There are certain shows that have left such an impression on viewers that they can go two or three years between seasons and fans will still be able to recall where the show left off before the new season begins. Then there are shows like Mayfair Witches, which debuted its first season in January of 2023. Do you remember anything about the first season? Yeah, neither did we, and it showed when we watched the Season 2 premiere.
MAYFAIR WITCHES SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: A man with a bloody hand walks up to the house where Rowan Fielding (Alexandra Daddario) aka Rowan Mayfair, lives with her new baby son, the human manifestation of Lasher (Jack Huston), the powerful, mostly evil shapeshifter.
The Gist: As the man attacks, intent on taking Lasher, Rowan uses her powers to no avail. Then Rowan wakes up.
Bringing up Lasher in human form is tough, though, as he’s constantly hungry and already at toddler size at three days old. He has crazy growth spurts. And when Rowan tries to find out why he’s now in human form, Lasher can’t or won’t say anything. When Dolly Jean Mayfair (Charlayne Woodard) comes to visit, she assures Rowan that she produced a miracle; Lasher has been a spectral member of the Mayfair family for 500 years, and Rowan is the first to give him a body. She also suggests that Rowan talk to Cortland (Harry Hamlin), the family patriarch, about Lasher, but Rowan turned him to stone after he raped her biological mother.
Another Mayfair cousin, Moira (Alyssa Jirrels), arrives in New Orleans, wanting to confront both Rowan and Lasher over the death of her sister Tessa (Madison Wolfe). Moira is a mind reader who has to blast music in her ears to keep other’s internal voices out of her head. Also in the area is Ciprien “Sip” Grieve (Tongayi Chirisa), the Talamasca agent who is determined to bring an end to Lasher and his destructive ways.
As Lasher’s growth continues to accelerate, Rowan gets a sample of blood from him after one of his violent outbursts and asks an old friend, Sam “Lark” Larkin (Ben Feldman), a CEO of a genetics startup, to test the sample.
Lasher, now in teenage form, ventures to the French Quarter. He is now able to smell and feel the touch of a woman for the first time, but as he and Rowan find out, he doesn’t know his own strength.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Mayfair Witches is part of the “Immortal Universe” that AMC has created based on Anne Rice’s novels, with the other series being Interview With The Vampire.
Our Take: When we reviewed the first season of Mayfair Witches two years ago, we were mesmerized by Daddario’s performance as Rowan, but had a lot of concerns that there would be storytelling issues during the season, mostly due to twists that weren’t that twisty and a plethora of characters that were hard to keep track of. The first episode of Season 2 brings those issues to the forefront.
So much happens in the first episode of Season 2 that we had to keep checking to see if the episode was longer than the 46 minutes we originally thought it was.
When a show is away for as long as Mayfair Witches was, and it has a massive set of characters with different functions in the Mayfair family, there needs to be some sort of exposition to get viewers back into the mindset of who was who. We see that a little here, like when Rowan and her sister JoJo (Jen Richards) reconnect and talk about “our father”, referring to Cortland. But for the most part, we spent a lot of the first episode trying to reorient ourselves as to who everyone is in the Mayfair universe.
The essentials of the Season 2 story are definitely going to be Rowan seeking out Lasher, after the now-fully-grown version escapes from the house and explores his new world. She’ll get help from Moira, and Sip is going to be looking for him, as well. What we hope is that showrunner Esta Spalding and her writers can focus in on the pursuit of Lasher, because we felt a bit lost by the end of Episode 1.
Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.
Parting Shot: A grown Lasher escapes and goes out in the world.
Sleeper Star: We feel like Ben Feldman has been called in for a bit of comic relief. If so, that’s actually something this dark show needs.
Most Pilot-y Line: Rowan, a neurosurgeon, uses her powers to tell a young patient she encounters that she is now cancer-free. So all those years of training and experience go out the window in favor of witchy powers?
Our Call: STREAM IT. We still like watching Daddario, there’s a lot about Mayfair Witches that we find exhausting to watch, because there are too many characters to keep track of and not enough story to service them all.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
The post Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Mayfair Witches’ Season 2 On AMC, Where Rowan Has To Find A Now-Human Lasher, While Others Look For Him appeared first on Decider.
