MAYFAIR WITCHES
THE WORST WITCH
MINING ANNE RICE’S SHOWRUNNER ESTA SPALDING REVEALS HOW THEY’RE
WORDS: TARA BENNETT
LIVES OF THE MAYFAIR WITCHES TRILOGY FOR SEASON TWO AND THE BROADER IMMORTAL UNIVERSE
Alexandra Daddario (left) returns as Rowan.
WHEN IT COMES to “out there” cliffhangers, the season one finale of AMC’s
Mayfair
Witches
ranks up there with the all-timers. Adapting Anne Rice’s
The Witching Hour,
season one establishes how seemingly ordinary neurosurgeon Rowan Fielding (Alexandra Daddario) discovers that she’s actually the heiress to the Mayfair dynasty of witches – the 13th such designee. She becomes the latest witch haunted by the ancient evil entity known as Lasher (Jack Huston), who seduces and impregnates her by the finale.
In that, Rowan finds herself in the ancestral Mayfair family mausoleum, where in a matter of hours, her pregnancy gestates to full term. Through visions, Rowan discovers that her baby will be the new vessel for Lasher.
To summarise: Rowan had sex with the evil entity who is now going to be her son. If you’re already an Anne Rice devotee, you’ll know that kind of crazy is de rigueur for her special brand of supernatural storytelling: full of tragedy, romance, kinky bits and interconnected mythology. Developed and showrun by Esta Spalding (Masters Of Sex), Mayfair Witches returns two years after that shocking finale with a more focused approach to Rowan and Lasher’s intertwined destinies.
Aware of some criticism regarding season one, Spalding tells SFX that Rice’s Lives Of The Mayfair Witches trilogy has an abundance of stories and characters that they’ve streamlined even more this season.