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William Fichtner’s Magnetic Performance Punches Up Talamasca: The Secret Order’s Supernatural Slow Burn

By Lacy Baugher Milas  |  October 23, 2025 | 11:00am
(Photo: AMC Networks)
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William Fichtner’s Magnetic Performance Punches Up Talamasca: The Secret Order’s Supernatural Slow Burn

For those of us who have long loved the work of author Anne Rice, the idea that an entire interconnected universe of television series based on her works would one day exist is, quite literally, the stuff that dreams are made of. And Interview with the Vampire, the first installment and flagship series of AMC’s dramatically named immortal Universe, was suitably sublime, giving fans (almost) everything they could have wanted from an adaptation of Rice’s seminal work. Unfortunately, its second offering, Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches, stumbled badly in its attempt to add the ponderous world of the infamous titular coven to the franchise, which is probably why the fact that Talamasca: The Secret Order lands squarely at “pretty decent” feels like such a relief. This shared universe thing does work, after all—even if the series’ creators had to firmly strike out on their own path to make that happen. 

Rice wrote the Talamasca into many of her books, using the organization and its various officers as connective tissue throughout her stories. A secret society whose job is ostensibly to research, investigate, and monitor the variety of otherworldly creatures that populate the author’s fictional universe, Talamasca agents watch and are always there, as the saying goes. But they do not drive the story themselves—or, at least, they haven’t until now. Who watches the watchers? Us, apparently. The six-part series (all of which were available for review) is set within the conspiracy-tinged bureaucracy of this secret order of agents, where paranoia, double-dealing, and unreliable narrators run rampant. 

A whole cloth creation of executive producer Mark Johnson and co-showrunner John Lee Hancock, Talamasca: The Secret Order sets the franchise on an expansive and necessary new path by putting the group that haunts the fringes of Rice’s novels center stage. And while the show never comes close to the heights of Interview—which is genuinely one of the best genre shows of (at least) the past decade—its absence of a direct source material means that it has a freedom and flexibility that Mayfair Witches often sorely lacks. And Talamasca makes the most of it, crafting a first season that feels as much like a spy thriller as it does a supernatural drama. And while the series’ back-half occasionally can find itself bogged down under the weight of several secondary storylines that it doesn’t really have the space to properly flesh out in the course of its limited run time, its story still delights in the specifics of Rice’s larger world in a way that makes the whole franchise feel richer.

The story follows Guy Antole (Nicholas Denton), a recent law school graduate who happens to have a strange and occasionally terrifying gift: He can read people’s minds. Despite the disruption this regularly causes in his life, he manages to use his abilities to snag a prestigious new gig at a distinguished law firm. But when he’s approached by a mysterious woman named Helen (Elizabeth McGovern), the enigmatic spymaster who runs the Talamasca’s New York headquarters (colloquially known as a “Motherhouse”), he’s recruited to join their ranks with promises of answers to long-lingering questions from his past. 

Denton makes for a warm and charming everyman figure as Guy, a fish out of water whose life is thrown into chaos as he learns that not just his understanding of the world around him but his own history is not what it has always seemed. As he heads to London to investigate a Talamasca office that may have gone rogue, the series spins out about half a dozen ongoing mysteries, involving everything from the identity of Guy’s biological mother and the location of a MacGuffin-style object known as the 752 to a police investigation into a growing pile of murder and suicide cases.

But let’s be clear: The real reason to watch this show isn’t its connection to AMC’s larger Anne Rice universe — though both Eric Bogosian’s Daniel Molloy and Justin Kirk’s Raglan James appear — or the twisty premise that constantly asks us to question who we trust. It’s William Fichtner, who turns in a thoroughly magnetic performance as the show’s quasi-antagonist Jasper, the vampire who has taken over the Talamasca’s London Motherhouse in service of his own ends. Jasper is….genuinely unlike any other immortal in this franchise, a truly unique creation who feels angrier, grittier, and strangely almost more human than anyone else on the canvas — on this show or anywhere else. (When I say I desperately need him to meet Lestat, it is the highest of compliments.) 

The show is at its most interesting when Guy is forced to turn to Jasper for information, and the two uneasy allies must work together towards a shared goal. Neither character is a particularly reliable narrator in this moment, which makes almost every interaction between them crackle with a unique and thrilling sort of tension. Are they adversaries? Frenemies? Kindred spirits? The answer is both all and none of these things at various points over the course of the series, and their mutual fascination with one another allows the show to ask necessary questions about what an organization like the Talamasca is meant to be and do. (Or even if it ought to exist at all.) Denton and Fichtner are at their absolute best opposite one another, and their interactions are some of the few that reach the campy dramatic heights of some of the other series in this universe.

The rest of Talamasca’s cast is solid, particularly McGovern, who is clearly having the time of her life playing a morally questionable woman full of secrets. (Not to mention getting to wear pants and trainers instead of Downton Abbey-esque corsets.) Helen’s story, which, like Guy’s, also involves a search for answers about her family, is less interesting than the series seems to think it is, but McGovern makes a delightful meal of what is fairly mediocre fare. (It helps that she and Denton have fantastic chemistry with one another, as a pair of loners who are often underestimated by those around them but who see something useful in each other.) Maisie Richardson-Sellers has a captivating aura as Guy’s Talamasca handler Olive, but, sadly, her character is poorly served by the series’ shortened runtime and doesn’t get the depth or interiority necessary to make some of her choices feel earned. 

If Talamasca: The Secret Order fails to reach some of the lavish heights set by its predecessors, that may well be because it doesn’t need to. Any good franchise requires its entrants to do different things, and this series’ more grounded, street-level feel allows it to firmly carve out its own space within the larger Immortal Universe even as it serves as a kind of connective tissue within it. And the show’s first season certainly ends with plenty of hints that there are more stories to tell here, both about its individual characters and its namesake’s larger purpose and place within the franchise. It’s not perfect — and no one should come into this expecting another Interview — but there’s plenty to sink your teeth into while you’re waiting for the next round of vampire drama.

Talamasca: The Secret Order premieres October 26 on AMC and streams on AMC+.

Lacy Baugher Milas writes about TV and Books at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter and Bluesky at @LacyMB

For all the latest TV news, reviews, lists and features, follow @Paste_TV

 
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