Editor’s note: The below interview contains spoilers for the Mayfair Witches Season 2 finale.After a whirlwind of a season, Mayfair Witches has finally wrapped up its return installment with “The Innocents,” an episode that manages to feature a lot of twists, turns, and unexpected deaths — and, in the case of Lasher (Jack Huston), at least one resurrection before seemingly meeting a more definitive fate. With the Scottish Mayfairs having unveiled their real plan — to kill all the Taltos children born to Lasher and Emaleth (Henessi Schmidt) and steal their power — it’s up to Ciprien Grieve (Tongayi Chirisa) and the Talamasca to get them out of harm’s way while Rowan (Alexandra Daddario) faces off with her very own family.
Said conflict doesn’t come without its share of temptation, as Julien Mayfair (Ted Levine), now wearing Cortland’s (Harry Hamlin) body, makes a last-ditch effort to lure Rowan to his side by offering her Lasher’s blood. In the moment, Rowan resists, but later on, once she’s alone, she gives in. Will the ends justify the means in this instance, as Rowan emphasizes later to Sam Larkin (Ben Feldman) that she intends to use her stronger abilities to help heal people through her day job as a neurosurgeon? Or has Rowan crossed a bridge too far by embracing more power? Ahead of the Season 2 finale, Collider had the opportunity to speak with showrunner Esta Spalding about some of the episode’s biggest moments. Over the course of the interview, which you can read below, Spalding discusses how the Talamasca has become the biggest bridge between AMC’s Immortal Universe shows, whether Lasher is gone for good, what Rowan’s major decision means for her moving forward, the possibility of any more Interview with the Vampire crossovers, and more.
COLLIDER: I feel like I wasn’t the only viewer who perked up when Felix showed up early on this season — but in your mind, is the Talamasca really becoming more of the connective tissue between these shows?
ESTA SPALDING: Absolutely, now that we have this Talamasca series, and they have been building out what that world is and how it operates, and so on. We have it in the book, but obviously, now we have specific new characters to talk about it, who can interact. I think it’s going to be a large, unifying force field for all the shows. Of course, I’m sitting there going, “What could Season 3 be?” You start thinking, “Well, these Talamasca guys are interesting.” We’ve always had a Talamasca presence in the show, but it’s an exciting thing to think about pursuing. I don’t think anything concrete has come into thinking for Mayfair Witches, but it’s a possibility.
There’s been conversation from fans who want to see characters from Interview with the Vampire show up on Mayfair Witches, but do you feel like the reverse scenario is just as or more likely? Especially with Interview more in the modern-day timeline at this point.
SPALDING: Absolutely. I think it’s fun for viewers of all the shows to have those moments and touchstones. Interview’s up next in terms of who’s shooting, so it seems completely possible that that could happen.
Is Lasher Really Dead in ‘Mayfair Witches’?

Image via AMC

I did want to talk about Lasher because his arc this season has really been about resurrection, rebirth, and past lives.
SPALDING: All of that is straight out of the book, so it was really fun to explore that particular arc.
Even in this episode, Rowan brings him back to life, and then he is stabbed again. Is it safe to say that his death is permanent, or should we not really rule anything out when it comes to his ability to find a way to come back?
SPALDING: No one is ever entirely dead, and Anne Rice’s Immortal Universe carries an aspect of that. Lasher lived a life in the Middle Ages and died and came back as a spirit called down by Suzanne [Mayfair]. The idea that that could happen and that there’s a cycle like that in our universe for any character, I think it’s a real possibility storytelling-wise. Even Jack Huston, when he was being interviewed, said, “Nobody’s really dead.”
In getting to explore Lasher’s humanity, it feels like a different Lasher this season, the one who’s reborn and has to grow from being an infant with a new understanding of humanity. Was that a fun challenge, writing a different side of him than we’ve ever seen before?
SPALDING: For sure. It’s in the books, and we wanted to honor that. How do we make it honest and real? The story that came to mind was Frankenstein’s monster, who is born into this big adult body and doesn’t know who he is or why he’s there, and everyone, because he seems monstrous, perceives him as violent. Lasher does have these… not really violent tendencies, but he does have this destructive power when it comes to the Mayfair women. So, it was interesting to take him from a destructive force, but he always had to be the innocent that we understand him to be at the end of the season, and I thought that Jack just did a fantastic job with that.
It was funny, when we were talking about the season, he said, “I’ve always wanted to play Frankenstein’s monster,” and here we are, and that is the story that Anne Rice told. It’s funny you say “humanity,” because we have to be really careful not to say he’s in human form — because he wasn’t human. He’s this other kind of being, and in some ways, much more innocent and pure than a young human.
Right. I suppose he feels more human in the sense that he can be killed. He’s vulnerable; that’s probably a better way to put it.
SPALDING: I kept saying “embodied,” and then it felt so formal. But what’s the word for it? He’s “taken a form.”
In this episode, the Talamasca essentially manage to steal the Taltos heirs away from the Scottish Mayfairs. Moira checks in and says they’re safe by the end of the episode, but are there potential repercussions to be explored, now that they’ve gone from essentially being under the thumb of one group to another? Can the Talamasca’s intentions be fully trusted, or do they have a more sinister goal?
SPALDING: I feel like Sip’s intentions can be trusted. Sip has never understood the higher levels of things that are operating in the Talamasca, and there’s absolutely drama to be had in how the kids are handled. By the time we meet them again, I think they’d be adults. But how the Taltos would be handled… there’s a lot of that in the Anne Rice mythology, in the third book in particular.

Related

“It Has to Be Earned”: ‘Mayfair Witches’ Showrunner Breaks Down That Surprise ‘Interview With the Vampire’ Crossover

Season 2 of Mayfair Witches is currently airing on AMC.

How Powerful Is Rowan After the ‘Mayfair Witches’ Season 2 Finale?

Image via AMC

Rowan refuses to ally herself with Julian when he offers Lasher’s blood to her, but later on, she’s alone when she makes that choice. What drives her choice in that moment, and in what ways has she now managed to become even more powerful than she was before?
SPALDING: She’s always told herself that her intentions are entirely good, that she wants this power. I think there’s real pleasure in the feeling of power. I really believe she goes over to drink the blood to see if she can raise the dead, to see if she can raise Lasher. But what comes after is this realization of the ways in which she’s even more powerful now, and I think that’s what a Season 3 might explore. What does a powerful witch who’s tasted blood, who knows she’s willing to be transgressive, do?
It’s interesting how she’s being cagey about doing it. In her conversation with Lark, where he asks her what she’s planning to do with the blood, he talks about how she gets a look on her face when she talks about it. Is there even a part of Rowan that knows that what she’s done is a little transgressive?
SPALDING: For sure. She’s not telling him in that scene what she’s done, so she’s aware. She’s also aware at this point that he is of a mortal world and that she has immortal or supernatural interests in what she thought might be a romantic collision. He’s not a person who can go to the next place with her.
Lark decides that he can’t really be around to support whatever she’s going to do, and she makes him the tea so that he doesn’t remember her at all. Is Rowan ever going to get a break when it comes to her love life and being able to really make it work with anyone?
SPALDING: If we are lucky enough to get a Season 3, that’s something to explore. It would be nice to find somebody who really can match her, who she is, and the power she’s coming into, and who she can be her real self with. I think with Lasher, she could, and Lasher knew her, but that was a tragic story. It’s laid out in the books that way.
‘Mayfair Witches’ Showrunner Teases the Possibility of Season 3 and Potential Talamasca Spin-Off Connections

Image via AMC

The end of this episode tees up the Rowan/Julian conflict, now that he’s taken over Cortland’s body. Is he going to become a more powerful foe moving forward? I’m assuming the Mayfair family drama is far from over.
SPALDING: All to be explored. When we really know we’re doing another season, all to be discussed. We fully intended that feeling, that “game on” between the two of them, as the cliffhanger for the season. What happens after that is still an exciting, fun conversation to be had.
Is there potential for any threads here to tie into the upcoming Talamasca show? Obviously, there are teasers that have been dropping, but is there anything that happens in this season, in particular, that might be a reference point for people who want to jump into that show when it comes?
SPALDING: Mark Lafferty, who’s the co-showrunner on that show, wrote Episode 207 of Mayfair and was in the writers’ room at the very end, so he certainly knew all of our mythology and the way that we had treated the Talamasca in Mayfair Witches, and I think carried that. Obviously, our producers are also keeping track of the continuity and so on, so, for sure, the worlds overlap, but obviously, I can’t say whether any of the characters do.
All episodes of Mayfair Witches are available to stream on AMC+.

Mayfair Witches

Release Date

January 7, 2023

Writers

Michelle Ashford, Esta Spalding