Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches – Transference

By starrymag | February 19, 2023

By: Kelly Kearney

 

 

After last week’s harrowing escape from the Mayfair Mansion of hook-up horrors, Rowan (Alexandra Daddario) finds herself, once again, listening to the whispers of her own personal family curse – Lasher (Jack Huston). After her Carlotta (Beth Grant) fell, or more than likely magically pushed off, the mansion’s balcony, Rowan was freed from her repetitive prison and filled with hope about her future and of what she is now capable. She is no longer questioning her brain zaps but instead, embracing her legacy as a wielder of magic and the Mayfair family’s new designee.

Witch Hunters of The Past and Present

Once again tying the past to the present, we open on Suzanne (Hannah Alline) in 1600s Scotland. In last week’s episode the young midwife caught the attention of a disappointed father when she delivered his cursed (his words) child with webbed fingers. Some men just can’t handle anything different and this father, as well as the local witch hunters who claim to be cleansing the villages of wayward evil women, are a prime example of toxic masculinity run amok. Suzanne watched as they paraded a dead woman in front of a crowd of seething townspeople and she knew it was a trouble that could land on her doorstep. Her worst fears came true when angry men barged through her front door with questions for her and her sister Florie (Emma Rose Smith) about the rumors of a cursed baby swirling around the local gossip mill.

Cut to the present and we meet a man named Keith Murfis (Ian Hoch) who is watching a news report about a man named Arlo Whittle (Chris Coy). Whittle is a preacher of sorts – stirring up hate and divisions with a heavy dose of fear. He talks about “a powerful cabal of women” threatening the position of men. He is your average misogynist pounding his chest and barking out ludicrous stories of witches infiltrating churches, and the government, and even taking their jobs.  Keith heads into the kitchen and pulls a big jar from his refrigerator that seems to be holding a human heart inside. We can assume it’s a witch’s heart since the man on TV keeps chanting about them. The question is whose heart is it? Well, we’ve seen Kevin before when Ciprien (Tongayi Chirisa) went to read Deidre’s last thoughts at the morgue. That’s where Kevin works and we can only assume that heart belongs to the recently deceased mother of Rowan Mayfair.

Over at Ciprien’s apartment, he and Rowan are sleeping in his bed when Lasher infiltrates her dreams. He says he’s always been a part of her and that union is cellular, genetic, and universal. No matter how hard she tries to ignore him, Lasher is not going away. Rowan tries everything to push him out of her mind, even trying to choke herself on leftovers as if she’s trying to swallow down his whispers, but nothing seems to work. He controls everything, even her ability to feel pain, which she tests by touching the flame of a candle. She can’t even feel the burning heat on her skin but Ciprien can see it and he is worried this Lasher thing is getting out of hand. He suspects the demon is behind all of Rowan’s weird behaviors and considering she’s still wearing his necklace and she doesn’t even remember putting it on, Ciprien must be on to something. The problem is that Rowan keeps lying about Lasher’s influence. Every time Ciprien asks about it she blows him off. He knows the necklace connects the two and even without it their union is hard to break. Carlotta tried for decades and all it got her was a dive off the top-floor balcony. To combat his influence, Ciprien comes up with an idea to take the necklace to the Talamasca but Rowan has no interest in parting with it. Just the mere suggestion sends her into a tizzy – a full-blown meltdown – for which she would later apologize and admit it was all Lasher. Ciprien takes a necklace anyway and starts to do some digging about this bond and how it all began.

 

Diedre’s Heart

Next, we catch up with Tessa (Madison Wolfe) Rowan’s younger cousin, when she pops – into Ciprien’s to fangirl over the new designee. She also has information about Deidre and what she thinks could be her missing heart. Tessa shows Rowan a social media post from Keith’s account where she saw a heart in a jar followed by a caption that read to whom it belonged. “Deidre Mayfair’s heart! Ding-dong the witch is dead!” it said, and surprisingly Rowan doesn’t freak out. Instead, she offers Tessa a cup of coffee and listens to her cousin explain how this weird man has been harassing her online. She managed to track down his account to some message board for anti-witch cultists who area group who hunts their people. She wonders if Keith, or anyone else connected to this group, could be responsible for the recent random burnings of women across the city. After all, history says that the best way to deal with a witch is to burn her at the stake and the recent rash of fiery homicides would suggest that these people are behind them. Rowan is listening (barely) but she’s also staring out the apartment window and directly into the image of Lasher – who just happens to be staring back at her. It’s as if the two share one reflection and it’s so distracting that the words coming out of Tessa’s mouth seem to fade into her obsession. She’s paying enough attention to question why Tessa cares about this when it seems like she’s the only one in the family who does. Likewise, Tessa can’t believe Rowan doesn’t care more; this is the heart of her mother that some sicko stole from the morgue! Where is the outrage, Rowan? By updating her on what’s going on, Tessa had hoped Rowan would be the one who would offer to help but since she’s not she’s going to pay whatever price Keith wants for the heart. She knows Lasher is to blame. He is turning down Rowan’s fire and controlling her mind and her actions. Even though Tessa looks up to Rowan, she admits she would never want that monster to hold power over her. “I want my own power on my own terms,” she says, but does she mean it?

Later, Rowan pops in for a visit with her Uncle Cortland (Harry Hamlin) to tell him she’s ready to give Lasher the boot. Her uncle finds her determination amusing and instead of agreeing with her he tells her she should just get used to him. Used to the man who just threw her Aunt Carlotta off the mansion’s balcony and recently murdered her mother? Not likely.  Rowan the doctor changes the subject when she immediately notices something is off with her Uncle. He seems shaky and right away she recognizes the tell-tale signs of ALS – an incurable and almost always fatal, disease. Cortland confirms it but asks her to keep quiet. The conversation quickly switches back to Lasher, who Rowan insists she wants removed from her body, much like how her uncle would like his disease removed from his. Courtland tells her that unfortunately, a separation is not possible. He goes on to explain that there was once an attempt at a ” transfer ” on Katherine Mayfair’s brother, who also happens to be Cortland’s father, Julien. After a brief back and forth, he agrees to find out the details of this transfer from his cousin Dolly Jean. Of course, there is a catch. He will do it if the good doctor agrees to meet his daughter Jojo (Jen Richards) for a tour of the family’s wing at the New Orleans Medical Center.

Elsewhere Ciprien is digging deep into how Lasher wound up involved with the Mayfair family. The Telemasca Healer (Suleka Mathew) we saw in earlier episodes takes one look at Rowan’s necklace and tells him that she is doubtful she can keep him safe from the magic attached to that pendant. He brushes off her warning and uses his imprint powers to read the history on the necklace and it catapults him to Scotland in the 1600s. There he sees Suzanne being accused of sorcery and witchcraft as the terrified woman begs for her life. The villagers have murder on their minds and they ignore her promises to heal them of whatever sickness they may suffer if they let her go. Predictably, they do not and we can hear her scream as they drag her to the river to get stoned.

A Transfer of Power

Next, we meet Dolly Jean (Charlayne Woodard) who shows up at Cortland’s house, surprised the shaken man is already drinking and it’s barely noon. He puts the blame on Rowan, claiming it’s hard to be around their new designee when she doesn’t seem to want to lead the family in a way he can make sense of. She wasn’t raised with magic or an understanding of the legacy for which the other Mayfairs have been conditioned to respect and embrace. Is it too late for them  to groom her into a proper designee, or is letting Lasher take over the better answer? Dolly Jean has an idea of what could work. They could warn Rowan about the realities of unifying with Lasher and why it is equally dangerous to separate them. To do so they would need Diedre’s blessing since she was the woman who passed Lasher down to her daughter. That’s when Cortland pulls out a lock of Deidre’s hair that he cut off her body during the funeral. It’s enough of his niece that should please whatever spell Dolly Jean is working on.

Over at Nola medical, JoJo gives Rowan a tour of the hospital and shows off the family’s wing. She is trying to convince her cousin to transfer from San Francisco to New Orleans, but Rowan makes it clear she has no interest in picking up stakes and moving across the country. That’s when Rowan sees Lasher in the hospital and simultaneously Jojo gets a premonition that tells her to bring her afflicted cousin to meet Dolly Jean. Rowan isn’t too enthused about returning to her mother’s house after having to save herself from a life of never-ending captivity, but she follows Jojo back anyway and ends up in the charred dining room with Dolly Jean explaining how this ceremony can only transfer the power of Lasher from one female to the next of kin. Since he is connected to the Mayfair’s matrilineal bloodline – a very powerful bond, she may need to sacrifice an important part of herself to make the separation stick. When she questions Dolly Jean about what she would need to sacrifice, the woman says it will be a piece of her that is important. It could even be her ” medical intuition.” Rowan can’t believe that one magic ceremony to separate her from a curse could also separate her from years of medical training and schooling, so she tells Dolly Jean she isn’t worried. She might not believe in the dangers but she agrees to it anyway. The question is: who will Lasher latch onto next?

He Has Chosen

In an abandoned room in the mansion, Dolly Jean shows Rowan a collection of bones from the former designees of the Mayfair family. The boney-bunch has been combined to create a small human skeleton. She goes on to say that this transference requires a blessing from all the matriarchs and then she makes Rowan braid her mother’s hair into her own. It’s the only way to receive her mother’s blessing and complete the ceremony.

Next, we meet Keith as we follow him to Arlo’s hate rally, where he pounds the patriarchal drum of female hate claiming them all to be witches. He prattles on with the familiar hits: the media protects these women by claiming their victims of the very evil they project onto others. Woven into his anti-woman tirades is information about the latest arson victim, Polly Jenkins, who was killed by fire. Whittle blames her murder on her lost Christian values that he says she traded for some sisterhood of the witch. The only way to stop women like Jenkins is to burn them at the stake. Besides Keith in the crowd, we also spot Samir (Ravi Naidu)  from the Telemasca and we quickly start to realize that this Arlo preacher bears a striking resemblance to the men locking Suzanne in a cage in the 1600s. That’s where we find Ciprien – watching it all unfold in Scotland as we bounce back to Dolly Jean who’s preparing for the transference ceremony. She has gathered all the Mayfair women to stand in a circle and recite the names of the former designees. They’re also instructed to pass around and kiss a doll that could summon Lasher and force him to choose a new host. Bouncing back to Keith who tries to impress Arlo by pulling out the famed Mayfair witch’s heart. He works at the morgue and took the still heart of the magic mom when he was asked to prep the body for burial. This organ thief is basically a hero to the rest of the witch hunters, and for a loser like Keith, those accolades really boost his mood.

Checking back into the goings on in Scotland and we see Suzanne’s sister, Florie, panic and scream as her older sister is taken away in a cage. She pleads with Suzanne to use her magic to save herself, and at first, she refuses out of fear. As the scene gets direr she mutters a spell and the wind changes and a magical current turns chaos loose in the streets. At the same time, Rowan is sitting with Dolly Jean and the rest of the Mayfair women, chanting the same words over and over again. As Suzanne gains confidence chanting her spell so does Rowan – who is determined to stick the landing on this separation. She kneels down on the floor surrounded by her family members and chants and wails the words that would break Lasher’s spell. The color of Rowan’s eyes bleed to white as we watch 1600s Suzanne unleash fire on the village she called home. The past and the present converge into one as Lasher makes himself known and Rowan gets off her knees and stands proudly in front of him. He makes some comment about spending years hiding who she was and now she’s turning her back on her true self? She does not fall for his manipulations and says that she can be her true self without him. She knows the risks of separation and tells Lasher that she’s going through with it anyway. That admission is all it takes. Lasher leaves Rowan the second she heaves up the necklace her mother wore around her neck. Necklace in hand,  Dolly Jean raises it above the women in the circle trying to determine who will be the recipient of Lasher’s influence next. Like a homing missile, the necklace angles its way toward Tessa, Rowan’s younger cousin. It seems Lasher has chosen his next Mayfair host. Rowan never wanted this curse heaped on the young woman and tells her not to accept it, but Tessa doesn’t agree. In fact, she always wanted more magic than her glamor abilities afforded her. Tessa accepts the necklace with excitement and everyone in the house congratulates her, but was Lasher always the one influencing Rowan’s every move or was she making those choices without his influence? They are more connected than any legacy spell could explain.

The Deed is Done…Or Is It?

With the separation complete we head back to Scotland where Lasher makes himself known to Ciprien by sending him hurling back through time and space, eventually landing in the interrogation room at the Talamasca. In the past, Lasher approaches Suzanne just as a necklace and a key magically appear around her neck. We can assume it’s the same one Rowan just coughed up in the present, but Suzanne takes the cue and uses the key to unlock her cage. In the present, the Telemaska Healer tells a dazed Ciprien that he is straddling the line between the past and the present and needs to find his way out of the necklace’s memories. Coincidentally, the necklace he was holding onto to read the imprint has also disappeared. Over at the Mayfair house, Tessa is also holding onto her new necklace and staring at it in the mirror as she attempts to summon Lasher. In a surprising turn of events, Tessa turns away from the mirror and opens up the witch hunter message board to post that the Mayfair women are witches and need to be stopped. Is Tessa working for the other side? it seems doubtful but why is she so invested in Keith and this witch-burning cult?

Back in Scotland in the 1600s, Suzanne watches as her village is engulfed in flames. She asks Lasher if she’s a witch, and not only is she one but he says that she’s his witch and can have anything she wants but she should know that she is bound to her legacy–as nefarious as that might be.

That’s when we see Keith in the present standing in the woods at night meeting with Tessa – who connected with him through the message board app. The young undercover witch is all smiles and flirtatious banter with this creepy loser in hopes the attention will get him to fork over Deidre’s heart. Unfortunately for her, she misread the entire situation because Arlo is also hiding in the woods and steps out to stop her from trying to glamor Keith into giving up Deidre’s heart.  As the episode draws to a close we can hear Tessa’s screams and know this cult has not only captured the young witch but is more than likely itching to build a fire. She’s not even one day into this Lasher life and already Tessa is in trouble. If something happens to her, Rowan might never forgive herself.