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While some are worse than others, the stories people tell about how data centers invade and disrupt their communities follow the same contours. The tech company and their swarm of contractors are in town before you know it, and they’re already scheming with local leaders. In no uncertain terms, your elected officials have chosen tech billionaires over their own neighbors.

Soon, an army of men with bulldozers are tearing out trees near your home and ripping up fields. Dump trucks careen around town, and the night sky is so polluted with light, you can’t see the stars. A year or so later, the data center is up and running. By then, the high-paying construction jobs have all but disappeared.

After months of digging, you finally have an idea of how much water the data center actually consumes. If you’re lucky, your area isn’t in a drought. You hope things won’t get dire. Meanwhile, the monolith is droning and hissing, wearing you and your neighbors down with constant noise. You hope the water you do have will be drinkable this time next year as you try to adjust to the unnatural heat the data center generates.

The militaristic drive to build the best chatbot and somehow “beat China” knows no bounds, including those of logic. This nightmarish iteration of the extraction economy was made possible by undemocratic processes and a national administration that sold us and our resources out to tech oligarchs. But people in these towns and cities are smarter and tougher than the plutocrats accounted for—and they’re putting up one hell of a fight. Told by people whose communities have been impacted, this is the story of unhinged data center expansion in America.

Jared Spann (Utah): It’s been the equivalent of a sucker punch. People have had no say in any of this.

Devan Jenkins (Mississippi): Nobody here wanted this. They didn’t let us know. We had to find out on our own.

Tracie (Texas): If you look at the board of directors at the very beginning, Bill Gates’s fingerprints are all over it. He had his own picked people on the board in a town like Abilene, Texas that isn’t really on the map. That set the stage for the sleight of hand.

Dan Caruso (Indiana): They called it “Razor 5” at first. I thought it would be a Motorola-type manufacturing plant. Then they went on and called it “Ramboll.” By the time they broke ground, we figured out it was Amazon and Anthropic all along. It was a lot of everyone wanting to be so secretive about the whole thing, and that’s gone on through the entire process. They call it “Project Rainier” now, but I have other names for it.

Our elected officials who were meeting with Amazon all signed NDAs for how much water it would use to cool their servers. They have open-loop systems here. My question to them was and still is: How are we supposed to know if they’re getting close to the limitations of our freshwater aquifer if we don’t know how much water they’re using? They just say, “Oh, we’ll know. Don’t worry.” Yeah, right. That’s what I’m worried about. I’m always asking them, what’s so “Colonel Sanders’s 11 secret herbs and spices” about how much water they use to cool their servers? We have a right to know.

Amazon has tried to win us over by doing “nice things” for us. Over the holidays, we have a town potluck banquet where everyone brings a dish, but this year Amazon brought all the food. On Facebook, people were saying, “Isn’t this wonderful? Amazon is bringing food to the banquet for everybody!” I guess all they had to do was feed people for them to forget everything they’re doing to us. That one really got me.

Racel Wurfel (Indiana): Meta has been allowed to go through so many tax loopholes that, even on the most basic economic level, this makes no sense for the state of Indiana. I’ve done so much research trying to figure out how much Meta paid for the land. We have no transparency.

When the project got rolling, our community was told it was a “technology campus.” We thought it would be a Meta office with software jobs. We had no idea what the intention was.

If you go to the Jeffersonville Data Center Facebook page, they try to make it look like a place you can go and enjoy with cutesy community rooms with paintings on the walls. But if you drive over there, it’s like a military compound from a sci-fi movie. Everything is covered. You can’t see what’s actually going on.

Christine LeJeune (Wisconsin): Our town heard about the data center during a presentation from Cloverleaf. The mayor was careful to point out that discussion about it was in the very early stages—that this was the first step in a thousand. He said he was hearing about it along with us, but open records revealed that he was already in communication with them. Cloverleaf handed off the project to the operator, Vantage Data Centers, a multinational corporation with data centers on five different continents. Vantage maintains ownership, but they’ll rent out the data center to Oracle and OpenAI.

The project was approved at a town hall. That was also when the transmission line company outlined how people’s properties will be impacted by the huge transmission lines needed to power the data center. Part of their playbook is to give the public piecemeal information. When we were focused on the data center itself, suddenly there’s the other issue of how it will be powered by gigantic transmission lines that will affect people across five different counties, running through protected areas and conservation easements.

It caught us all off guard. Since then, the mayor has kept repeating this phrase, almost like a mantra: “It’s a done deal. It’s a done deal.” I’m so sick of hearing that. They’re trying to infiltrate your psyche with this belief that there’s nothing you can do. And a lot of people accept that. People here are not used to having to stand up for themselves to corporations like this. It’s very new, complicated, and challenging for people.

LaTricea Adams (Tennessee): The only folks who knew were part of the deal: the mayor of Memphis; the president of Memphis Light, Gas, and Water; and the Chamber of Commerce. It really shows how this goes beyond a permitting issue and gets into a democracy issue.

Our local utility didn’t have the capacity to provide the power the Colossus 1 data center needs, so xAI brought in “temporary” gas turbines on semi trucks and parked them. The turbines weren’t fixed to the ground. They were on trailers.

In the same zip code as the Colossus 1 data center, there are over 17 other high-polluting facilities. Both of my parents are from that area. To make the environmental racism fully blatant, the Valero refinery is right next to MLK Park. So with the addition of the xAI data center, there’s a nexus of pollution—from transportation, the oil refinery, all the other heavy industry, and now the data center.

The community rightfully raised hell about the polluting, unpermitted turbines when they were in Memphis. The city decommissioned the turbines, but then xAI went right across the state line into Mississippi and set them up again.

Devan Jenkins (Mississippi): Musk came along and bought all the land around here that he could—and it’s a lot of land. He’s rushing it. I don’t know what contractors they have, or who exactly is doing what, but they have these huge dump trucks here on Windsor Road. It’s a residential street where my grandparents have lived for decades. The truck drivers violate this residential area that isn’t supposed to have industrial trucks driving through. I got the city to put up “No Trucks Through” signs, but they still drive down the road all day. They take up the whole road and drive crazy. They won’t be done building out the power plant until early 2027.

I’m having my wedding in my grandparents’ backyard in June. My husband and I will move into a little cottage on the property. I don’t want the peace of my wedding to get disturbed, or have the safety of my guests get compromised.

Dan Caruso (Indiana): There were problems with the Amazon people zooming past a school bus with its “Stop” arm out. They’d swing out into the other lane and fly past the school bus while the kids were about to get on or off. The bus driver took it on her own initiative to tell people not to send their kids to the bus stop at that intersection. She started driving to everyone’s door to pick up their kids instead.

Amanda Mueller (Wisconsin): When they first started 24/7 construction, it was land of the midnight sun. My streetlight went out, and I didn’t even notice because it was so bright. The light pollution from construction has since improved, but data centers are maximum security installations. The perimeter is lit up at all times. They want to keep it secure and surveil it constantly.

Christine LeJeune (Wisconsin): There has been a big dust issue because of the scale of the first construction phase, during which they tore up the majority of the 673 acres. It’s windy here because it’s near Lake Michigan. There’s a vortex of swirling air surrounding the lake. The dust, concrete stabilizer, lime—all that gets trapped in the air. Then the wind gets very strong very often, blowing it all in different directions.

People who drive past are shocked by the huge swales of dust. The way they build these things, they push up the soil into volcano-looking mounds throughout the site. It collects on people’s homes and cars, not to mention inside our lungs. There’s a lot of dump trucks driving around and carting the top soil away. They’re just carting away this wonderful, fertile soil that’s been cultivated by farmers for generations.

Amanda Mueller (Wisconsin): Our subdivision empties out into the middle of construction. We call it the battlefield. Wherever you turn, it’s bulldozers, cement trucks, men. There are 5,000 workers coming in, and the total population of our town is 1,432.

Tracie (Texas): The housing shortage is intense. Many people who own their homes are moving and setting their houses up as rental properties. My widowed daughter-in-law is completely out of a house. She couldn’t afford the rent hike. And it’s her own family who’s saying, “We want to make hay while we can.” All the apartments are full, and we have R.V. parks springing up all over the place.

Jane (Oregon): I’ve worked on multiple data centers here in Oregon. There’s something like nine or 10 Meta buildings, and then about four for Apple, just in this area where I live. They’re all over Oregon. It brings in a lot of people while they build them, but they don’t employ many people long term. One is a million square feet.

I’m a sheet metal worker. I run duct work for the big units to keep everything cool. Most of the data centers in Oregon are built by union workers. We’re the only ones who can man them. It’s trades-workers like sheet rockers, electricians, painters, and metal framers that frame the walls. It takes somewhere near a year to get one of them up and running, depending on the size.

They get their own Apple or Meta people running diagnostics and doing the high-tech jobs when it’s all online. One outfit I worked for keeps four or five people on at one of the Meta buildings, doing stuff like changing out filters, because there’s thousands and thousands of them in the walls. Outside air gets sucked in, cleaned, and then run down a long tunnel to keep the servers cool.

The jobs lately have all been for all this AI stuff, which is not my jam. But when we bid for the job and that’s what it calls for, we’re not necessarily thinking about how bad data centers are for the environment. This is just what I do for a living. Data centers are not all we build. We do schools, hospitals, libraries, all kinds of things. The data centers are good money for people in my trade, but they’re obviously not good for the world. If that work was replaced by something else, I would be all for it, 100 percent.

Dan Caruso (Indiana): The agreement between Amazon and St. Joseph County was that, upon completion of the 16 to 18 data center shells, they would have 400 full-time workers and then 600 on-call contractors for basic maintenance. The 400 permanent workers are spread among the 16 shells, working five shifts. So five workers per shift, per building. Each of those buildings is 216,000 square feet. These guys are going to need a cell phone just to communicate with each other across these huge buildings.

Rachel Wurfel (Indiana): There was a lot of blasting required during construction, and that’s done untold foundation damage to people’s homes. Every lawyer in this area who people contacted are under NDAs. They’ve been on retainer to Meta. People don’t know where to turn for help.

Within a year of Meta starting construction, we had multiple homes that needed major foundation repairs. My next door neighbor had to have it done. Part of the house has to get jacked up so the concrete can get repoured. It takes at least a few weeks. Some of the data center contractors have come out and said that heavy blasting can cause shifts in land—and they were doing massive amounts of blasting.

I’ve also noticed problems with our water. We’ve always needed water softener, because we’re on a rural water tank. But now you get this pink cast left behind if the water sits. It’s this sludgy residue. You have to constantly scrub your bath and shower, or else it looks disgusting. We strictly use bottled water to cook with now. There’s also a smell in the air. On hot days especially, you can feel a different heaviness.

Jason Haley (Mississippi): My neighborhood was nice and peaceful until the turbines and xAI power plant came in. I’ve been here 20 years. I’ve never had any major complaints with noise. Just typical neighborhood sounds. A dog barking, stuff like that. You’d sit outside at night on your back deck and not have many problems.

Now it’s constant noise. I started hearing it when I was in my backyard or around my house—not super loud at first, but always present. My first thought was, “Hell, somebody’s got a leafblower going.” But it never stopped. Then I found out it’s the xAI powerplant causing the noise.

The noise kept getting louder. It became this terribly loud, high-pitched noise—and that’s along with the lower tone rumbling. I started reaching out to city officials. They’d say, “Yeah, we know it’s a problem. But it will be better next week.” That’s a phrase they kept repeating: “It will be better next week.” It’s never gotten any damn better.

It took a lot of speaking in public, going to meetings, and posting about it for city officials to even take it seriously. The mayor at one point said it was a priority, but there was never any pause with the noise. Today it’s not as bad as it was yesterday, but that could change any minute. From my understanding, the high-pitched sound has to do with the steam and releasing the pressure from the turbines, which they run wide open.

I hear it from inside my house. It’s torture, man. Some people say, “Well, just shut your door. Stay inside. Insulate your house better.” Blah, blah, blah. It was so damn loud in my house the other night that I could feel it. It felt like my house was vibrating. And I’ve had that happen several times—where I can feel it in addition to hearing it. There are a few days here and there when it seems bearable, and I start thinking maybe they’ve finally gotten something fixed. But within 24 hours or less, it’s back to, “Fuck my life.”

Elena Schlossberg (Virginia): “Data Center Alley” is in Loudoun County, about 30 minutes from my house. When that area of Loudoun County first became Data Center Alley, they were small data centers. But it’s metastasized.

When you go into the belly of the beast, you can see what unconstrained data center growth looks like—and how the digital world is crowding out our own. You come over this ramp and look in front of you. As far as the eye can see are sprawling buildings. Cranes everywhere. Substations, transmission lines. It’s a mechanical overgrowth. No matter what road you go down, there’s more and more.

Pratika Katiyar (Virginia): Actual communities could’ve been built there, but instead it’s one data center after another. It’s dystopian, especially compared to my memories of what it was like to grow up here, when there were so many parks and kids had so much space to play and ride their bikes. They can’t ride their bikes there anymore. Some of the data centers are surrounded by barbed wire fences. Some are right out in the open. So it’s these huge, alienating rectangles that clash with the area’s culture and history, as well as the land itself.

Jane (Oregon): Data centers are great for the CEOs and uppers like that, but it’s not good for us or our land. They eat a lot of water. It’s something like 1,300 gallons of water per minute for cooling. Oregon’s in a severe drought. Usually we get buried in snow. We got one inch one day this year. That’s it.

Dan Caruso (Indiana): In 2024, our board of commissioners committed to a 24 million gallon per day withdrawal cap from our aquifer to protect it. That’s for everyday users, like people taking showers, as well as the water needs of farmers and other businesses. But now we have contractors for the data center pulling 35 million gallons of water per day–and that’s in addition to our 24 million. And let’s be generous–the town could go down to 23 million if we had to. You’d still have 58 million gallons of water per day getting pulled. That’s exceeding the capabilities of our aquifer by at least 10 million gallons of water every day. They say it will only be for a period of two years. But it can’t be for one day. They’ll drain the aquifer.

Austin Dalgo (Tennessee): Memphis sits atop one of the purest aquifers in the country. It’s the size of Lake Michigan, just underneath Memphis. We have the best-tasting water I’ve ever had in any city, and that’s because of the Sand Aquifer.

xAI initially told us they were going to use gray water. About a month ago, the company turned around and said, “Oh, by the way, we’re using freshwater at the data center.” They’re feeding off this amazing natural resource we have, using something insane like five million gallons of water a day.

There’s no reason why they can’t use gray water. Musk said that using gray water was always supposed to be phase two of the plan—but that he “doesn’t have the money right now to do it,” which is absurd coming from someone who just became the first trillionaire in history.

Jared Spann (Utah): Water has been a sensitive subject for a while here. This year we had one of the worst snowpack years in Utah history. Almost all of Utah’s water comes from snow runoff. And now Kevin O’Leary wants to use two billion gallons of our water per year for his psychotic data center.

Not having the moisture we need, the temperatures are getting insanely hot. We’re getting well into the hundreds during the summer, and it’s lasting for longer and longer. Everything dries out, so then we’re also dealing with wildfires. As if that weren’t enough, the Great Salt Lake is evaporating and receding every year, which puts toxic chemicals into the air. Salt Lake City and the Wasatch Front traps all those pollutants. Now they’re saying O’Leary’s data center will raise temperatures across the entire Wasatch Front. According to Governor Cox, somehow it will all be fine.

Paul Oblock (Utah): I never would’ve considered myself a climate activist in any way whatsoever. But there are some early estimates from ecologists that O’Leary’s data center could raise daytime temperatures in our region by five degrees, and then nighttime temperatures by almost thirty. So when they’re only 10 miles away from such an awesome ecological site as the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge—it doesn’t take an ecology professor to know that a thirty degree rise in temperature will not be good for any of the wildlife in that area or that marshland habitat. There’s going to be a lot of evaporation of that existing water at an accelerated pace.

If temperatures rise that much, it doesn’t seem sustainable for any amount of time. Imagine where we’ll be in 200 years if it goes on like that. My family and I love it here, but now I’m left wondering what my sons’ future will look like. If we don’t have water that’s easily accessible and we’re bleeding it all dry–I worry about the future for all of us, period.

Amanda Mueller (Wisconsin): I thought these were going to be my golden years. I thought it was going to be me and the raccoons. Now I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t think I can sell my house at this point, but I don’t think I can live with this monster data center either.

I’ve never protested. I’m a 67-year-old lady. The only time I’ve been a menace to someone was when I took sailing lessons. I wanted to mind my own business, but suddenly I’m taking on towns and cities, and even the whole state. I’ve come to realize we’re all in this together, and we can do this together. Even though people are so trodden on and so defeated, there’s still this little voice that won’t go away. And that’s America truly being America.

For anyone who’s looking to get involved, remember that facts speak truth. A lot of people in suits are going to tell you that you don’t matter. They’ll say you’re small and you should crawl back under your rock. So you need thick skin.

But if this keeps you up at night, you should do something. Even if that just means going to a town meeting and telling people it’s wrong. And when you speak to government people, don’t be afraid to tell them like it is. I told our state senator to her face that she’s wishy-washy, and she got really upset. But the people who lead us need to be tougher than that.

Jason Haley (Mississippi): After some back and forth, an xAI representative offered me enough where I could get a nice house somewhere else. It was clear what they wanted, which was for me to shut the fuck up and go away. But it doesn’t feel right. That’s not who I am. What about everyone who can’t just pack up and move? I’m trying to have some integrity here and do the right thing.

Elena Schlossberg (Wisconsin): I was one of those residents who was hesitant to become involved. I was very aware of the situation, but I never thought it would come to this. Having access to more information than I did a year ago—my advice is for people to realize that, if you don’t do it, no one else will.

LaTricea Adams (Tennessee): This is a pivotal moment where the majority of the country has something in common that’s ticking us all off, and that’s data centers. So how can we harness that energy and take back our democracy? It’s possible. The elected officials who are just creating pathways for the tech bros—we need to remind them they work for us, not corporations.

The United States and Iran have signed a Memorandum of Understanding, or (MOU), to end an Iran War that—when it began—Congressional Democrats widely denounced as a reprehensible and illegal “war of choice.” One might logically expect those same Democrats to welcome a diplomatic end to that war. Instead, many have taken aim at the MOU; some have even joined critics in the GOP who’ve suggested that it be subjected to Congressional review. The obvious alternative to allowing negotiations to proceed according to the terms established by the MOU is to continue the Iran War—and all of its attendant geopolitical and economic disruptions.

In a social media post on Thursday evening, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer suggested that the White House would need to seek Congressional approval to move forward with a prospective deal. “If Trump wants to send hundreds of billions of dollars to Iran,” he wrote, “he’ll need to do it with Republican votes. Democrats will not be helping Trump send $300 billion to Iran,” referencing a provision of the MOU to establish a multilateral fund for Iran’s post-war reconstruction and economic development. Hours later, after midnight, Schumer clarified his position: “As I’ve said from day one, this reckless, illegal war was a mistake and it’s no surprise it led to a shameful deal. This war must end.”

Criticisms of the MOU over the last week have highlighted lingering tensions in a party reckoning with its leadership’s long-held support for hawkish and increasingly unpopular foreign policy—especially with regard to Iran. That baggage includes top Democrats’ historically staunch support for an Israeli government that once again seems poised to undermine any lasting peace deal between the US and Iran. “I do still think there’s kind of a vestigial reflex among a lot of Democrats to oppose anything that’s good for Iran, to oppose anything Israel doesn’t like, and to oppose anything that suggests the US is not all-powerful,” says Matt Duss, a former foreign policy staffer for Senator Bernie Sanders and current executive vice president of the Center for International Policy. “Despite the multiple foreign policy failures of the last several decades, especially after 9/11, there is still this belief that American military power can do magical things—even for critics of this war,” he added.

It’s worth noting that Democrats’ criticisms of the MOU have in some cases been rooted in deep misunderstandings of what it actually says. Several senators, for instance, focused on an alleged “$300 Billion Dollar payment to Iran by the U.S.,” as Schumer wrote on social media. Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy called it a “reparations payment to Iran.” Senator Amy Klobuchar, of Minnesota, wrote that those funds could be used to “end homelessness, fund cancer research for 40 years, and give every child free pre-K for over 7 years. Instead, Trump is sending it to Iran.”

The agreement states only that the U.S., “with regional partners,” will “develop a definitive mutually agreed plan with at least USD 300 Billion.” Essentially, this amounts to a commitment to make a plan to create a fund. The MOU further clarifies that those funds will be dollars—not that the U.S. government will itself be providing $300 billion (or any amount) directly.

Esfandyar Batmanghelidj—chief executive of the Bourse & Bazaar Foundation, a research organization based in London—noted that the text of the MOU largely reflects points that negotiators had been discussing even before the Twelve-Day War between Iran and Israel last June. It’s mainly a framework for future negotiations, he explained, and provides for fairly modest economic relief as a show of good-faith that Iran might finally see an end to years of crushing U.S. sanctions. Rather than a $300 billion “payment,” the MOU outlines the immediate provision of two forms of interim economic relief: a sanctions waiver allowing Iran to export oil and petrochemical products, and the return of a small portion of Iranian assets that have been frozen in foreign accounts. The deal, Batmanghelidj added, “makes very clear the promise to Iran that if diplomacy is pursued to the max extent possible, and a deal is reached, then Iran can achieve an end-state where it’s no longer a global pariah.”

It’s arguably somewhat historic that the U.S. and Iran have—after decades of tensions—have agreed to respect one another’s “sovereignty and territorial integrity and to refrain from interfering in each other’s internal affairs,” per the MOU.

Batmanghelidj was wary of the prospect of partisan points-scoring helping to undermine an agreement whose foundations remain fragile. The next round of negotiations between the US and Iran were expected to begin in Switzerland on Friday, then abruptly postponed. Israel continued bombing Lebanon on Friday after reports that the two countries had renewed a ceasefire. “Critics need to be really mindful that they are giving a lot of fodder to hardliners in Iran who are not convinced about this deal,” Batmanghelidj said, “but also hardliners in Israel and the Gulf states, who’ve so far been overruled by more pragmatic figures in their systems.”

If negotiations do proceed, the team that’s been leading those talks for the US—namely Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner—aren’t exactly ideal personnel to hash out the more technical details that will be required for any lasting peace agreement. “Iran and the other countries in the region are going to have to work very hard to make sure Trump doesn’t convince himself that it’s ‘mission accomplished,’” Batmanghelidj said.

Duss cautioned Democrats against doing anything that would co-sign continued fighting. Thankfully, as of Friday, several Democratic critics of the MOU had at least clarified their support for ending the war “on any terms,” as Murphy told CNN. “I hope that most elected Democrats are smart enough to know that right now Donald Trump owns this war,” Duss said. “He owns this whole catastrophe. If Democrats are seen as doing anything to tank this ceasefire agreement—that leads to a resumption of the war—they will be co-owners of this war with Trump.”

A Pajaro Valley Unified School District committee has recommended renaming Cesar E. Chavez Middle School either Central Coast Middle School or Tagami Hashimoto Middle School following allegations of sexual abuse against the late civil rights and farmworker advocate that surfaced earlier this year. The school board reviewed the options last week and is expected to vote on a new name at a future meeting.

Veteran tech website Gizmodo confirmed a compromise on Saturday after readers reported ClickFix malware prompts appearing on article pages. Users posted screenshots of fake CAPTCHA windows appearing on Gizmodo's site. The attack aims to fool users into running malicious code via their terminals. According to Proofpoint threat researcher Tommy M, the attack was seemingly launched by an affiliate of ErrTraffic, a ClickFix-as-a-service program that allows attackers to deliver whichever malware they choose. He said the ClickFix prompt was tailored to each user's OS. The Windows version attempted to install the NetSupport RAT malware, which abuses the legitimate NetSupport Manager tool to gain access to affected systems. Darktrace says NetSupport RAT can also be used to exfiltrate files from affected systems and to load additional payloads, such as other malware strains and ransomware. The macOS version had a payload configured but appeared to be broken, requiring a password to open a ZIP archive. Gizmodo said the attacks were being displayed only "briefly," and the timeline of user reports, which span just a few hours, suggests that was indeed the case. "We identified and resolved a security incident on our site earlier today," the outlet said. "A compromised account was exploited to inject a malicious script, briefly exposing users to scam content. The site was taken offline immediately, the script removed, and the account secured. "We're back up. If you notice anything unusual, reach out." The Register confirmed that the website is no longer serving ClickFix prompts as of Monday. ®

Ask any parent: banning kids from doing anything doesn't work. On the contrary, it's just about the most powerful way to motivate them. As The Register reported last week, the UK government is planning on kicking under-16s off social media. The move echoes a similar one by the Australian government, which we reported at the end of 2025 – noting at the time that "nobody thinks it'll really work." Perhaps, though, there's more to it than at first sight. Perhaps this is some sinister mandarin's long-term plan to improve digital literacy and technology awareness among British, and indeed Australian, youth, using a well-established form of mind control far more effective than the CIA's MK-ULTRA: reverse psychology. Or, as the late great Sir Terry Pratchett called it, "headology." Although this quotation from Witches Abroad is about witches, he could have been talking about teenagers: "And that ain't easy, with people like them. Got to use headology. Got to make 'em send 'emselves. Tell Esme Weatherwax she's got to go somewhere and she won't go out of contrariness, so tell her she's not to go and she'll run there over broken glass." Given a certain type of teenager, we can think of no more powerful incentive to self-education than to tell them that a powerful adult somewhere doesn't want them to see something fun or potentially naughty. The direct result will be an urge to learn about geolocation, virtual private networks, identity verification, biometrics, and everything to do with accessing bits of the internet that they're not meant to. The legislation specifically says: "The ban will therefore include platforms like Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X." That sounds like a lot of the fun bits to us. Or perhaps not, depending on your perspective. This especially pertains to restrictions that apply to those bits of the internet with lots of, shall we say, flesh tones. It reminds us of the aid package for VPN providers known as the Online Safety Act, which rapidly drove up demand 14 times. It also reminds us of a couple of lines from another Discworld novel, The Colour of Magic. "Rincewind got down on one knee, the better to arrange the picture, and pressed the enchanted lever." "The box said, 'It's no good. I've run out of pink.'" "A hitherto unnoticed door opened in front of his eyes. A small, green and hideously warty humanoid figure leaned out, pointed at a color-encrusted palette in one clawed hand, and screamed at him." "No pink! See?" screeched the homunculus. "No good you going on pressing the lever when there's no pink, is there? If you wanted pink you shouldn't of took all those pictures of young ladies, should you? It's monochrome from now on, friend. All right?" Well, quite. ®

Donald Trump’s war with Iran is making it clear this presidency could have much worse long-term consequences than we expected. Yet Trump is spending his nights indulging his crazed obsessions. In one early-morning tirade, he raged about “fools” who criticize his Iran fiasco, calling them “bad people” and “stupid.” In another, he fulminated at length about his ballroom. He’s posting updates on the gilding of statues and images of himself on international magazine covers. The gap between the gravity of the moment on one side and his trivial megalomania on the other is jarring. We talked to economist Paul Krugman, who has been writing really well on his Substack about both sides of this divide. He goes big-picture, detailing the signs that we’re a country in decline, why other countries are looking toward a post-American world, and why it’s shocking that we put up with his worsening megalomania and nonstop desecration of our republic. Listen to this episode here.

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Legislators last week approved a health tax bill meant to continue critical federal funding for the state’s Medicaid program, also known as Medi-Cal. Their approval comes despite warnings from health industry leaders that the tax, as designed, will raise premiums for privately insured Californians.

New federal rules are forcing the state to restructure its managed care organization tax, or MCO tax, which the state collects from health insurance plans that coordinate care for their members. California has been charging Medi-Cal insurance plans at a higher rate than private plans. The state’s newly designed solution, Senate Bill 125, will lower the tax on Medi-Cal plans and raise the tax on private plans to the same level. If finalized by the governor, and accepted by the federal government, the new plan would shift more of the cost burden onto people who buy private insurance but bring in less revenue overall. 

Senate President Pro Tem Monique Limón, a Santa Barbara Democrat, told reporters last week that there was no perfect plan for redesigning the tax and that the Senate still has concerns, but the proposal senators voted through is one that would bring in money quickly. 

“We have as a Senate been very clear that we needed revenue … it was a matter of making a decision which we could troubleshoot given what is happening at the federal level,” Limón said.

As part of the tax and spending law Congress passed last summer, the federal government imposed new restrictions on provider taxes, including the one imposed on health plans. Under existing rules, California received almost $8 billion annually from this tax; the new limits mean the state will receive billions less. The Legislature’s plan tries to fill at least some of that gap.

The plan does not directly raise health insurance premiums. Instead it imposes a higher tax on private plans, which have said they’d pass the cost down to consumers.

The proposal would require all health plans, both public and private, to pay a monthly rate of $8.85 per enrollee – a total cost of about $1.5 billion a year for private plans. If health plans pass the entire tax to their members, Californians could see about a 1.5% increase in their monthly premiums, according to the independent Legislative Analyst’s Office. That’s on top of the yearly premium rate increases that people see year to year. 

The California Association of Health Plans, the health insurance lobby, estimates this would translate to consumers paying about $100 more in premiums each year. That means a family of four could be looking at $400 more a year in health premiums. 

Charles Bacchi, president of the association, said health plans roll taxes and fees into the administrative portion of premiums. “That is just actuarial science,” he said. “So when you increase taxes on health plans and insurers, that is built into premium rates and the customer pays it.”

Affordability is key concern

The Legislature’s plan largely mirrors what Gov. Gavin Newsom and his Department of Finance proposed last month. Bacchi argues the state could have imposed a smaller tax to lessen the impact on plans and consumers. 

The Department of Finance said it tried to balance affordability for privately insured patients with generating enough revenue to keep the safety net afloat amid federal funding cuts. The department settled on the $8.85 a month assessment because that  rate would generate $2.3 billion a year – roughly the amount that the state generated before 2023 to support Medi-Cal, said H.D. Palmer, a spokesperson for the Department of Finance.

A medical worker pushing a bed through the corridors of Hazel Hawkins Memorial Hospital in Hollister. Credit: Larry Valenzuela / CalMatters/CatchLight Local

Of that total, $2 billion would support existing Medi-Cal services, while roughly $300 million would fund previously established rate increases for providers delivering primary, maternal, and mental health care to enrollees, Palmer said. 

Some legislators continued to raise concerns late into the week. Sen. Akilah Weber Pierson, a San Diego Democrat, said she found the tax plan “extremely problematic” as she questioned the administration during a hearing Wednesday. “I am very uncomfortable with this proposal and the economic burden it will have on the families I serve as a Senator but also a physician.” She voted for the measure on Thursday.

Bacchi’s organization, along with physician groups and the California Hospital Association, urged legislators to reject the tax proposal as is.

“What makes this vote especially disappointing is that California leaders continue to talk about affordability as a top priority,” health plans said in a statement after the Assembly approved the measure. “It is difficult to reconcile those statements with a vote that will increase health insurance premiums on the very people policymakers say they are trying to help.”

Industry leaders also argued that the tax measure conflicts with Proposition 35, which voters passed in 2024 and which limits the taxes charged to private health plans. Prop 35 also requires that much of the revenue be used to expand Medi-Cal services and increase provider rates, rather than offset general fund spending on the program. 

“Raising health insurance premiums to help balance the state budget is simply robbing Peter to pay Paul,” said Dr. René Bravo, president of the California Medical Association, which represents doctors around the state. “It will only make it harder for families to keep coverage and get the care they need.”

New federal rules prompt tax redesign

California is redesigning its MCO tax to comply with new federal rules implemented through H.R. 1, the spending plan Congress approved last year. California currently charges Medicaid plans, which are reimbursed jointly by the state and federal government, a significantly higher tax than private plans. The state then uses revenue from this tax to draw down matching federal funds. 

The Trump administration argues that states “exploit” this funding mechanism by effectively pushing their share of Medicaid costs onto the federal government. Critics of the tax describe its “net effect” this way: Insurers remain financially whole, federal Medicaid spending increases, and states reduce their own costs.

To close what federal officials call a “loophole,” the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued a final rule earlier this year prohibiting states from taxing Medicaid plans more than commercial plans. Now that the legislature has approved California’s revised MCO tax plan, Newsom must sign the measure in order for the state to seek approval for it from the federal government.

Consumer advocates say that maintaining strong revenues from the MCO tax is key to keeping the Medi-Cal program running. But if the state knows that insurers will pass the cost onto private customers through higher premiums, California legislators should ensure the money remains within the health system and improves care. 

“What we don’t find acceptable is to have individual healthcare consumers pay increased premiums to support the MCO tax, and then just have that money backfill the general fund,” said Kiran Savage-Sangwan, executive director of the California Pan-Ethnic Health Network. 

Because the Legislature’s plan resembles the governor’s proposal, budget experts expect Newsom to sign it as part of the larger budget package. One major hurdle remains, however: federal approval. The Trump administration must approve the state’s revised tax plan for California to continue drawing down federal matching funds. 

The job of lawmakers is to put together a proposal that is compliant with new federal rules, said Adriana Ramos-Yamamoto, a senior policy fellow at the California Budget and Policy Center. 

But, she added, “it’s not a guarantee that the federal government will approve our new MCO tax proposal.”

Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org to learn more.

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The legal battle between Broadcom and Tesco isn't so much a contract dispute as a serial TV drama. An aggressive organization takes over a renowned operation with blue chip clientele, and puts the squeeze on. Prices go up, customers are encouraged to move to new products if they know what's good for them, and the old ways are shredded. The new mob reckons it has customers locked in. Their tentacles reach deep into the heart of corporate IT infrastructure, and who wants the trauma of a heart transplant when you can still pay for the medicine, right? Lots of little people will move on, even some of the big fish, but who cares. Triple the cost and lose half the customers, and you're still up on the deal. Eat it up. Only, some of the marks refuse to play the game. One is the UK supermarket giant Tesco plc. Citing contractual violations and unfair practices, including the revocation of support options and perpetual licenses, it tells Broadcom it'll see it in court. This is a threat to the authority of the new regime, and backing down is not an option. Broadcom has seen off corporate leviathans like AT&T. A British grocer will do the sums and see sense. The British grocer is not seeing sense. It's seeing red. In the latest episode, new court filings up the ante, with Tesco revealing numerous offers from Broadcom and why they are displeasing, a massive internal push to ditch Broadcom altogether, and the dangers and costs of a forced march to relieve the siege on company-critical systems. Broadcom's bluff is being called. Tesco, it turns out, is not an enemy you take on lightly. It's been around for about 70 years longer than Broadcom, going from a market stall to the UK's biggest supermarket. It makes more money than Broadcom, with revenues of £73 billion ($96 billion) compared to $64 billion (£48 billion). There's selling chips, and then there's selling chips.* These are just numbers. When it comes to contractual shenanigans with suppliers, Tesco has form. Ten years ago, a regulatory investigation found that it had itself been treating suppliers unfairly, delaying payments, making unilateral deductions, and engaging in other improper billing practices. Tesco apologized, paid £1 million ($1.4 million) costs, and restructured its supplier billing. Whether it's the zeal of the reformed or institutional memory of how to play, Tesco is remarkably disinclined to brush Broadcom under the carpet. Sadly, the series finale will be as anti-climactic as Game of Thrones' terminal detumescence. Not for nothing has Tesco estimated the rushed migration will be finished at the end of 2027, which coincides in a non-coincidental way with the start of the actual court hearing. By then, of course, the full cost of the extraordinary measures will be known and Tesco's lawyers will present some truly cosmic estimates for damages. Broadcom will fold, either on the courtroom steps or – if it's sensible – long before. A secret deal will be done. There is always a power imbalance between supplier and client, and this drama shows what happens when one side misjudges the other. With corporate IT infrastructure, bad things happen if the supplier overestimates its importance or if a customer underestimates it. It's bad news indeed if you can't afford to break a supplier lock-in, or if your business can't afford to lose one particular client. IT has been a paragon of this equation, going through cycle after cycle in which power imbalances brought down the big and the small. IBM once owned corporate computing, NetWare owned the server space, Nokia reigned in mobility. The very best time to be aware of history is when a future technology beckons. Virtualization was once the future, decoupling software from the hardware it ran on, enabling efficiency, flexibility, and eventually the revolution of life in the cloud. VMware was a trusted partner in the virtualization revolution, respectful of its clients and respected by them. Technically and corporately trustworthy and responsible, right up to the point a venture capital outfit disguised as a chip company took over and busied itself with weaponizing assets. The joker in this particular game is that while virtualization is fundamental to modern corporate infrastructure, any particular virtualization solution is replaceable. The VMs do the work, and they don't care what's beneath them. It may be painful to realize that, but it can be done. Broadcom's bet is that this pain makes VMware a one-way street; Tesco's bet is that not only is that not true, but the pain can be reflected back to its source. What if a core technology really was a one-way street? What if it involved such a rewiring not just of an organization's underlying tech, but the very nature of the relationship between that org and the tech that powers it? What if it ripped out not just layers of the stack, but the stack itself and the expertise behind it? What if it absorbed so much of every resource that powered the corporate IT market that it choked out the competition? What if all this were true, and then that tech failed? Worse, what if it succeeded? These aren't hypotheticals. This is the game, right now. What Broadcom versus Tesco shows shows us are the real rules, where it can go badly for either side of the supplier/client equation when reasonable assumptions are changed. Like all good dramas, it makes explicit conflicts we recognize but can't make explicit. Big decisions are coming. Enjoy the show. ® *Chips, as in "fries."

WHO, ME? The world of work is weird, so The Register records the worst of it every Monday in a reader-contributed column we call "Who, Me?" in which you admit to mistakes, and reveal your escapes. This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Terry" who told us of a summer job he worked in the 1980s. "It was at a municipal IT facility, and everyone had a specific job to do, and woe unto you if you stepped over the line," he wrote. Terry illustrated the workplace culture by telling The Register that not long before he started work, the facility had just replaced a punch clock with a clipboard on which staff recorded the times they arrived at and left the office. "Everyone wrote 08:00-16:00, but being a young whipper-snapper, I cleverly wrote 07:53-16:01, or 08:02-16:04. That got me hauled off to face the boss for being late." When Terry wasn't tangling with management, his job involved programming an IBM mainframe. One day, he needed to move a program from one drive to another, a task that the mainframe front end didn't support. "A colleague told me there was a MOVE command to do the job, so I ran it and my file disappeared from the source drive as expected," Terry wrote. But the file never reached the destination drive, so Terry's work was lost. "Always one to collect receipts before taking any action, I looked into the MOVE command and found it was a batch program." A very bad batch program with no error checking or safeguards, so Terry rewrote the script so it wouldn't delete data. He sent his changes to the mainframe sysop team, which he assumed would be pleased because his changes prevented data loss. "Instead, I was hauled off to the boss's office again," he told Who, Me? "They wanted to know why I was spending valuable time doing someone else's job. I said I had to because those people weren't doing it right." That answer went down badly, so Terry tried again. "I lost an hour's work and wanted to save my colleagues from the same fate," he said, before again being told to just do his job and take the matter no further. "Lesson learned: just do your job," Terry wrote. "I did my job and got another one elsewhere after that summer was done." Has going above and beyond the call of duty landed you in trouble? If so, it's your duty to click here to send us an email about your experience so we can consider it for a future instalment of Who, Me? ®

Mach's approach differs sharply from some of its peers.

⚡ Quick Take

• The Vampire Lestat episode three properly introduced Nicholas de Lenfent
• Nicki is a vampire who was Lestat’s first real love.
• The AMC show’s depiction is remarkably close to Anne Rice canon.

In episode three of AMC’s The Vampire Lestat, “Toronto,” we finally get an excellent character study of Nicholas de Lenfent, Lestat’s first true love in 18th-century France. He’s once again played by actor Joseph Potter, who briefly played him in a flashback scene in Interview with the Vampire season two. But who is this enigmatic vampire in the Anne Rice Vampire Chronicles canon? Much like Claudia, he’s not a character who lasted past one novel, but his impact haunts Lestat for the rest of his immortal days.

How Do Nicholas de Lenfent and Lestat First Meet? AMC Networks

In the early chapters of The Vampire Lestat, we learned that Lestat was friends with Nicholas de Lenfant as a child. They shared a potent childhood moment together, when both were taken by a local priest to a location where they burned witches in the Middle Ages. They reunited as adults after Lestat saved their French countryside village from a pack of wolves. Nicki’s father was a tailor, and he presented Lestat with a red cloak lined with their fur. The two reconnected, with Nicki explaining how he had gone to Paris to become a pupil of Mozart as a violinist. However, he ultimately wasn’t good enough, and returned home in shame. When Lestat decided to run away to Paris, he took Nicki with him, in part because he’d lived there before.

Was Nicki Lestat’s First Love? AMC Networks

By all accounts, Nicki was Lestat’s first true love, although Lestat had sexual trysts with both men and women before Nicki. He fell in love with his wit and talent as a musician, but his cynicism was often overwhelming. Yet Nicki was equally drawn to Lestat’s outgoing attitude and sense of humor. Lestat found success in Paris as an actor, but Nicki wanted to go to Paris and fail, hoping to spite his disapproving parents. They wanted him to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a tailor, not become a hedonistic musician in Paris. But Nicki was indeed Lestat’s first true love.

Why Does Nicholas Struggle After Becoming a Vampire?

Nicki struggled with depression as a human, had a tendency toward dark thoughts, and was generally cynical. He likely suffered from some form of undiagnosed mental illness. Because of this, Lestat resisted giving Nicolas the Dark Gift after becoming a vampire himself. But after Armand’s coven kidnapped Nicki and drained him of blood, Lestat gave in and turned him. This, despite his own mother Gabrielle warning him of impending disaster.

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THE VAMPIRE LESTAT’S Backstory, Explained in Linear Fashion

When turned into an immortal, Nicki went catatonic for months, with Lestat bringing humans for him to feed on. Eventually, he snapped out of the catatonia and rejected Lestat for ever keeping the blood from him in the first place. He essentially tells Lestat that he “owes him” the Theater of the Vampires, and tells Lestat to leave him and Paris.

Why Does Lestat Leave Nicki? AMC Networks

Lestat leaves Nicki after he angrily rejects him, sometime after he transforms him into a vampire. He tells Lestat that he resents the fact that he succeeded in Paris as an actor, when all he wanted when they went to Paris was to disappoint his disapproving parents, whom he hated. He wanted to “go down and down and down,” while Lestat continued to “go up to the light.” And when he got “the dark magic,” as he called it, he somehow became an even brighter beacon that Nicki resented even more. So he essentially forced Lestat and Gabrielle to leave Paris.

What Happens to Nicholas in The Vampire Lestat?

After Lestat and Gabrielle leave Paris, they leave Armand in charge of the coven in the Theater, along with Nicki. Armand would write Lestat letters, informing him of his progress. Sadly, Nicki’s mental condition did not improve, and he continued to behave recklessly. He made new vampire after new vampire, drawing too much attention, and his kills were sloppy, endangering the coven. At one point, Armand chops off Nicki’s hands as punishment. Eventually, Nicki realizes he has no stamina for vampire life, and throws himself into the fire, something Lestat learns about in a letter from Armand. The ancient coven master also sends Lestat Nicki’s violin.

How Does Nicki’s Fate Affect Lestat? AMC Networks

Lestat falls into a deep depression over the death of Nicki, and he blames himself for everything that went wrong with him. In fact, he buries himself in the Earth after Nicki’s death, until the ancient vampire Marius finds him. When he eventually meets and makes Louis a vampire, he describes him as Nicki’s “spiritual twin” in many ways. He even refers to his relationship with Louis as punishment for his failings with his first love.

How Is Nicholas Different in the Books and The Vampire Lestat TV Series?

Nicolas de Lenfent is remarkably similar to his portrayal in the novels, perhaps more than any other character. One key difference is that Nicki was already in Paris when Lestat reunited with him, and they didn’t run away there together. But everything else about Nicki in AMC’s The Vampire Lestat is in keeping with Rice’s original idea of him. The other big difference is that Nicki dies with Lestat present in the room, after chopping off his own hands.

Will Nicki return in future episodes? It’s certainly possible there are more flashbacks to his and Lestat’s time together. We doubt that Nicki survived the flames in the AMC version’s events, but one never knows. The Vampire Lestat is currently dropping new episodes every Sunday night on AMC and AMC+.

The post Who Is Nicholas de Lenfent in THE VAMPIRE LESTAT? appeared first on Nerdist.

⚡ Quick Take

• Jacob Anderson’s Louis has a storyline in AMC’s The Vampire Lestat that is unique to the series.
• Louis was the main character of Interview with the Vampire seasons one and two.
• His storyline in The Vampire Lestat is not from Anne Rice’s books.

The principal star of Interview with the Vampire seasons one and two was Jacob Anderson as the undead Louis de Pointe du Lac. After all, he is the titular vampire being interviewed. But he takes a back seat for season three, now re-titled The Vampire Lestat. And this is in keeping with Anne Rice’s series of novels, as Louis just makes a minor appearance in the second book in the series. However, the AMC series gives Jacob Anderson as Louis a whole new storyline, one not from the novels. And they tie it to a plotline from IWTV season two, a story point also created just for the AMC series.

The Talamasca Recruits Louis to Take Down the Fang Gang AMC Networks

At the end of episode two, the Talamasca convinces Louis to handle a problem for them, essentially cornering Louis after a hotel meeting with Daniel Molloy. The vampire coven in Detroit that attempted to kill Lestat, the Fang Gang, has been making undue trouble. They’ve been selling fentanyl, keeping humans prisoners as a food supply, and just overall wreaking havoc. The Talamasca does not want to get its hands dirty, so they try to convince Louis to take care of its problem, just as he did in Paris with the Theater of the Vampires decades prior. They flatter him, telling him he’s quite good at dispatching those who trouble him.

AMC Networks

At first, Louis says “no thank you,” until Talamasca agent Raglan James mentions the leader of the Fang Gang, a vampire named Killer. But he used to go by another name, many years before. He once went by Bruce. And Louis instantly realizes who this Bruce is, especially after Raglan James shows him an old photograph. Once he hears that Killer is really Bruce, he agrees to take care of the problem for the Talamasca. Because this Bruce (Damon Daunno) is the same vampire who once tortured Claudia for weeks, then seemingly disappeared. Louis has waited a century for his revenge.

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THE VAMPIRE LESTAT’S Backstory, Explained in Linear Fashion

In season one of IWTV, we learn that Claudia attempted to leave home, where she met the first vampire outside her family, a man named Bruce. He charms her at first, but later brutally sexually assaults her, and keeps her prisoner for weeks. She writes about the entire harrowing experience in her diary, which Louis reads from. He eventually abandons her and takes off for parts unknown, leaving Claudia traumatized for the rest of her life. In the present day, Louis learns Bruce survived until the present day, and now leads the Detroit coven. This is in keeping with Rice’s novel The Queen of the Damned, where Killer leads a motorcycle vampire gang.

Louis Gets Revenge for Claudia AMC Networks

We see in episode three, “Toronto,” Louis goes full vampire slayer mode, and goes to the vampire coven house in Detroit. He dispatches all of the vampires providing security, decapitating more than one of them. Louis then frees their human prisoners. Covered in blood, he waits for Killer to get home. He finally arrives with his new bride, who we recognize as Baby Jenks, the vampire groupie from episode one. Louis pushes Baby Jenks out of the way, and cripples Killer. He then reads the passages of Claudia’s diary to him, detailing her harrowing ordeal with him that nearly destroyed her psyche. When he’s done, he lights the pages of the diary on fire, sets them on Killer’s head…and watches as the vampire once named Bruce burns to death after 100 years of causing so much pain.

Louis Meets Regina, Claudia’s Human Doppelgänger AMC Networks

Afterward, Louis tells his new lover, Loumel, that he feels better after having done the deed. However, his somber facial expression suggests otherwise. Getting rid of Killer and his coven (except for Baby Jenks, who survives) didn’t bring Claudia back. So Louis goes to an all-night diner in New York, where he’s been following a young waitress who works there. Turns out, this waitress is an exact doppelgänger for his lost Claudia, only human. And British. This is how actress Delainey Hayles returns to the series, as a waitress named Regina.

Louis (and Claudia’s?) Future in The Vampire Lestat

Could Regina be Claudia reincarnated in human form? And can Louis ever forgive himself for everything that happened to her? None of these story elements, such as Louis’ revenge on Bruce or Claudia’s human doppelgänger, are from Rice’s novels. AMC’s The Vampire Lestat is truly going into uncharted territory for the character of Louis this season. And we can’t wait to see what his future holds. Judging from the opening moments of episode one, which take place in a future where Louis is crippled, it’s going to be a harrowing journey.

The post How THE VAMPIRE LESTAT Gives Louis All New Storylines appeared first on Nerdist.

⚡ Quick Take

• Fans have been wondering where Magnus got his Lestat fan art painting from.
• Magnus actor Damien Atkins shares that he thinks the vampire drew it himself.
• We guess it’s an artistic bloodline.

The Vampire Magnus is a terrifying figure. On a dime, he can turn from campily pathetic to an aggressive monster. One truly twisted facet of Magnus is revealed to us during The Vampire Lestat‘s “Your Biggest Fan” song sequence. There, we see that Magnus is having a slew of imaginary romantic overtures with Lestat. And that includes setting up a candlelit dinner, complete with wine, candles, and… a fan art portrait of Lestat. Of course, “Your Biggest Fan” is largely a figment of Lestat’s imagination of Marius. But, in some ways, we understand it to have a more omniscient view of what really happened with all the characters it showcases. And so, fans had to wonder, where did Magnus get his fan art portrait of Lestat? As part of a larger conversation with Magnus’ actor Damian Atkins, coming soon, Nerdist inquired about the provenance of the Lestat portrait. And Atkins thinks Magnus drew this Lestat fan art himself.

AMC

Atkins laughed and shared the following about Magnus’ Lestat portrait, “Oh, that’s so great. I think I drew it myself. I love that. Yeah. I think there’s a lot of discarded, terrible versions of it.” And when we suggested that he was after one perfect drawing. Atkins agreed, “Yeah. I took my time.”

So there you go, everyone. Magnus didn’t commission anyone to make Lestat, who could do it as well as he could? There’s also something eerie and shudder-inducing to the vision of all the dead blond men in the tower hanging next to all the crumpled up versions of the Lestat portrait on the floor. It casts an even darker light on the whole scene… and on how Magnus sees the world around him.

It also occurs to us that if Magnus is an artist, that does reveal quite a creative bloodline: Magnus with his (creepy) fan art portraits, Nicki with his violin, and Lestat with his singing. It’s too bad Magnus couldn’t have found more solace in making art and less in tormenting the objects of his twisted affection.

The Vampire Lestat airs on AMC and AMC+, Sundays at 9 pm ET/PT and midnight, respectively. You can snag The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice to read, if you’d like to know a little bit more about what’s going on.

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The post Where Did Magnus Get His Lestat Fan Art Portrait? Damien Atkins Says ‘He Drew It Himself’ appeared first on Nerdist.

⚡ Quick Take

• The third episode of The Vampire Lestat introduced viewers to Magnus, Lestat’s sadistic maker.
• Magnus is an ancient vampire who becomes obsessed with Lestat and is determined to pass on his vampirism to him.
• After turning Lestat, Magnus casts himself into the fire and dies. This means Lestat never actually knows his maker. But in the AMC series, Lestat imagines Magnus through his song, “Your Biggest Fan”

Episode 3 of The Vampire Lestat, “Toronto,” finally shows us the vampiric transformation of Sam Reid’s Lestat back in the 1700s. At last, we see how his maker, Magnus (Damien Atkins), turned the young stage actor into the glamorous immortal we all know today. But who is The Vampire Lestat‘s Magnus, and what is his relation to the other vampires in the series? Here’s everything we know about Lestat’s centuries-old sire.

AMC Networks Who Is Magnus, Lestat’s Maker, in The Vampire Lestat?

Magnus is an ancient vampire with dark hair and unsettling features. A French alchemist in the 15th century, he was denied the supernatural blood by the ancient vampire Rhoshamandes for being too physically unattractive. So he found a vampire named Benedict, made by Rhoshamandes around 800 AD. While Benedict was hibernating, Magnus stole the blood from him and turned himself into a vampire. He was an outcast from the local covens, who considered him a heretic for living outside their rules. Over 300 years, he accumulated vast wealth from his victims, which he hoarded in a tower outside Paris. But as the centuries passed, the immortality began to drive Magnus insane.

How Does Magnus Find Lestat? AMC Networks

Magnus becomes fascinated with the mortal Lestat in the late 18th century, when he’s a young actor playing Lelio in a local Paris theater—a tale which Lestat recounts to readers in Anne Rice’s The Vampire Lestat. Magnus reads his mind and sees that Lestat killed eight wolves back home and barely survived. Fascinated by his bravery and tenacity, Magnus begins to stalk Lestat, telepathically calling him “Wolfkiller.” Also, Magnus finds Lestat physically beautiful, citing his blonde hair and blue eyes. One night, he pulls Lestat through the window of his home, while his lover Nicki screams, believing Lestat died in the attack.

Why Does Magnus Choose Lestat as His Heir in The Vampire Lestat?

Magnus mainly picks Lestat as his undead heir for his looks; that’s true. But that was not the only reason. After Lestat was transformed, he found the decomposing bodies of dozens of identical blonde men in Magnus’ dungeons. Clearly, Magnus meant to turn them, but ultimately chose to just kill them, for not being up to snuff to receive the Dark Gift. Lestat made the cut because of his innate bravery and his irreverent personality.

How Does Magnus Turn Lestat Into a Vampire? AMC Networks

Unlike what Lestat will eventually do with Louis, Magnus did not give Lestat a choice in becoming his fledgling. Magnus essentially assaulted him and forced him to become a vampire, even though Lestat resisted and said no with his dying breath in The Vampire Lestat. Even though Lestat relishes his vampire nature, it was done to him completely against his will.

What Happens to Magnus After Turning Lestat?

After Magnus turns Lestat, he gives him a quick rundown on what to do (and what not to do) as a vampire. With his heir now fully a vampire, he sets a funeral pyre and ends his undead life. Before Magnus dies, he warns Lestat to scatter the ashes, or he might return, in a nightmarish form that he can’t conceive. He leaves Lestat his tower and his vast wealth. In Anne Rice’s 2014 novel Prince Lestat, Magnus actually does returns as a ghost, who now looks like the blonde beauty he always coveted. But occasionally, his ghostly form flickers back to his old self, which is a shock to those around him. We’ll have to wait and see whether Magnus in The Vampire Lestat series is able to achieve this ghostly status.

AMC Networks How Old Is Magnus in Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles?

Magnus was made a vampire about 300 years before the events of The Vampire Lestat, somewhere around the late 15th century. Thus, the ghostly form of Magnus we meet in Prince Lestat is about five centuries old.

Is Magnus One of the Oldest Vampires in the Series?

While Magnus is old, he’s nowhere near the oldest vampire in Anne Rice lore. He’s roughly the same age as Armand. Marius is over 2,000 years old, as are the vampires Pandora and Mael. And of course, Akasha, the Queen of the Damned, is 6,000 years old. So are the twins Maharet and Mekare.

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Major Changes AMC’s THE VAMPIRE LESTAT Makes to Anne Rice’s Books What Powers Does Lestat Inherit From His Maker Magnus?

Because Magnus never sired another vampire in his 300 years, his blood never became diluted. So Lestat inherited a full array of vampire powers from his maker. Lestat gained telepathy, called the Mind Gift, from Magnus, could set fires with his mind with the Fire Gift, and was much harder to kill thanks to his maker’s age when he transformed him.

AMC Magnus in AMC’s The Vampire Lestat Series

In the AMC series, we don’t get much of Magnus’ backstory. We know he’s old, not very attractive, and is an outcast from Armand’s coven. We see him stalk and kidnap Lestat, just as in the book, and we see glimpses of the other blonde men he killed in his tower. However, we don’t see him throw himself into the flames. Instead, Lestat describes the event to Daniel Molloy. A version of Magnus haunts Lestat in the present day, but we assume it’s not a real ghost, but a manifestation of Lestat’s trauma.

Lestat’s Song “Your Biggest Fan” Is About Magnus

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Daniel Hart Talks Crafting Lestat’s Magnus in THE VAMPIRE LESTAT’s ‘Your Biggest Fan’ Song

One of the songs in The Vampire Lestat, “Your Biggest Fan,” written by Daniel Hart, is sung by Lestat. But it’s told through what Lestat believes is his maker’s POV after he gave him the Dark Gift. Since Magnus kidnapped, assaulted, and transformed Lestat against his will, leaving behind no guidebook, the song is his way of reckoning with what Magnus did to him centuries ago. Despite the torture Magnus put him through, he now romanticizes it all (to a degree). He sees Magnus as “his biggest fan,” who gave him a powerful gift in the worst possible way. It’s pretty twisted, but Lestat uses music as a coping mechanism when dealing with what Magnus did to him in The Vampire Lestat.

The Vampire Lestat airs on AMC and AMC+, Sundays at 9 pm ET/PT and midnight, respectively. You can snag The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice to read, if you’d like to know a little bit more about what’s going on.

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⚡ Quick Take

• It’s a bloody world out there, so strap in. We’re keeping track of all the major character deaths in The Vampire Lestat.

Even amongst immortal vampires, deaths can occur. And in The Vampire Lestat, it’s shaping up to be a fairly violent season already. Some deaths, we know are coming from Anne Rice’s books, while others might take us by surprise. Join us as we keep track of the bloody business of being a vampire. Here are all the major character deaths we’ve seen so far in The Vampire Lestat. Warning for some discussion of dark themes below.

Lestat’s Maker Magnus Throws Himself Into the Fire AMC

This The Vampire Lestat series death comes right from Anne Rice’s The Vampire Lestat book. After stalking Lestat, kidnapping him, and turning him against his will, Lestat’s Maker, Magnus, throws himself into the fire and dies. Granted, we don’t actually see this moment in The Vampire Lestat, but Daniel confirms it is so. Thus, Magnus leaves Lestat totally alone to navigate being a vampire and Lestat never even truly meets his Maker. But in The Vampire Lestat, we get to see Lestat reckoning with Magnus after his death in the song, “Your Biggest Fan.”

Daniel Hart told Nerdist about the song, “I thought, well, if he’s going to write a song about his transformation, then he should write it from the point of view of the person who transformed him. And since it was basically abduction and then abuse, and a rape of sorts, then that would be Lestat’s experience of it.”

And continues:

But the person who did those things, as can often be the case in real life, the person who is the tormentor, the predator, the abuser, doesn’t view themselves that way. And for Magnus, I don’t think he viewed himself that way at all, and either because he himself was so dark and twisted or because by that point in his own life, he had just basically lost his mind. So I thought, yeah, he wouldn’t think of himself as doing something terrible at all. He wasn’t torturing people. He was loving them. So I thought, oh, it’s a love song. Obviously, it’s a love song. So then I started writing a love song about abducting someone and then torturing them, and then it became the thing that it is.

But, [of course, the song] is really about Lestat’s version of what he thinks Magnus thought was happening. Since he barely knew him. The guy transformed him and then threw himself into a fire, and that was that.

Lestat’s First Love Nicki May or May Not Have Been Killed By Armand AMC

In The Vampire Lestat, the readers learn in an “off-screen” scenario that Lestat’s first love and fledgling, Nicolas de Lenfent, cast himself into the fire and died. It’s implied that Armand drove this suicide by tormenting the already unstable Nicki, by, among other things, cutting off his musician hands.

In The Vampire Lestat, Nicki’s death remains off-screen, but its narrative changes from Anne Rice’s books. Lestat recounts Nicholas’ final moments to Daniel in The Vampire Lestat, narrating that Armand pushed Nicki into the fire and held him there until he died. Notably, in this version of events, Nicholas cuts his own hands off, and Armand isn’t responsible for, at the very least, that part of things.

But, as Joseph Potter, Nicholas’ actor, cautions us about the current iteration of Nicki’s death, “We don’t see it.” Make of that what you will.

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Major Changes AMC’s THE VAMPIRE LESTAT Makes to Anne Rice’s Books The Vampire Bruce Meets Death at Louis’ Hands in The Vampire Lestat AMC

The Vampire Bruce does exist in the world of Anne Rice and appears in Queen of the Damned, but he’s a very different character in AMC’s Interview with the Vampire/The Vampire Lestat. Primarily, we know Bruce to be Claudia’s torturer. When Claudia briefly leaves Lestat and Louis, Bruce kidnaps her and does unspeakable things, which make him worthy of way more than death.

In The Vampire Lestat, the Talamsca want Louis to destroy the Detroit coven that’s plaguing them. Louis refuses until they reveal to him that Bruce is the one running it. Like in Anne Rice’s Queen of the Damned, Bruce is now the leader of the Fang Gang coven. And that’s enough to convince Louis to destroy them all.

After demolishing the coven and freeing their human “food,” Louis handily cracks Bruce’s spine and forces him to listen to everything he has to say. In a truly harrowing scene, Louis reads the missing pages from Claudia’s notebook to Bruce (as we also get images of Lestat’s torment at the hands of Magnus). Then, using the fire gift, Louis sets the pages aflame, drops them on Bruce’s head, and that’s it. Bruce, as we said, deserved more than just death in The Vampire Lestat, but we’re glad he got that much.

We Don’t Want Any More Deaths on The Vampire Lestat

Ultimately, we’re scared for our favs, and we don’t want any more death and destruction in The Vampire Lestat. Can’t we just have cheery, sweet vampiric times?

The Vampire Lestat airs at 9 pm ET/PT on AMC and AMC+. You can also read The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice today as you wait for the next episode of the series to air.

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⚡ Quick Take

• Delainey Hayles returns to The Vampire Lestat as new character Regina. But who is Regina? Is she related to Claudia? And how does Louis fit?

We’ve known for quite some time that Delainey Hayles would be back in The Vampire Lestat. But we didn’t know what character Hayles would play in her return. In Interview with the Vampire, we witnessed the death of Delainey Hayles’ original character, Claudia. Claudia was the vampire daughter of Lestat and Louis, and she was murdered by the Paris Coven for “breaking the Great Laws” of the vampire, while Louis was just barely spared. Uncovering the truth of her death was a core part of Louis’ journey in Interview with the Vampire, and no doubt, reckoning with the grief of losing her will continue to be a major part of his story in The Vampire Lestat. But does Delainey Hayles actually return as Claudia in The Vampire Lestat? In The Vampire Lestat episode three, she comes back to us in the form of someone else, a human. But who is Regina, Delainey Hayles’ new The Vampire Lestat character? Let’s take a closer look at what the series has revealed to us so far about this familiar face with a new name.

AMC Who Does Delainey Hayles Play in The Vampire Lestat?

Delainey Hayles plays Regina in The Vampire Lestat. We meet Hayles’ Regina in The Vampire Lestat episode three, but we hear Louis talking about her as early as episode two.

Who Is Regina in The Vampire Lestat?

So far, all we know about Regina is that she is a human who works as a waitress at a NYC diner called “Brick and Bacon.” Louis describes Hayles’ Regina to Daniel as follows: “I saw Claudia in New York, coming out of the subway… Someone who looked like her, but in her twenties, if she’d made it to her twenties. So I come up, I watched her turn the corner. I saw her walk into a diner. I couldn’t help myself. I go inside, I grab a booth. It’s not her, she’s not there. Chased a ghost, I guess. I ordered a donut and coffee, just to pass. And she comes out the back in uniform. It’s not her. This one’s got a different walk, accent. I’m not in her section. I walked out.”

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THE VAMPIRE LESTAT Is Unlike Anything Else on TV (Review)

But indeed, when we see Regina in The Vampire Lestat episode three, played by Delainey Hayles as she is, the character is an exact copy of Claudia. Her accent is British when she speaks to Louis and she’s aged to Hayles’ age at the present. But we can see how intense this might be for the character.

Is Regina Related to Claudia at All? AMC

For now, we don’t know if Regina and Claudia have any kind of cosmic connection on The Vampire Lestat. Anne Rice’s universe is full of all kinds of magic and powers, though, so we guess we can’t entirely rule it out either.

Nerdist Take: What Role Will Delainey Hayles’ Regina Play in Louis’ Story in The Vampire Lestat?

What we can say is that Regina’s resemblance to Claudia is likely not good for Louis if Regina is, indeed, not at all connected to Claudia in The Vampire Lestat. Louis already went to the diner once to see Regina, as he told Daniel. And now we see that he’s returned again. The idea of seeing someone we love come back to life is, of course, a temptation that no human and vampire could withstand easily. But if Regina is truly just some human person, then she likely cannot actually help Louis with his grief over Claudia. In all likelihood, she would just make it worse if she is not actually Claudia in any way. And, especially for a vampire, intense grief can be a dangerous thing. We want healing for Louis, but we’re not sure this is the path that brings it.

Will We See More of Delainey Hayles’ Regina in The Vampire Lestat? AMC

Given that The Vampire Lestat episode three concludes with Louis meeting Regina at her diner, we feel like the answer is definitely yes—Delainey Hayles will be back as Regina in at least one more episode. What will that bring, though? Only time will tell.

The Vampire Lestat (or season three of Interview with the Vampire) is currently streaming on AMC and AMC+. New episodes arrive Sundays at 9 pm PT/ET on AMC and at midnight on AMC+. You can also read Anne Rice’s The Vampire Lestat book today.

Rotem Rusak is the Editor-in-Chief of Nerdist. She cannot take any more Interview with the Vampire/The Vampire Lestat devastation for Louis or anyone else.

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⚡ Quick Take

• House of the Dragon is back and bloodier than ever for season three, which features a lot of major deaths in a battle for the Iron Throne.

House of the Dragon is back for season three and whoa did it not waste any time diving right into the action. Rhaenyra’s continuous quest to sit upon the Iron Throne and claim her place as her father’s rightful heir and Alicent’s cold, villainous decisions to attempt to clean up her royal messes are at the forefront of this season as battles rage on. As is customary with any story of war and revenge, there will be a lot of bloodshed and big deaths in House of the Dragon season three. So, who ends up losing their life in this conflict between Team Black and Team Green? Here is every major death that happens in House of the Dragon season three. 

Note: We are only counting main and important named characters. Sorry to all the ancillary soldiers and random people who are caught in the line of fire between Rhaenyra’s rage and Alicent’s boneheadedness. 

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What Is HOUSE OF THE DRAGON’s Battle of the Gullet? (Spoiler Free) Prince Jacaerys Velaryon and His Dragon Vermax HBO

Believing in Alicent’s offer to let her come into King’s Landing and take power, Rhaenyra sends her naval forces, led by the Sea Snake Lord Corlys Velaryon, in that direction to control the city. Her wise son Jace strongly advises against this, saying that it is likely a trap. This decision leads to the Battle of the Gullet when the Triarchy shows up and Admiral Sharako Lohar is determined to take the Sea Snake down. Rhaenyra gets word of this and hastily decides that she will ride Syrax into battle; however, Jace comes up with a plan to protect his mother’s life. 

He conspires with Sir Lorent to lock Rhaenyra in her room, and Jace instead rides off with Baela on their respective dragons, Vermax and Moondancer. Unbeknownst to them, Rhaena rides a very untamed Sheepstealer into battle, who begins to burn everything and tries to attack the other dragons. This leads to Vermax being harpooned for a second time. Vermax drowns and Jace manages to unhook himself, but is shot down with several arrows, ending the first episode of House of the Dragon season three with a very major and sad death. Now, Rhaenyra will have to deal with losing two sons in her journey towards the Iron Throne. 

Admiral Sharako Lohar  Ollie Upton/HBO

Sure, she’s not necessarily the most “major” character in this show. But Admiral Sharako Lohar made quite the splash with her appearance at the end of season two, and fans were ready to see more from her. The Battle of Gullet features much bloodshed and fire, much of it fueled by Admiral Sharako Lohar’s hatred of Lord Corlys. She wishes to exact revenge on him, saying that he led the persecution and slaughter of her mates for 20 years. She doesn’t care what the King’s mission is, nor is she Team Green. She is driven by hatred, and after much tense battle and chase, finally gets her one-on-one fight against Lord Corlys.

Interestingly, Lohar’s drowning at the hands of Alyn of Hull was a creation of the show. In George R.R. Martin’s Fire and Blood, the Lyseni admiral survived the Battle of the Gullet. His ship was one of the 28 out of 90 not to burn or sink. Lohar’s survival, and the fact that 25 in total hailed from Lys, helped lead the three Free Cities of the Triarchy to go to war with one another two years later.

As the ship splits, it throws Corlys into the sea, a sight that makes his illegitimate son Alyn of Hull incredibly angry. Alyn tackles Sharako into the seas and attempts to drown her before finally stabbing her in the neck. It’s kinda sad because she was lit but she also dug her own grave by going rogue against the Sea Snake. Right now, we won’t include Corlys in our death breakout because it is not clear if he’s dead or has washed ashore somehow.  

Let’s see what other demises await us in House of the Dragon season three.

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This post contains major spoilers from the House of the Dragon season three premiere and its major character death or deaths. If you haven’t seen it yet and want to avoid them, you can instead check out our pre-season coverage, like what you need to know ahead of The Battle of the Gullet.

Ollie Upton/HBO ⚡ Quick Take

• House of the Dragon‘s season three premiere featured the death of Rhaenyra’s eldest son, Jacaerys or Jace.
• Jace flew into battle unprepared and ended up dying in a way similar to what we read in G.R.R. Martin’s books.
• Jace may have won a battle for Rhaenyra, but he did her incredible damage. Jace’s death will be a great wound to her going forward in House of the Dragon.

George R.R. Martin readers have long known why the Battle of the Gullet was a Pyrrhic victory for Queen Rhaenyra. Despite losing many sailors and ships, the Velaryon fleet defeated the Triarchy and maintained its blockade. It won thanks to a big, fiery assist from the Queen’s dragons. But Rhaenyra had no reason to celebrate. She lost something far more precious than an armada. Her son and heir, Prince Jacaerys Targaryen, died after his dragon Vermax fell. Jace’s House of the Dragon season three, episode one demise was a shocking death straight from the books that forever changed the Dance of the Dragons.

HBO Jace’s House of the Dragon Death Comes Straight From G.R.R. Martin’s Books

In the end, Jace didn’t survive the Battle of the Gullet in Martin’s books or HBO’s House of the Dragon series. Martin’s history actually posits a few versions of Jace’s death, but most accept that the end began when a grapnel hook took down Vermax. HBO’s adaptation changed some of the details of how that worked and where Vermax crashed (into a boat versus being dragged by an anchor into the sea), but House of the Dragon‘s version was the same in spirit.

Then, it’s onto Jace’s actual death in House of the Dragon. Prince Jacaerys also died the same way in both the books and series. For a brief moment, he clung to a piece of wood from a wrecked ship. But before his allies could save him, archers from a nearby Triarchy ship riddled his body with arrows.

HBO How Did Jace End Up Dead?

Rhaenyra lost her second son, Luke, at the start of the Dance. Since then, she kept her eldest Jace by her side. She even told him about Aegon the Conqueror’s Song of Ice and Fire, the prophecy about the White Walkers that led him to unite Westeros under his family’s rule. Now, Jace, a good, smart, well-intentioned young man, is dead. He was his mother’s fiercest protector and confidant.

Jace’s desire to protect his mother led to his House of the Dragon death. Rhaenyra wanted to answer Ser Corlys’ call when the Triarchy launched its sneak attack. On House of the Dragon, Jace conspired with Queensguard knight Ser Ser Lorent Marbrand to keep Rhaenyra locked up so she couldn’t fly into battle. It was the most recent example of her allies stopping her from doing so, as they believe her death would instantly end the war, which would likely mean their own heads on spikes. Jace always agreed with keeping his mother safe and far from direct conflict. His protective nature was not the only reason he fell. And we don’t mean because House of the Dragon made a major change when it came to the Battle of the Gullet and the number of dragons who fought there, and why.

HBO Jace Won a Battle, But Lost a War for Rhaenyra

While Rhaena’s wild Sheepstealer contributed to Jace’s demise on House of the Dragon, his own overeagerness to fight was as responsible for his death as anything else. Jace went headfirst into battle after reaching a frenzy talking about what victory would mean with his bethrothed, Baela. “We are ready. We can win this victory for her. Was this not always our purpose?” said Jace. He then flew too low amid ships full of seasoned sailors who had long fought dragons in the Stepstones.

Neither Jace nor Vermax were prepared for the Battle of the Gullet. By keeping his much smarter mother out of the fight, Jace’s naivety, inexperience, and bad luck got him killed. So while he did win a victory for his mother, he also ensured that Rhaenyra lost.

Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist. He thinks Jace with age and wisdom Jace would have been a good King. You can follow him on Bluesky at @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.

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⚡ Quick Take

• Here’s what House of the Dragon kept the same, what it changed, and what it omitted entirely from the books with the Battle of the Gullet.

This post contains major spoilers for House of the Dragon‘s season three premiere. If you want to avoid them until you watch the episode, check out our pre-season coverage instead. That includes learning everything you needed to know before The Battle of the Gullet.

In Westeros, the Battle of the Gullet is remembered as one of the deadliest, most consequential sea conflicts in the Realm’s history. Now House of the Dragon viewers know why. The series brought to life a deadly and destructive fight between two massive fleets. While HBO’s adaptation kept the broad strokes of the conflict between the Triarchy and Rhaenyra’s forces the same, it also had a lot of room to fill in many gaps. George R.R. Martin’s recorded history of the infamous fight in Fire & Blood only covers a couple of pages. But even then, House of the Dragon made some major changes to its version. Here’s what House of the Dragon kept the same about the Battle of the Gullet, what it changed, and an important development it omitted entirely.

What Stayed the Same in the Battle of the Gullet From the Book HBO

The Lyseni Admiral Sharako Lohar did split up the Triarchy’s 90 ships during the surprise attack on the Velaryon fleet. Lohar sent some to the northern part of the waterway to hit the island of Driftmark (but not the neighboring Dragonstone). It was the seat of the Triarchy’s old nemesis, House Velaryon.

In the books, the Triarchy entered the harbor of the nearby Driftmark city Spicetown, setting both it and ships located there on fire. The show (in a deft bit of storytelling) focused on the Triarchy’s other main point of attack, as Lohar specifically went after Corlys Velaryon’s personal castle of treasures, High Tide, burning it to the ground. Ultimately, despite claiming many lives and many Velaryon ships, most Triarchy boats burned in a doomed effort to break the blockade.

HBO

In each Battle of the Gullet, Prince Jacaerys arrived on his dragon Vermax to turn the tide of the war, which the Triarchy waged in close proximity. Ships of the Three Sisters rammed and boarded the Velaryon fleet’s boats, making it harder for dragons to burn enemies since they were so close to Rhaenyra’s forces. The Triarchy was also well-prepared for dragons, as it had plenty of experience with the creatures thanks in part to wars in the Stepstones against Prince Daemon and his dragon Caraxes.. The show captured how the ships of the Three Sisters came equipped with plenty of archers, scorpion bolts, and grapnel hooks.

Like in the book (though there are differing, less convincing accounts from history), a grapnel hook took down Vermax. The most oft-repeated story is that a single grapnel tied to a ship’s mast tore through the young dragon’s belly, its own speed adding to the hook’s effectiveness. That caused the creature to crash into a ship where it got tangled up and drowned. House of the Dragon version of Vermax’s death was mostly the same, but instead of a whole ship dragging down the dragon, it was an anchor attached to the grapnel. It brought Vermax to the water where the dragon drowned.

Ollie Upton/HBO

HBO’s series also kept Jace’s death the same (after faking out readers by having him and Vermax escape a grapnel hit earlier). Archers killed Rhaenyra’s son and heir as Prince Jacaerys clung to a piece of wreckage.

The Changes That House of the Dragon Made to the Battle of the Gullet HBO

The biggest change House of the Dragon made to the Battle of the Gullet—besides time, as the TV conflict did not last many hours into the night—was its dragon participants. While Prince Jace first answered the call in both versions, Baela was nowhere close when the fighting began. She never arrived with Moondancer and was never part of the Battle of the Gullet, let alone a reason for victory.

Sheepstealer was part of the fight, but not because Rhaena arrived on the wild dragon. Instead it was a young girl named Nettles who took to the skies that day. The show has cut her from its story. In the book, Nettles claimed the wild, sheep-eating dragon who lived on Dragonstone (and not the Vale, which is a whole thing) as part of the book’s very different Red Sowing. Nettles and Sheepstealer did not attack Jace or any other of Rhaenyra’s dragonriders, either. That was wholly a creation of HBO’s adaptation, which made Sheepstealer’s presence and indiscriminate attacks partly responsible for Jace’s death.

HBO

In George R.R. Martin’s history, Nettles and Sheepstealer came to Jace’s side along with Ulf the White on Silverwing, Hugh Hammer on Vermithor, and Addam of Hull on Seasmoke. On House of the Dragon, those three were instead far away at Dragonstone awaiting the arrival of Prince Regent Aemond, which Alicent told Rhaenyra was the Greens’ plan. (Aemond threatened to ruin Alicent’s doublecross when he decided to stay in King’s Landing before his mother manipulated him to leave.)

The appearance of four more dragons was too much for the Triarchy forces, which did ultimately break into chaos. (On the show, Corlys made that happen by luring Lohar away, leaving the Triarchy without its leader.) Before that the fleet had bravely stood up to the inexperienced Jace and Vermax. Once the five dragons brought fire and blood to the Gullet the battle was lost. The fact the Triarchy held out for as long as it did shows how formidable it really was. The Gullet was not a total victory for Rhaenyra’s side. It lost 1/3rd of its ships, a dragon, and its heir.

There’s also no indication from recorded history from Fire & Blood that anyone stopped Queen Rhaenyra from fighting, either. With five dragons ready to defend the Gullet for her, it seems unlikely she would have needed to put her own life at risk.

HBO

Lohar only died on HBO’s prequel. In the books, the Admiral survived alongside 28 of the 90 Triarchy ships that sailed into the Gullet. Of those, 25 surviving boats were Lyseni boats. Myr and Tyrosh did not respond well to that peculiar fact. The other two Free Cities accused Lohar of protecting his own men at the cost of their forces. That ultimately led to the dissolution of the Triarchy. Two years later, the three cities went to war with each other.

Tyland Lannister was also not with Lohar during the attack. The Greens’ Master of Ships wasn’t even on a boat he could then be tossed off of. He was in King’s Landing while the Battle of the Gullet took place. (To avoid spoilers, we won’t discuss the fate of Corlys from the book. The show clearly left that ambiguous during its battle.)

HBO What the Show Omitted Entirely

In House of the Dragon‘s second season, Princess Rhaena ran away from her protectors in the Vale to pursue Sheepstealer. Rhaena was supposed to accompany her half-brothers—Rhaenyra and Daemon’s sons Aegon and Viserys—to Pentos. Just like in the books, the young princes were traveling their on the Gay Abandon.

In Fire & Blood, that boat and its Velaryon escorts ran right into the Triarchy fleet. Aegon, who’d never ridden his dragon Stormcloud before, barely escaped the sailors who fired heavily on him and Stormcloud. He made his way back to Dragonstone to warn of the fleet, but Stormcloud died. Aegon also never forgave himself for abandoning his brother. The Triarchy (ultimately Lohar) took the boy and his dragon egg captive.

HBO

Rhaenyra’s side thought Viserys died in the Battle of the Gullet since no one knew what ship he’d been on. The loss of two more sons only made Rhaenyra more protective of her two remaining boys, Joffrey and Aegon.

For now, we have no idea what House of the Dragon plans to do with little Aegon and Viserys. We do not know the fate of the Gay Abandon. But no matter what happens to that cog, Jace is gone. As is the Triarchy fleet and many of Corlys Velaryon’s men and ships. Because while House of the Dragon made big changes to the Battle of the Gullet, it was just as deadly as ever.

Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist. He would simply never fight a dragon. No chance. You can follow him on Bluesky at @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.

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⚡ Quick Take

• House of the Dragon season three’s Olivia Cooke and Ewan Mitchell talk about Alicent, Aemond, and TV’s most awkward kiss ever.

Listen, there’s something in the television air. And that something is… incest? We didn’t really see that one coming. But we have two major series on the air right now, House of the Dragon and The Vampire Lestat, that are both serving us some strange mother/son interactions... By which we mean kisses. And you’d think we’d be a bit inured to this by now, given the strange propensity for incest we’ve seen in recent times. But NOPE. House of the Dragon season three’s kiss between Aemond Targaryen and his mother, Alicent Hightower, is probably the most awkward kiss we’ve ever seen on television. And, as we mentioned, that’s SAYING something. We’re glad it’s cringe, but we’re a bit less glad to have to watch it.

HBO

It’s a difficult life for a woman in Westeros. It’s triply difficult if you’re just trying to run away from your terrible family and prevent all-out war. Alicent did her best to get the rightful queen on the throne when she went to Rhaenyra at the end of House of the Dragon season two, willing to sacrifice her terrible son Aegon for some peace. But in House of the Dragon season three, nothing is going as planned. Aegon is missing, and Aemond (and his vicious dragon Vhagar) refuse to leave King’s Landing to make way for an easy Rhaenyra takeover. So what is Alicent to do? Well, on House of the Dragon season three, episode, Alicent deftly manipulates Aemond by offering him what he wants most… her love… and a kiss… A really bad one. Eeps.

HBO

In order to get Aemond out of the castle, Alicent finally tells him what he most wants to hear. That she loves him and that while she “strove tirelessly to put Aegon on the throne,” Alicent truly believes, “You should have been King. If you’d only been born first, then perhaps we wouldn’t be here.” And, of course, these are the words that mommy-issue-riddled Aemond has always wanted to hear. And as she continues to speak, Alicent moves closer to Aemond, taking his hand and telling him, “That is why you need to go to Harrenhal. It is a stronghold. One that has withstood dragonfire once before. You are no longer safe here in King’s Landing. You are the crown now. And Rhaenyra will send her new dragons here for you.” But, of course, nothing actually sways Aemond to leave King’s Landing until Alicent offers, “Perhaps I could even meet you there… I cannot lose you.”

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And that, to Aemond, is the opening for the world’s most uncomfortable kiss ever. Alicent’s eyes are fully open, and her whole body conveys disgust as Aemond kisses her on House of the Dragon, but he doesn’t seem to notice. Instead, he very sincerely tells her, “I shall host a feast there in your honor. In Black Harren’s hall. Whilst my uncle’s head looks down from a spike.” Well… that’s charming.

We can see Alicent regret all her life choices after her kiss with Aemond and his bloodthirsty proclamations. Of course, the whole thing is also a bit sad. We know that, on some level, as we see from his interactions with Sylvi, the madam of the aptly named brothel, Mother’s, Aemond just wants to be held, loved, and listened to by a maternal figure. Alicent clearly did not give him much in the way of motherly affection. And, in the world of House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones, that dearth has gone very wrong.

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Speaking to both Alicent actress Olivia Cooke and Aemond actor Ewan Mitchell, Nerdist learned more about the awkward kiss between them in House of the Dragon.

Cooke shares, “She thinks it’s really hot.” Only joking. In fact, Alicent finds it incredibly disturbing. It’s completely out of left field. I think she is like, ‘Great, another failing as a parent,’ because something has been confused. Something has been tragically confused along the way. And she’s in a really dangerous position now because any seeming rejection will get her killed, and will mean that Aemond is still in the castle when Rhaenyra comes, and so she’s got to play body chess at the same time as trying to survive.” ‘Body Chess’ is a phrase we might have done without, but it does get the point across.

Meanwhile, Mitchell offers an empathetic view of Aemond’s actions in House of the Dragon and his desire to kiss his mother, Alicent, “Aemond, he kind of grew up feeling like he never had that much love as a child, and he really had to learn to love himself. And so that’s where his ego and his vanity stems from. If a child isn’t embraced by the village, they’ll burn it down to feel its warmth. He’s kind of on this war path. He’s finding his power through using Vhagar and really making a name for himself. A notorious kind of name for himself. And I think Aemond, in that moment, he’s kind of risen to a position where he can comfortably call himself the king and the leader of Team Green. And with that, maybe he feels like he can shoot his shot with Alicent in a really weird way because his perception of love is so skewed. He doesn’t necessarily know how to show it since he never received any. What you’ve seen in that moment is kind of a combination of both of those things.”

HBO

Well, as awkward as it was, Alicent’s shared kiss with Aemond on House of the Dragon episode one did, indeed, achieve her aims. What will happen between the pair in the long run remains to be seen. But hopefully… no more kisses.

House of the Dragon season three is now airing on HBO and HBO Max on Sundays at 9 pm ET/PT.

Rotem Rusak is the Editor-in-Chief of Nerdist. She’s seen a lot on TV, but that kiss between Aemond and Alicent on House of the Dragon was one of the worst things ever.

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