Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches – The Thrall

By: Kelly Kearney

We open in Scotland in the 1600s, where midwife Suzanne (Hannah Alline), helps in the birth of a baby. When the worried father demands to see the newborn, he rejects it as evil when he notices the child has webbed fingers. He accuses Suzanne of poisoning his wife with potions that she swears to him was only nutrition to help the baby. Later that day she sees that same father in a crowd of people listening to “The King’s witch hunter” hold public court over a woman he captured in the woods. The beaten prisoner looks dead as he parades her around as proof he’s come to “cleanse” the village of her evil. He claims he caught the woman sacrificing herself over to the devil-flesh and all, and of course, nobody questions why he was in the woods at night. Suzanne can see the angry father staring at her as he listens to the rantings of this delusional street preacher, forcing her to escape the crowd before she becomes the next innocent woman locked in that cage.

Cut to the present and the injured Ciprien (Tongayi Chirisa) is healing with some good old-fashioned lovemaking and breakfast in Deidre’s (Annabeth Gish) bed. He and Rowan (Alexandra Daddario) hooked up and now they are famished–for food and human contact. Ciprien seems to be healing slowly and he can hardly carry the eggs and puddings he made for Rowan. That knife to the gut courtesy of Carlotta (Beth Grant) has left a mark but the demon that’s infesting his soul is another thing entirely. Rowan spots the knife wound and we realize she is clueless as to what went down in the previous episode, but now everything is starting to fall into place. Who stabbed Ciprien? How long have they been in Carlotta’s house? Since the funeral? When did they decide to have sex? Nothing makes sense to Rowan and even less to the man with the mysterious slash in his side. Neither of them seems to remember what happened with Carlotta or the fire–one that definitely should have charred this bedroom they’re in. Worried about infection at the wound site, Rowan says he needs an ambulance and heads to the bathroom to grab her clothes. She spots a knife on the floor and starts questioning whether or not she was the one who stabbed Cip. They don’t need three guesses to figure this out when he grabs the knife and reads the imprint of Carlotta trying to stab Rowan just as his abdomen takes the brunt of the attack. His weakness is due to sepsis and Rowan thinks needs IV antibiotics. One problem: the phone isn’t working and the doors and windows are magically glued shut. Lasher (Jack Huston)! But why would he lock them in this sexy groundhogs day? The day keeps repeating but it’s different every time. Sometimes Ciprien is hurt, and sometimes he is fine. All of these mind games are a distraction to keep them from getting help. If Cip dies then Lasher has an easier path to Rowan.

Speaking of, while she’s upstairs talking to a healed and happy version of Ciprien who is trying his hardest to gaslight her into thinking this is all in her concussed head, his wounded doppelganger is downstairs trying to reverse the curse on the locked front door. While grabbing at the handle, Ciprien envisions a man–Stuart Townsend (Kellan Rhude), a fellow Talamasca agent. Stuart was assigned to protect Antha– one of the Mayfair matriarchs, and Cip asks him where he went when he disappeared all those years ago. The man responds with an eerie warning to not to fall in love with Rowan and definitely try not to die in this house or else Lasher will trap him in it forever. The real Ciprien is in rough shape as he’s painfully crawling up the steps to the bedroom, while Rowan is once again, eating eggs and puddings with her delusions. When she realizes none of this is real thanks to spotting fake Ciprien’s gloves, he disappears and she runs downstairs to care for the fading man who’s been tasked with protecting her. She runs to the bathroom again for supplies and there, sitting in the tub she finds a crying translucent ghost-like Millie Mayfair (Geraldine Singer) asking what she did with Carlotta. She rattles off something about dying and then vanishes before Rowan can make sense of it. What does make sense is that Lasher is an ex-boyfriend who is entirely made up of sewn-together red flags because if he can’t have this 13th witch, no one can. He is everything Carlotta said he was and more.

“So, what’s the game?”

Apparently, death is what will break this endless day behind a locked door, and if a dead Ciprien is what stops this, then he is willing to end his life to get Rowan out of the house. He gives her the go-ahead to take him out, but as a doctor and a friend, she can’t brain-zap him away. Instead, she calls Lasher out. She ignores Cips pleas and offers herself as a trade for his safety. In an instant, Ciprien is magically chucked through the house walls as Rowan says she will stay inside forever if that’s what it takes to keep him safe.

With Cip gone, Rowan searches the house for Lasher until she finds a dress laid out for her on the bed. It’s a familiar style and cut–like the one she was wearing in that mysterious photo, she didn’t remember taking. Lasher tells her everything that’s happening is what she wanted–she wanted Ciprien, so she got him. Then the two share a dance as he does his best to help make her dreams come true– right down to a table filled with decorative cakes he knows she is craving. He even manages to bring a dead fox she tried to save as a child back to life–anything to impress his Princess of Darkness. He has somehow crawled inside of her head to share her memories and remind her of her youth. “You can be like that–free and beautiful, or you can be more,” he says as they are both teleported outside under a starry sky. She asks him what he wants from her and all he can say is “only this. Us,” which is a lie but she hasn’t figured that out yet. Even when he reveals her Aunt Carlotta suspended in the air with a tortured look on her face claiming she wanted that too because of how the woman treated her mother, she still cannot tell what is fact from his manipulative fiction. The one truth he utters is how this can only end when she finishes what she came to do.

Across town, Odette (Keyara Milliner) finds her brother injured and lying on his apartment floor. When she attempts to call 911 he tells her they can’t fix him. “I went in the house. The Mayfair house,” and his sister is shocked, wondering why he would take such a risk. That’s when Samir (Ravi Naidu) and another agent from the Talamasca show up and Ciprien orders his sister to hide. Through the crack in the door, she watches them cast a healing spell, completely confused by what she is seeing.

Back to Rowan, who tries to get information out of Millie on how Catlotta took control of the house. She starts digging through closets looking for clues and stumbles on a book that eventually sends her down to the basement where Delphine (Deneen Tyler) was killed. Of course, Lasher is waiting for her as she reads the recipe for a potion from the book and starts searching the basement grow room for the ingredients. “Hundreds of years I’ve been with this family. You can’t get rid of me with a bunch of lettuce” he says, and goes on to tell her she is just like Antha. The former matriarch shared Rowan’s curiosity, but you know what they say, it killed the cat and it certainly killed Antha–who jumped off the balcony to her death. His unwanted advances push Rowan into Delphine’s remains and she freaks out and runs up the stairs to try the front door again. It is still locked, and Lasher tells her that Carlotta wanted it locked and if she wants it open, all she has to do is will it to be. When the door opens she knows it was him who did it and he is still controlling her and her magic.

Vengeance is Rowan’s…or is it?

Back at the apartment, Ciprien’s knife wound is magically transferred to the healer Samir brought over. She digs deep into his wound and pulls out the knife Carlotta used and the whole scene freaks his sister out! At the same time, Rowan demands Lasher let the suspended Carlotta down. When the woman hits the floor she is devastated and terrified but thankful her niece saved her from Lasher. Now that Rowan isn’t still livid over how this woman treated Deidre and her infant self. She even says the woman should be in jail for what she’s done and plans on contacting the authorities as soon as she can. Unfortunately, that front door is still magically glued shut and now the two of them are stuck in Lasher’s house of Mayfair horrors together. If the only way out is death, Rowan might have to kill Carlotta to unlock the door–not that she particularly wants to do that, but she is running out of ideas. Carlotta tells her there is a way out but Rowan can never get back to her life as a doctor in San Francisco. Lasher is bound to her now and no amount of distance from New Orleans will change that. For saving her, Carlotta offers to return the favor with a promise to save Rowan now. As Carlotta prattles on about how happiness is not a part of her great-niece’s future, she starts to realize Antha never jumped off the balcony, Carlotta pushed her and she is about to do it again to Rowan! “I should’ve killed you when you were a baby,” the crazed woman says, and that’s when Rowan hears Lasher’s whisper and a choking Carlotta falls off the balcony to her death. Rowan didn’t want that and she accuses Lasher of murdering the woman on his own. She refuses to accept the blame for this death, but is he right? Is she controlling all of this?

Maybe Ciprien can figure it out now that he is healed from his knife wound and heading out in search of Rowan. Before he leaves, he explains the ins and outs of his job to a shocked Odette. She had no idea what her brother was up to and now she is practically begging to quit before it’s too late. She asks him to steer clear of the Mayfairs, but how can he when Rowan got the front door open and needs his wisdom now more than ever? It’s a new and powerful day for Rowan Mayfair, and what is next for her is a walk–free of family curses, under a warm sunny sky.