When WAS Daniel reborn, really??
(Did my best to avoid putting the obvious spoiler in the title here, please let me know if I should repost with something even more vague)
There are a lot of theories surrounding how and why Armand turned Daniel in the time jump that happens at the end of Season 2, and I want to talk about them as a group. My personal theory is below, but feel free to sound of with your ideas in the comments here.
There are a ton of unknowns from production here, that I assume we will learn MUCH more about in Season 3, but as it stands, the facts as we know them are
- Daniel and Louis begin their second interview in 2022, which at the release of Season 1 was intended to be the present.
- The second interview took 12 days, beginning June 14 and continuing through June 26.
- We don't see Daniel leave the penthouse after Louis in the final episode. He is still human at this point.
- When we see him next, on the morning show interview, he states that the book has been out in the world for four months. At this point, he is a vampire.
For the sake of the timeline, let's assume the morning show sequence happens in 2024, bringing the show back up to a present-occurrence timeline to align the show in real time for Season 3. That would mean two years have passed since the interview itself. Most fans seem to be assuming that Armand turned Daniel in the near aftermath of the interview, but I'm not so convinced.
I think Daniel had to have handed over a draft of the book, while still human, to the Talamasca. Not necessarily the final draft, but a first draft. We don't know what the working relationship is between the Talamasca and Vampires in-the-know yet, but I doubt it is smoothly cordial, and timeline wise, it makes the most sense for him to have turned in a draft, then be turned, and while he is dealing with that transformation alone and figuring out how to stop staring at lightbulbs, they're shopping it to publishers and doing the final edits (which he complains about after the morning show interview on Brain!Phone with Louis).
When publishing a book traditionally, as Daniel does, it takes a while for a text to come out. At the end of the interview, all he has are the interview recordings the Talamasca sends back to him. He hasn't even remotely started the process of writing and editing the final text. Assuming the Talamasca didn't make him transcribe the interviews by hands, and sent him their own transcript (which would save him likely months of work), I think it would have taken Human!Daniel AT MINIMUM six months to write the first draft. And that's a major assumption, it can be done in the non-fiction genre, but from personal experience, I assure you that to pull that off he either got back on the stimulants or straight up did not leave his writing desk for the entire span of time, which... doesn't really gel with the whole "has Parkinsons and needs regular treatments" thing.
So, let's give him a year to write that draft. Then the Talamasca edits and shops the book around to just about every major publisher in the US and UK, which would take about a year to complete on their end. So that's one year for Daniel for outlining and writing a pretty comprehensive draft, six months of the Talamasca editing the book and finalizing what they want out there while Daniel is otherwise unable to intervene, three months to shop it, three months to typeset and print it, and badabing, badaboom, you've got a book and Molloy's a vampire.
We know from Molloy that he hadn't heard from "his maker" in a significant amount of time when he is Brain!Phoning Louis, which tracks for being abandoned for a full year. While Louis apologizes for leaving Molloy alone with Armand (which many have taken to mean Armand struck immediately after he walked out of the door), I'm not so sure his leaving was the inciting incident. It strikes me how similarly detached it is to Lestat's apology to Louis in the very same episode, again regarding Armand
Lestat: "I gave you to Armand, you tell me if that was saving."
Louis: "I'm sorry you were burdened out of spite. I shouldn't have left you alone with him."
When Louis left the penthouse, after threatening Armand not to touch Daniel, he explicitly told Daniel to fetch his things from his room, as he would be calling a car for him to take him to a chartered flight home. If Daniel had not gotten in that car or on that plane, Louis would've 100% known, and he was pissed off enough that I think he would've made good on his threat to kill Armand then and there, before going back to New Orleans several days later (based on the dates of the 2022 Essence Festival, which the NOLA cab driver name drops). Post transformation Daniel would not have been in a state to get on a plane within hours of being turned, therefore I don't think it aligns for his turning to be immediate like people are assuming.
Of course, all of this is conjecture. I'm sure Rolin Jones and the writers room have concocted something so perfect we can't even dream of it. However, my best guess, based on what little evidence we have?
Daniel makes it to his 70th birthday. He pours what little energy he has left into pumping out a draft, and the late nights + stress of it all exacerbates his Parkinson's. At some point, Armand re-enters the picture, either through his stalking proclivities, Talamasca interference, or Daniel somehow contacting him to follow up on a loose thread in the narrative (this is by far the funniest option. What would that call even look like? "Hey listen/stop yelling/I know you're in a post-divorce funk, but Louis gave me conflicting birth years and I can't get a hold of him, can you please clarify?" lmfao).
Armand then
- Sees the book coming to fruition, which he knows will put a giant target on Louis's back, as he exhibited anger toward the situation while cosplaying as Rashid
- Recognizes that Daniel is getting notably worse
- Transforms Daniel in a fit of guilt-riddled rage as a twisted way of keeping his promise to Louis to keep Daniel from harm, never mind that Louis didn't mean never let him die by natural means.
- Destroys what he thinks is the only draft, in another move at trying to save Louis from himself (let's be honest, his Lestat fanfiction proves Armand is perennially incapable of moving on, and a year off probably feels like a "break" to him).
- Leaves immediately after, not sticking around to find out the Talamasca already had the draft.
Of course, what leads up to 3 is QUITE flexible, depending on what they're doing with Devil's Minion. How much time passes between them reconnecting and Armand chomping on him is fully up in the air for me. It's fun to leave little head canon optional holes in your own theories!
All of this is, after all, my theory. We don't know anything concrete at this point. What are your theories?