When AMC put their new, very impressive spin on Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles, Interview With The Vampire turned out to be a masterclass on book-to-screen adaptations. It held the fundamentals of Rice’s literature close to its heart while it explored wildly complex emotional spaces that appeared only subtly in the source material. While very different in both style and substance from its predecessor, season 1 of Mayfair Witches proved to be a worthy addition to Anne Rice’s Immortal Universe. And with the second season right around the corner, now might be the best time to revisit and untangle that very convoluted first season of Mayfair Witches.
Spoiler Alert
Rowan’s a Mayfair
Neurosurgeon Rowan Fielding’s life is hard enough as it is. She’s the best surgeon at a hospital that’s run by a major egomaniac. So seeing as she’s almost intuitive when it comes to knowing what’s best for her patients, Rowan’s boss, Dr. Keck, is very threatened by her gift. Keck’s of no help when Rowan’s adoptive mother Elena’s cancer returns. The only way Rowan can save her mother is if she can get into Lemle’s stem cell research program and secure a place for Elena. So you can imagine how desperate she is when she practically begs Keck to put in a good word for her. But Keck’s devoid of kindness. When Rowan’s rage takes the form of a telepathic assault on Keck’s brain, the narcissistic doctor gets a very painful taste of the powers Rowan’s unaware of. Rowan’s terrified by what she’s capable of doing. And despite a similar incident scarring her when she was a child, Elena’s of the opinion that it’s all in Rowan’s head. Had that been the case, Lemle would’ve gotten away with harassing Rowan and expecting sexual favors in return for his help. But Rowan’s power is very real. And that’s what kills Lemle on the spot when he pushes her into that extreme stage of fury. Elena knows more about Rowan’s freakish powers than she’s letting on. She makes a hush hush call to Talamasca, the secret agency in New Orleans that keeps a check on the supernatural.
Seeing as Talamasca is an organization that deals with witches, vampires, and other supernatural beings, their involvement in Rowan’s case is pretty self-explanatory. You see, Rowan’s the successor of a long line of witches, the Mayfairs of New Orleans. A quick trip to the past lets us know that Rowan’s biological mother, Deirdre, suffered terribly under the draconian rule of her aunt, Carlotta. Carlotta was desperate to keep her guarded against Lasher, a seductive, manipulative entity attached to their family. Carlotta’s warnings were too weak against a young Deirdre’s desire to explore her new youth. And that’s exactly what Lasher weaponized when he got her dressed and sent her to a party at their uncle Cortland’s house. From the very beginning, there’s this sense that Cortland and his sisters had never seen eye to eye. Cortland was playing his own game when he hired a boy to seduce and impregnate Deirdre at the party. When they were intimate, the boy was simply a vessel for something demonic. And since this is how Rowan was conceived, we can safely assume that there’s something beyond her witch heritage running through her veins. Right after birth, Rowan was snatched from her mother’s arms and handed over to Elena Mayfair, who changed her name to Fielding and raised Rowan away from the dark shadow of her bloodline. In the present, the timing’s almost perfect when Talamasca sends their agent, Ciprien Grieve, to look after Rowan. Elena’s passing has left Rowan shattered and lost. When a volatile mix of Rowan’s powers and Ciprien’s psychometric abilities leave him unconscious, Rowan looks through his phone and gets closer to understanding her origin. The picture of a young Deirdre and Elena and the foggy dreams of the Mayfair house all point to New Orleans. So that’s where Rowan flies off to. Carlotta’s been keeping Deirdre sedated in a desperate bid to contain Lasher within her mind. It bodes well for Lasher and Deirdre that the new doctor finds the whole system quite sketchy and stops the sedation. With Deirdre awake and Rowan in New Orleans, Lasher gets to restart whatever game he’s been playing with the Mayfair witches clan. But someone doesn’t want Deirdre to meet Rowan. So when Deirdre goes to the hotel Rowan’s staying at and their eyes meet for the first time, Deirdre’s throat is mysteriously slit open before they can speak a word to each other. By the end of episode two, Rowan’s lost both her moms and entered the murky maze that is her identity.
The world behind the world
Like I said, the timing of Ciprien coming into Rowan’s life is super lucky. Staying at his place is pretty neat for Rowan. Even when Ciprien’s not there to protect her, Lasher can’t get through the protective spell the Talamasca has put on the place. But this isn’t Lasher’s first rodeo. All he needs to do to get Rowan out of the house is light a fire in the building. A trippy funeral procession weakens the veil between the two worlds just enough for Lasher to get close to Rowan. But she’s too strong for him still–too cautious to fall for his charms just yet. But while Rowan’s too scared of Lasher to even entertain the thought of accepting him as her spirit familiar, Lasher’s proven his love for Deirdre time and again. Lasher is heartbroken. And that can’t be good news to the man who’s killed Deirdre. Whoever was behind the murder was both smart and powerful enough to wipe the event from the memories attached to the place of the murder. So it makes sense that Ciprien’s unable to read the place. Deirdre’s corpse is a whole different story though, and when Ciprien touches her, he sees the clear likeness of her killer. But before the Talamasca can get to the killer, Lasher’s driven him mad. Judging by how Ciprien’s boss Albrecht is in a hurry to wrap up the case just as soon as Lasher kills Deirdre’s murderer, he seems to be hiding something.
While it definitely seems to be Cortland’s job to persuade Rowan into accepting Lasher, he doesn’t seem to be too worried about Carlotta. He’s confident that, being the hopeless control freak that Carlotta is, she’ll freak Rowan out in no time. What they underestimate is Carlotta’s psychotic need to have things go her way. She doesn’t even hesitate to have their maid killed in the process of trying to keep Lasher away from Rowan. And when she gets Rowan in her house for the wake, she realizes soon enough that sweet talk won’t get her too far with the new designee of the Mayfair clan of witches. Rowan wanted no part of the house, the history, and the heritage. All she wanted was to get to know her mother. She is, after all, the successor to a long line of matriarch witches who’ve been passing down their gifts to their daughters. Carlotta and her sister’s strong Christian faith stood in the path of Deirdre becoming the powerful witch she was meant to be. When Carlotta sees Rowan put on the pendant that’s connected the Mayfairs with Lasher for centuries, she hastily tacks on murder to the dinner menu. Had it not been for Ciprien, Rowan might’ve died in the fire Carlotta starts. Seeing as Ciprien literally runs into Carlotta’s knife, it’s a good thing that Rowan’s a doctor.
Lasher’s connection to the Mayfair witches
With such obvious chemistry between the two, we can overlook the fact that Mayfair Witches very randomly puts us in the thick of Rowan and Ciprien’s romance. Or we could just see it as one of Lasher’s schemes, especially considering the loopy limbo Rowan and Ciprien get stuck in is Lasher’s doing. In a dream-like state, Ciprien’s cursed to make breakfast for Rowan after an endless row of steamy nights. And when Rowan finally sees his bleeding wound, there seems to be no way out of the house. The entire ordeal Rowan’s put through is Lasher’s way of both liberating and manipulating her. On the one hand, she’ll get everything that her heart desires if she accepts him. And yet all Rowan wants is to be herself without Lasher’s ominous presence looming over her forever. What it does bring out in Rowan is a side she didn’t know she had. In the process of being manipulated by Carlotta into killing herself as a selfless act, Rowan finds out a lot of truths about her family. She also finds out that she isn’t incapable of having homicidal instincts when she mind controls Carlotta into killing herself.
All Cortland cares about is business. And since having Lasher closer to his immediate family is better for him, he doesn’t mind helping Rowan with Lasher’s transference to another witch. But while the very taxing ritual needed for such a tremendous demand initially seems to be successful, and there’s this sense that Tessa Mayfair is now the designee Lasher’s attached himself to, there’s absolutely no way that Lasher gives up on his beloved successor witch that easily. He’s been with the Mayfairs dating back to the 1600s. Suzanne Mayfair didn’t start off as a witch. But when her gifts as a healer and a midwife were deemed demonic by the witch hunters, she had to choose between death and Lasher. The dark incantations chanted by Suzanne made Lasher show himself as a savior. All he wanted in return for granting Suzanne and her successors all their wishes was their help with the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy–a purpose that Rowan’s blood has burdened her with. Ciprien stumbles on what he wanted to know when he reads the memories attached the special pendant and goes into the past to witness the dawn of Lasher’s relationship with the Mayfairs, but he pays a steep price when the pendant disappears from his hand, and Ciprien’s lost in a memory without a map.
The Brotherhood
In a wild yet relevant detour from the source novels, Mayfair Witches introduced a band of basement-dwellers who call themselves the Brotherhood. It was first mentioned by morgue worker Keith when he thought Ciprien was a misogynistic reactionary and tried to recruit him in the witch hunting movement headed by Arlo. Keith earned a place in Arlo’s circle when he gave him Deirdre’s heart. And since Keith’s been blasting this win on social media, Tessa plans to take him down. She walks into a trap herself when she lures Keith out to get the heart back, and her gift of glamor proves inadequate against the group. Despite Rowan and the entire Mayfair clan’s best efforts, Tessa’s life is taken by Keith’s bullet. This turn of events is evidently Lasher’s orchestration. He wanted Tessa to feel the false sense of his protection and walk right into the fatal trap. Lasher knew that Rowan would have to call out to him. And to fulfil Tessa’s last wish, that’s what she does. With Lasher working on her command, Rowan watches Keith go up in flames and die screaming the same way many women have since the dawn of time.
The Talamasca are not as benevolent as they’d have you think
Rowan’s pregnancy came out of nowhere. Ciprien might be the biological father of the child, but what’s growing inside Rowan’s womb holds a much bigger mystery. The dad-to-be is stuck in Lasher’s memory when he gets the news from the mouth of the devil. When Lasher leaves, Ciprien kills himself in the memory to get back into his body in the real world. He’s too quick to get into Albrecht’s car when he offers to take him to Rowan. But Albrecht’s intentions are much more vile. He has no wish to help Ciprien or Rowan. As a staunch believer of the Talamasca’s role as the observer of the supernatural, Albrecht wants things to play out the way it’s supposed to. He wants to help Lasher fulfill the ancient prophecy. With the gift of memory erasure at his disposal, Albrecht reveals his true nature to Ciprien. Ciprien uses the only card that he still holds–his identity as the father of Rowan’s child–and convinces Albrecht to let him keep his memories. With the time he buys, Ciprien unearths a lot of consequential secrets at Cortland’s house. Touching the mask from the party where Deirdre got pregnant shows him that it was Cortland who raped and impregnated his niece. He was also the one who’d hired that man to kill Deirdre before she could meet Rowan. Cortland’s been playing for and against every side in this convoluted war.
In her weakened state, Rowan’s vulnerable to Lasher’s manipulations. Her spirit is imprisoned in Suzanne’s room. The fact that she’s started to open up to the idea of accepting Lasher is evident in her smile when she learns his language that Suzanne etched on the walls centuries ago. She’s overjoyed by the gift of healing that comes with giving herself to Lasher. And the pyrokinesis sweetens the deal even more. By being intimate with Rowan, Lasher strengthens his connection to the 13th witch and the baby in her womb. The birth of this child is the ancient prophecy–the price that the Mayfairs have to pay for the gifts they get from Lasher. The 13th witch will birth the physical form of Lasher. Considering he’s likely the devil or at least some form of him, Lasher’s physical birth is an event of monumental consequences. Cortland’s there to aid the process by bringing Rowan to the mausoleum of her ancestors. Suzanne’s spirit oversees the birth of a world-changing prophecy, something that she’d started when she embraced Lasher with all his thorns. Despite the deeply traumatizing circumstances behind her new motherhood, Rowan feels connected to her child. Baby Lasher’s rapid growth spurt does overwhelm Rowan, but she doesn’t want to give her baby up to Cortland. When Lasher was in her womb, Rowan learned everything that he knew. She knows that Cortland’s her father, the man who was selfish enough to destroy her mother’s life. Cortland’s reward for aiding Lasher was immortality. But that’s really more a curse than a gift now that Rowan’s turned him to stone. Although his heart is in the right place, Ciprien makes a grave mistake by lying to Rowan and trying to separate her from her baby. While it’s entirely possible that Lasher’s controlling Rowan’s instincts now, she’s too strong for the hold to last for long. She might even prove to be a good influence on the mysterious being she’s birthed.
