Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches – Second Line

By starrymag | January 29, 2023

By: Kelly Kearney

 

 

After last week’s shocking cliffhanger, we pick up with Rowan processing Deidre’s death. Upon finding out who the slashed-throated woman is, Rowan takes off with Ciprien Grieves to process her family’s reality and its curses. Now that both birth and adoptive mothers are gone, she is at the mercy of the man sent to keep her safe from whatever Lasher and her demented Aunt Carlotta and Uncle Cortland have in store for her.

 

Fear Death

 

We open on a flashback to 1600’s Scotland where Suzanne (Hannah Alline) is horrified to learn her sister, Aoife (Nadine Lewington), was gored by a boar and her wounds look mortal. Aoife is alert and she tells her sister she knows she’s going to die so the least Suzanne can do is give her henbane and feverfew to enjoy the trip beyond. Suzanne refuses to help speed up her sister’s death and the injured woman wonders if she’s afraid to die. Suzanne admits to her that it’s not death but the consequences she faces for not believing in heaven or hell as the scriptures describe. It’s a sin, but her sister croaks out a chuckle and says Aoife will be her guide but where she’s heading isn’t to some celestial heaven or its sinister basement. She’s returning to the earth, where her mother and her mother before her went in the end. With that admission, Suzanne realizes her sister is at peace and mixes up the hallucinogens Aoife asked for.

Flash forward to present-day New Orleans and the elevator door to Rowan’s (Alexandra Daddario) horrors opens to the sounds of screams from the guests. The doctor is kneeling on the floor of the car, covered in blood and clutching the body of the woman she has no idea is her birth mother, Deidre Mayfair (Annabeth Gish). After a brief questioning from police, Rowan is introduced to her aunt Carlotta (Beth Grant), who tells her the woman she just saw die was, in fact, her mother! She can’t listen for another second and spots Ciprien Grieves (Tongayi Chirisa) outside watching the entire scene unfold. She takes off from the hotel leaving her aunt calling out to her about coming back to the safety of their family’s house. I guess now that Deidre broke free, those chains at the spooky house need a new family prisoner. Thankfully, Ciprien promised Deidre he would keep her daughter safe and, for now, that means getting Rowan out of this entire mess.

 

Rowan’s Gift

 

The two go back to Ciprien’s ultra-secure safe house/apartment and if the crank on the front door isn’t weird enough, he fully admits his job is to watch Rowan and keep a record of her to ensure her safety. He then explains, “The Talamasca exists to document and investigate the unexplained,” he says as he loosely describes his work, but Rowan can’t get past the fact that she is the “unexplained” he is referring to. She hands him back the phone she swiped last week when she brain-zapped him and asks about the house in his photo gallery. He explains it’s the Mayfair house and it’s been in her family for centuries. Her Aunt Carlotta lives there now and her mother lived there too. She asks him about the man in the photo in front of the house and Ciprien tells her about Rowan, the “being” she’s inherited from her family curse. Rowan is speechless, but she is also covered in her mother’s blood and it’s time for a shower and an attempt at processing this news. Meanwhile, the doorbell buzzes, it’s Samir (Ravi Naidu), who tells Ciprien he should come clean with Rowan about who she is. Samir is accompanied by members of the Talamasca working as spell casters to surround the house and protect its occupants from demons. Lasher (Jack Huston) is a threat to them both, but with a spell masking the entire safe house, he can’t reach her. Poor Diedre wasn’t as lucky and nobody understands that loss more than the deceased woman’s aunts.

Protection Spells on Memory Lane

 

At the Mayfair house. Millie Mayfair (Geraldine Singer) holds her sister Carlotta as the latter grieves over failing her niece and God. It seems Carlotta isn’t in the family business, and instead, wraps herself in the protection of religion to counteract her genetic ties to witchcraft. She tells Millie she can hear Lasher rattling around the trees looking for Deidre and she won’t let Rowan meet a similar end. A plan is in the works to bind the beast to a human being as it is, “the only thing that’s ever worked.” The sisters also agree to plan a wake for Deidre to lure Rowan to them so they can capture her and protect her.

Speaking of protection, after the spell masks the house Ciprien heads inside and reveals his own “gift” to the overwhelmed Rowan. Anything Grieves touches gives him a vision of that object’s past and the people it is connected to. He wears gloves so as to not short-circuit his feelers but Rowan points out how they didn’t work when they met; she brain-zapped him into unconsciousness. He admits it’s because her gifts are the strongest he’s ever seen, like most of the Mayfairs except for Carlotta. Cortland (Harry Hamlin) also doesn’t possess the family’s gift,  he’s just wealthy and powerful in other ways. The Mayfairs are rumored to be private people and everyone in town has always whispered and wondered what went on behind those doors, but especially the young Ciprien- who walked past their house on his way to school. He eventually comes clean and says her adopted mother alerted his bosses after an incident on the playground when Rowan was younger. She remembers and mentions how her mother gaslit her into thinking that the whole thing was made up. The truth about all these lies hurts, and she lashes out at Ciprien in response to his offer to talk it out. Instead, he decides to head back to the hotel before the memory imprint of the elevator wears off. If he can see who was responsible for Deidre’s death, he will know if her daughter is in danger or not. He makes her promise to stay inside until he knows for sure because the killer could be lurking outside his door.

 

The 13th Witch

 

Back at the hotel, Cortland arrives just in time to witness the coroner wheeling Deidre out in a body bag. He goes to the bathroom to gather himself where he has an encounter with Lasher who is struggling over the loss of Deidre. It seems Cortland has some sort of relationship with the demon and he instantly apologizes to Lasher but also reminds his grief because he loved his niece too but her death means Lasher only has one witch to go, He has racked up twelve kills and the thirteenth is apparently the charm. We can surmise that by killing an unlucky 13, some sort of evolution to his very being is in the cards. He tells Cortland this witch is different; she’s tied to him in a different way and he can’t seem to find his way to her.

Back at the apartment Ciprien’s sister, Odette (Keyara Milliner), pops in to grab her missing shoe and she is shocked to see Rowan standing in the living room. After convincing her she isn’t Ciprien’s girlfriend the two have an awkward chat about the woman’s surrogate pregnancy and whether or not she feels connected to the baby she’s having for a gay couple. Rowan is in her mommy-feels, so much so that when the fire alarms in the building go off she decides to take the ten-minute walk through town to check out her aunt’s house. In the distance, we can hear the breathing growl of Lasher watching her exit Ciprien’s protection spell.

At the Mayfair’s house, Carlotta gifts Delphine (Deneen Tyler) Deidre’s pendant necklace that lures Lasher to whoever wears it. For all of her service to this family, Carlotta who seems like a coded racist for this is going to bind this woman to the devil’s right-hand man. Then, she leads the trusting woman to the basement and locks her inside right after she blames her for Deidre’s death by allowing her to escape.

 

Disco Dead

 

In the pajamas Ciprien gave her, Rowan wanders around New Orleans until she comes across a jazzy funeral- the kind the bayou is known for. A grieving woman notices her and the two strike up a conversation about loss. This prompts the woman to offer Rowan a special drink. What is it? A potion that allows her to commune with the dead. Considering the number of people in Rowan’s immediate circle who have died recently, it seems like an interesting idea. If the dead never leave us, maybe this drink will help her get the answers to the questions Ellie and Deidre never got the chance to give her. She downs the colorful liquid because stable people drink random liquids from strangers at funerals while simultaneously being hunted by a shape-shifting demon. Has she not watched a single after-school special? Stranger danger, Doc! For a woman of science, Rowan is really not thinking about the consequences of her actions.

It isn’t long before the effects of the potion kick in and she is greeted by a mask-wearing Lasher who manages to shape-shift into someone who appeals to Rowan. Meanwhile, Ciprien is back at the hotel struggling to find an imprint on the elevator that could lead him to Deidre’s killer. Upstairs in her room Cortland is trying to learn about Rowan by snooping through the young doctor’s belongings.

Now, peeking on the potion, Rowan spots the dead practically partying in the graveyard and at the funeral parade. Even the man whose funeral she crashed is dancing in his own parade. It’s a disco of the dead and this party is the first smile we’ve seen on Rowan’s face.

After failing to find an imprint on the elevator, Ciprien heads to the morgue to view Deidre’s body…literally. He removes his protection gloves and touches her body and is instantly teleported back to Rowan’s birth and the pain Deidre felt when Carlotta gave Rowan away.

Soon, Rowan follows Lasher to the gates of the Mayfair’s house but vanishes when he and Rowan see the ghost of her mother. Diedre hugs her daughter and tells her to embrace her gift. Is this all a hallucination? It must be because Rowan knows her mother is dead and none of this can be real. This isn’t her mother, it’s Lasher! That’s when she wakes up realizing her big reunion was just a drug-fueled dream.

 

How To Defeat A Demon

 

At the same time, Ciprien calls Samir to tell him what he saw in Deidre’s memories. Someone stopped that elevator and got on with her and we all know who that is. Having figured out what happened to her mother, Ciprien heads home to fill Rowan in but when he touches the outside wall of his apartment he sees Lasher! Rowan shows back up a little hazy from her funeral party/ family reunion, and her worried protector quickly ushers her inside and back under the Talamasca’s protection spell.

For now, Rowan is safe but the protection spell isn’t the only thing keeping Lasher away. When we peek in at the Mayfair house we see Carlotta and Millie actively ignoring the banging sounds of Delphine in the basement. The two women found the perfect vessel to trap the demon in and she is not having a good time. We see her banging her head against the basement wall until her head turns into a fleshy-bloody goo.

Meanwhile, Ciprien and Rowan bond over some take-out food and stories about Lasher. She knows the shapeshifter manipulated her at the funeral parade and later pretended to be her mother. Ciprien adds that he also probably lured her out by starting the building fire. He goes on to fill her in on the read he got from Deidre’s memories and mentions Carlotta’s role in ripping baby Rowan away from her desperate mother. Deidre never stopped loving her. It’s a nice sentiment but now that she’s in her mother’s demon boyfriend’s crosshairs, how do they stop him from killing her next? Ciprien has an idea: he will train Rowan to use her powers, which she now knows are quite considerable and could be a match for the villain himself. Rowan agrees by removing Ciprien’s gloves and holding his hand as a sign of trust.