’re doing these things, and at some point you just go down the line and say, ‘I don’t know if I can pull off a 50,000 people concert this season.’ So it’s better knowing you’re betting on yourself and you’re hoping that you’re writing a real part one. It’s not even the concert. There’s so much that happened off-screen this year, and I would encourage fans to remember the structure of Queen Of The Damned, and how many of those chapters are strict points of view. My guess is, anybody who thinks The Vampire Lestat the book is incomplete right now, we’re halfway there. There’s a lot of stuff that happened off-screen that will probably be revisited. 

AVC: Does that apply to Sheila Atim’s Akasha as well, in terms of how she doesn’t appear in the flesh after her introduction in episode five? 

RJ: Season three is all about an examination of Lestat, and part of that examination is to get to the part where the blood of Akasha has become an excuse, and he has to realize he’s had enough time to master it. It’s this idea of “What is my responsibility with how the world turned out,” and he’s doing CliffsNotes for some people, and also going after himself. We’ve been talking about Akasha and this idea of doing The Great Conversion for three seasons now. So we wanted you guys to get a taste of what energy is coming in next. There are suggestions in the first scene itself about this whole new kind of power that is coming in, and it’s embodied in Akasha. Hopefully, if there’s a fourth season, I’m pretty sure it’s going to be called Queen Of The Damned. It puts her right at the top of what’s coming up. 

AVC: Armand finally lets out his darker side after going on an “apology tour.” It makes me want to revisit Interview With The Vampire with this development. How did saving this reveal for the finale affect the plotting of season three overall? 

RJ: It is an apology tour to a certain extent, but this reveal is one of the things we’ve been sitting on for the longest time. If you think about it, Armand is in every scene in season three. If you consider Regina, he’s been everywhere because he’s been lurking. His body wasn’t, as in the actor wasn’t, and he’s a terrific actor, so I get wanting more Assad [Zaman], but Armand is everywhere, even with Alex and with Regina. He’s lurking like a little gremlin all over the place. By the end with Louis, there is a level of contrition about what he is owed. Now, has he gone to a certain extreme? Yes. Are there probably other ways of getting past these things? Sure. But I think his apologies to everyone in season three were sincere. He got the exact result that he wanted from all of them. Daniel’s by his side, and, well, Lestat is making fun of him still. And now here’s Louis, who is the most prideful out of all of them, right? So it’s really moving to have the scene where Louis apologizes and talks about Armand’s history. 

The hardest part about doing Armand’s backstory is that it’s fucking hard to shoot in Venice, man. It’s a pain in the ass to shoot. It’s not an easy place. But you

don’t want to tell the same story every single season either. So sometimes there’s going to be a season where somebody’s definitely on their darker side, and that may be what’s coming up. All I know is the last we see them, they’re all sitting in the auction house; they’re not at each other’s throats, and Lestat is not there. We end with Louis and Lestat in a very loving place, but he is still calling him Mr. Du Lac in The Failures. It points to the fact that there’s a bunch of shit coming up that, if we’re fortunate enough, we’ll get to cover in season four, but not even that—there’s at least a season five already percolating.

AVC: What was the process like in the writers’ room to handle season three’s overall comedic tonal shift? Did it feel like a creative challenge? 

RJ: I’ve always thought of Lestat in terms of Falstaff, a tragic clown, and so if he was going to lead the show, that was always going to be part of it. It was just intrinsically easier. Louis is a little more introverted and a little more existential. For Lestat, he has to confront and get through some of the stock shit before getting to the real stuff, which probably made people look at the initial episodes and ask, ‘What is this glossy ass shit that they’re doing?’ I hope people will go back and look at episodes one and two, and the quiet moments and tiny breaks that Lestat has in the midst of all the salesmanship. You probably can’t experience this whole thing until there’s, God willing, more [seasons]. 

We have a fun, gangly group of writers, but we also have turnovers season to season. It’s not because a writer didn’t do well. Half the time, people have taken other jobs, too. This year, I lost three writers who were fucking great: Shane Munson, Coline Abert, and A. Zel Williams. I had to bring in two singer-songwriters this year, which fits for this season. But I also look at seasons one and two, and I laugh my ass off all the time. This season, the comedy is just a lot more front and center, although a lot less in the last couple of episodes. 

AVC: Since the song and lyrics amplify the story being told, do you have a favorite that lends well to it? 

RJ: The one that has meant the most for me is probably “The Loneliness.” I will tell you this. There is a song; you have to look on the sheet that’s in a little frame in episode five. Well, there are a couple of songs on there, but one is a favorite of mine that Daniel Hart wrote. And if there’s a season four, then people will hear it.

Saloni Gajjar is The A.V. Club‘s TV critic.

Before long, images of the team hoisting Messi above their shoulders or tossing him in the air became a fixture of post-match broadcasts, as though he were part hero, part national mascot. They assemble just as quickly beside him on the pitch, to back him up and protect him during heated confrontations. It’s a two-way street; Messi loves praising his teammates unprompted in the press.

Critics noted that Argentina’s group stage opponents were less impressive in the grand scheme of things, but the narrative would shift considerably in the knockout stages. In the Round of 32, it seemed like first-time tournament entrants and cult favorites Cape Verde—who had just tied with heavy hitter and now-finalist Spain—might spell doom for the returning champions. They just managed to squeak by in extra time, in a thrilling bout that could’ve gone either way. Despite the positive result, it cast a shadow of doubt over Argentina’s ability to put away more formidable opponents. 

These concerns weren’t unfounded. The next three games saw the team fighting from behind, only to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat after the 90-minute mark each time. Their Round of 16 clash with Egypt saw them trailing by two goals until late in the game, at which point Messi diverted from his now-standard solo attacks down the middle. Instead, he turned back the clock to his days at Spanish club Barcelona, crossing the ball to his teammates from the right, performing split-second mental and physical calculus to get it into spaces few others would find. After missing a penalty earlier in the game, he scored one goal, set up another and directed a third from afar, all within 15 minutes. Each time, from nothingness, would emerge a sliver of chance; it was sporting alchemy. Sorry for the mixed metaphors, but his performance in this World Cup invites such grandiose comparisons. It’s science and poetry and pure adrenaline, and a thousand other things.

Now imagine being in close proximity to this magic, day in and day out. That can go one of three ways. The first is an inferiority complex. The second is resentment. The third, however, is the harmonious interplay viewers at home can glimpse from the camera’s bird’s-eye view. Newcomers might be tempted to only track the ball across their screen, but Messi’s chess-like approach is a reminder to take a wider look at where every piece is placed, and how the board shifts in desperate moments. The strategy against Egypt saw Argentinas reach into their gut at the last minute and turn the game on its head. This feat would repeat itself in subsequent fixtures with Switzerland and England—matches most of the team’s fans watched through their fingers.

Each of these games featured the possibility of Argentina’s unceremonious exit, only for them to put pedal to the metal (with a hit of NOS) right at the finish line. It’s become an exciting routine, if a rather harrowing one, to see them level or trailing by a couple of goals as the clock ticks down, but the nail-biting agony of watching them nearly lose makes each victory more cathartic. It’s sports-watching 101, but it comes with some interesting caveats. In most scenarios, it would be gauche to support returning winners so fervently as they advance. But for this Argentina squad, their journey is, in part, about proving their aging leader still has gas left in the tank. Their doe-eyed admiration for him, as they collaborate for each impossible late-game push, has practically made them underdogs all over again. Messi is a weathered general out to prove to younger, faster teams that his biggest victories were no fluke, and each comeback and celebration is a testament to his shocking longevity. It turns the team’s narrative into a grand soap opera of Achillean adoration as they set up his goals—and, more recently, as he drifts right to set up theirs.

Perhaps it’s sheer gumption that’s gotten them this far—or perhaps it’s written in the stars. Fans have been quick to share a UNICEF photoshoot from 2007 in which Messi, a then-rising La Liga prodigy, can be seen bathing a smiling baby—who grew up to be none other than Spanish right winger Lamine Yamal, the teenager who inherited Messi’s number 10 jersey at Barcelona, and who he’s now set to face in Sunday’s final. It’s a bizarre twist of destiny you couldn’t possibly script, but it feeds further into the fated quality that has defined Argentina’s campaign, where they’ve had to fight tooth-and-nail to stay alive in the closing minutes. Perhaps they’re fueled by luck (some theorize the deck is stacked in their favor; you can dismiss this by actually watching the games), or perhaps they’re fueled by the undying love the younger players have for their captain and king—a love that radiates through whatever screen you’re watching them on. Either way, it’s gotten Argentina here.

Whatever the outcome of Sunday’s final, this is the postscript that was never meant to be, written around a legacy hero whose magical abilities keep extending his “prime” further into middle age—so far that kids who grew up watching him are either playing by his side, or stepping up to challenge him for the crown. Another trophy would be a wistful parting gift from Messi to his team, but if their locker-room chants are any indication, it’s something they desperately want to win for him in return, after all his years of service. “Por la última de Leo Argentina quiero verte bicampeón,” they can be heard singing. “For Leo’s last one, Argentina, I want to see you become back-to-back champions.”

Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender (Paramount+, Saturday, movie premiere) Based on the animated series created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, this latest chapter of the Avatar story catches up with the now grown-up Aang (Eric Nam), who has discovered the existence of a surviving airbender named Tagah (Dave Bautista) as well as an ancient power that could save his culture from extinction. With his pals in tow (the voice cast also includes Jessica Matten Katara, Román Zaragoza as Sokka and Steven Yeun as Zuko), Aang embarks on a global quest to locate this mystical power before it falls into the wrong hands and upends the peace they fought so hard to achieve. 

Also arriving

King Of The Hill (Hulu, Monday, season-15 premiere)
Solo Traveling With Tracee Ellis Ross (Roku, Monday, season-two premiere)
The Real Housewives Of London (Bravo, Tuesday 9 p.m., series premiere)
Bill Maher: The Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor (Netflix, Tuesday, standalone special)
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (Paramount+, Thursday, season-four premiere)
Ransom Canyon (Netflix, Thursday, season-two premiere)
Breaking Bear (Tubi, Friday, series premiere)

Ending soon

The Ultimatum: Marry Or Move On (Netflix, Wednesday, season-four finale)
Criminal Minds (Paramount+, Thursday, season-19 finale)
The Chi (Paramount+, Friday, series finale)

There are a lot of moving parts to a live sports broadcast—that’s why the more seasoned players in the field love to fill downtime with shoutouts to all the camera operators in the stands, or the folks doing traffic control in the production truck. Netflix is attempting to spin up the kind of behind-the-scenes infrastructure that its competitors have built across decades, and its inability to, say, capture a history-making baseball moment as it happened—as it did when the Yankees’ José Caballero brought MLB into the Automated Ball-Strike era on Opening Night—demonstrates how much work it still needs to do to catch up. It’s little wonder that Netflix’s most successful sports efforts so far have been their Christmas Day NFL doubleheaders, co-produced in partnership with the old hands at CBS Sports.

There were marked improvements between Opening Night and the Home Run Derby—the Netflix synergy was blessedly restricted to the barely audible player introductions handled by the cast of The Hawk—but weak links in the production chain kept hanging the on-air talent out to dry. Be it a teleprompter, the copy on said prompter, or the awkwardness of doing patter from an ad hoc “lounge” put together in foul territory, the otherwise polished hosts kept tripping over their words: Barry Bonds saying “rendendum” when the captions indicate he was being fed “repetition”; the laws of arithmetic defied as Elle Duncan recounted her colleague Albert Pujols’ 2005-07 hot streak at Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park—“You came to this ballpark eight times, and you deposited a ball out into the stands nine of them.” (An onscreen stat corrected the record: Pujols hit nine home runs in eight away games against the Phillies during that stretch.) The zeal for upward-glancing shots created an ironic juxtaposition during the pregame, with the camera capturing the giant scoreboard message “ATTENTION ALL MEDIA CLEAR THE FIELD” behind the members of the media who had yet to clear the field.

Screenshot: Netflix

Multiply that undertaking by multiple games per day, spread across several weeks, and any mention of the 2027 Women’s World Cup during the Home Run Derby sounded less like enticement and more like a threat. Next year’s tournament will be a dry run for the streaming giant’s facility with such an event; the question of whether people will put up with a paywall standing between them and a highly anticipated competition between some of the greatest athletes on the planet, meanwhile, may have already been answered by this past spring’s World Baseball Classic. In Japan, which hosted the 2026 WBC, Netflix was the only way to watch the games. The Japan Times described “fans gathered at restaurants and bars to share their Netflix feeds and watch together on smartphones and tablets”—the “personal, noncommercial use” language in the streamer’s terms of service keeping sports bars from putting the WBC up on their big screens. A month later, the Japanese government entered a plea to the tournament’s organizers at MLB. “It is extremely important for a wide range of people to have the opportunity to experience and watch sports,” education and sports minister Yohei Matsumoto said in a press conference, acknowledging that the country’s major television networks have traditionally made the WBC, the Olympics, and the World Cup available to watch free of charge.

Such a request has a lot of resonance here in July 2026. Between the various cultural phenomena of the World Cup—the delight of international fans encountering American fast food and convenience stores for the first time, the rise of Cape Verde, Haaland and his stuffed raccoon—and the end of the New York Knicks’ NBA championship drought, it’s been a uniquely joyous summer for sports in the United States. And a lot of that joy has been expressed and shared in public, without the barrier of a streaming subscription: The crowds congregating at soccer bars that more typically cater to early-rising Premier League fiends; game five of the NBA Finals streaming on public wi-fi kiosks amid back-and-forth between Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Knicks owner James Dolan over outdoor watch parties. Put aside concerns about lackluster, technical difficulty-prone broadcasts for a second—the loss of this kind of communal experience is the greatest risk of a Netflix World Cup. I’ve been watching the tournament since the first time the U.S. hosted it in 1994, and I can’t remember any edition that captured the world’s attention and imagination like this year’s. It’s the ultimate reminder that sports belong to everybody, not just the people who can afford to pay $8.99 a month to put a movie or show on in the background while they scroll through their phone.

Tomorrow, I’ll be having friends over to watch the final between Argentina and Spain. We could pull up the game on Peacock, but I’d rather pull it out of the air with my antenna. The opportunities to perform such a magic trick grow fewer and farther between these days. And provided the signal from Chicago-area Telemundo affiliate WSNS is coming in just fine, I can count on actually seeing the game, too, with no gimmicky camera angles, CGI-dandruff-dusted graphics packages, or sales pitches for Stranger Things spin-offs obscuring the view.