Mayfair Witches Recap: Fall of the House of Mayfair

Okay, folks, now we are cooking. Mayfair Witches is best when it gathers its characters together, so as soon as I learned that “Cover the Mirrors” was centered around Rowan and Cortland hosting a family get-together, attendance mandatory on pain of enthrallment, I was locked in. This was a good episode of television! There were twists and stakes and emotional beats and everything. There was also an introductory interlude with a curly-haired vampire — those of you who watched season two of Interview With the Vampire may recognize Felix — who befriends Lasher on a park bench and urges him to drop his human impulse to empathy. Unfortunately, we don’t have time to discuss the potential crossover tease today because things are actually happening.

With three relatives now dead, the Mayfairs know that something or someone is hunting them, and the above-board reason for Rowan’s last-minute family reunion is a group protection spell. What the Mayfairs don’t know is that Rowan’s protection spell is a placebo, and they are essentially Lasher-bait (Lasher is attracted to Mayfairs by their smell, so how could he resist the combined aromas of 80-odd Mayfairs in one place?). Nor do they know that Lasher is the aforementioned murderous predator.

Perhaps my favorite part of this plan is that everyone keeps telling Rowan that, loose psycho killer or not, the Mayfairs won’t go anywhere without the promise of an open bar and passed apps. And even then, they’ll probably be late. “Well, yes, there will be cocktails and charcuterie, of course,” Cortland tells some cousin on the phone. And Jojo brought crawfish beignets!

And when free prosecco, hors d’oeuvres, and a protection spell aren’t enough of a draw, Cortland is also telling the relatives that Lasher — whom most of the family views as a sort of personal Jesus — will also be there and available for heart-to-hearts. This is a rogue move that does not thrill Rowan, but she is advised absolutely against telling anyone the truth about Lasher and her plans to kill him. Or put him in a thrall. Whichever she finds most expedient in the moment. Assuming she can do either, considering that her firepower appears on the fritz.

This is no Scooby gang, by the way. There are several problems within Rowan’s inner circle. For one, nobody trusts Cortland because he’s, you know, disgusting. Dead Aunt agrees that Rowan shouldn’t tell the family the truth about Lasher, but she hopes Rowan kills him brutally, like she did her sister. Yuck! Dolly Jean keeps her cards close to the vest and declines to tell Rowan even pertinent information until Rowan asks specific, direct questions like, “Where the fuck is Evelyn, and why is she screening your calls?”

As for Jojo, Rowan drags her to the house without even telling her that Cortland — ”your… our father…” — is currently bopping around upstairs and not gathering dust in the basement as Rowan promised her he would be. Amazingly Jojo, arms full of crawfish beignets she got just because she knew Rowan doesn’t know the Mayfair hosting rules, lets Rowan skate with a curt, “I trusted you” speech. Jojo is too good for this world, especially because that is not even the worst thing Rowan does to her in this episode.

Rowan has dressed for the evening like an entry-level public relations assistant working the door and is frantically making sure every last third cousin once removed is present and accounted for in between bouts of strained small talk. But, unsurprisingly, Jojo isn’t the only Mayfair who won’t be in the same room as Cortland unless actively misled to be there. The rest of the family is growing increasingly bored in the parlor, but Evelyn Mayfair is still a no-show, despite Dolly Jean’s repeated texts and voicemails. It is only at this point that Dolly Jean confesses that Evelyn probably won’t come because Cortland is there and “things happened between them.” Well, this would have been helpful information to have about an hour ago, Dolly Jean. We don’t get the details of these “things,” but I’m gonna make an educated guess and say that they are gross and it’s Cortland’s fault.

The place from which Evelyn ignores all of Dolly Jean’s calls is actually her place of business, a bar, where she serves Lasher repeated pint glasses of milk. Weird, but okay, says Evelyn, who doesn’t have time for this shit.

I suggested in my last recap that Lasher’s sexual influence over the Mayfair women he’d seduced and killed wasn’t entirely natural. But if there is some kind of bewitchment going on in these encounters, Evelyn is entirely immune. I can be wrong! Perhaps it’s the repeated milk orders that have turned her off, or maybe it’s just Lasher’s general twitchy-eyed vibe, but Evelyn is not into it. So, much like any other drunk at the bar, Lasher chooses not to hear Evelyn announce last call and instead grabs her arm and refuses to leave. I was genuinely worried that this was about to get problematic (again), but Evelyn fights him off with an assist from her son, who almost dies when Lasher tries to choke him out. Also there to help is Alonso, whom Rowan has dispatched to pick up the unmanageable Evelyn, with instructions to tell her Cortland is definitely for sure 100 percent not at the house. (Rowan has locked him in his father’s room, which I guess she figures is basically the same thing.)

Side note: who is Alonso? Have we met him before? How did he make his way into Rowan’s inner circle, and why did this happen off-screen?

But anyway, back to Rowan’s party, which still isn’t going great. She’s not having much luck charming any of her cousins except for Daphne, who is a child grieving her mother. Meanwhile nobody’s started this supposed protection spell, the beignets are getting cold, and there’s no sign of their promised messiah, all of which is making the Mayfairs antsy. Making things worse is Moira and the cloud of hostility that constantly surrounds her. Obviously, Moira did not want to be at this shindig. Moira doesn’t trust Rowan, and she wasn’t sold on participating in whatever little self-serving side project Rowan has going on, but Albrecht Escher, mid-level Talamasca administrator and brain damage enthusiast, told her she had to. For justice.

So Moira huffs and puffs and puts on her little floral sundress to go to Rowan’s, but she lacks a bit of the finesse that the magic bureaucracy might have wanted in their double agent. Instead of playing it cool, Moira arrives and immediately starts acting like a pill. I’m sorry, I know, but I just call ‘em like I see ‘em. Trust me, if I were doing a feminist analysis of this show, I’d have a whole rant about depicting female protagonists as shrill divas whose correct opinions are just a nuisance to the overall plot. But that’s not what we signed up for here, is it?

So Moira shows up and immediately announces to the room, “She is lying to us, everybody. Lasher isn’t even here.” And this is why she’s nobody’s favorite cousin.

Her hand thus forced, Rowan drags Moira into a side room where she can bring her into the inner circle. This should have been obvious to an organization as shady as the Talamasca, but Moira is simply not cut out for the double agent life. She thinks, bless her, that Rowan should tell everyone the truth about Lasher and her plans to kill him. But Rowan, simply repeating what Mayfairs with way better track records than Moira for getting along with the family have told her, says she can’t. And one last thing, Moira cannot under any circumstances tell Sip, i.e. the Talamasca, her plan because they will fuck everything up.

This leaves Moira with a choice. Does she trust Rowan? Or does she trust Sip? Now, honestly, if you were in Moira’s position, would you choose any differently? She doesn’t really know Rowan but she does know her relatives are all in a magical death cult and also they hate her. At least Sip seems like he’s on her side. So she tells Sip, enabling him to unwittingly fuck everything up.

But before he can do that, Rowan has to fuck everything up for herself, as is her raison d’être. She decides to come clean to the assembled Mayfairs about Lasher after all, and, at first, everyone seems less hostile than expected. But then little Daphne is so hurt to discover that Rowan lied to her that she tries to walk out, Jojo goes to stop her, and Rowan gets a little overzealous in trying to keep them both from opening the front door and accidentally traps them in a thrall in front of the whole family.

However, Rowan will have to deal with that later because Lasher is finally here. Unfortunately, we never get to find out what Rowan was planning to do to Lasher — kill him, thrall him, or save him — because Sip leaps forward with the purple smog blaster Albrecht gave him and accidentally smogs Rowan instead. Rowan goes down, and a bevy of unmarked cars roll up with Talamasca agents to grab Lasher and throw him in the back seat.

Additional Questions, Comments, and Concerns

• Theory: what if Lasher didn’t “give” Rowan her powers at all, and he simply had to stop siphoning them from her when she re-birthed him?

• Another theory: what if putting on his father’s old clothes allows Old Man Cortland to possess Cortland’s body?

• Literally nobody was asking but Lark is still in town enjoying the “trumpet music” and he has decided to miss his flight and hang around because Rowan said she’d probably have her family stuff wrapped up by tomorrow, tops.

• Now what is Albrecht up to and what does it have to do with Cortland? Who’s Ian? Who’s in Amsterdam? What is he not telling Sip? Why does Sip not have the self-respect to walk away from this toxic work environment?