The Rushed Second Season of Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches Favors Plot Twists Over Character Depth

Anne Rice’s Lives of the Mayfair Witches trilogy is not for the faint of heart. The story at the center of this trilogy of novels spans generations and crosses continents, featuring over a dozen powerful female characters, a demon curse, ghosts, and god-like immortals. It’s also full of dark themes and storylines, including but not limited to rape, incest, assault, forced pregnancy, suicide, possession, murder, abuse, and some really graphic violence. (Along with your standard copious sex and garden-variety betrayal.) It’s a series that’s genuinely unhinged at the best of times and was never the sort of story that could be straightforwardly adapted for a modern television audience. 

In its first season, the AMC series Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches made an admirable attempt to streamline and update the original, jettisoning some of the books’ more unwieldy plot elements, combining characters into intriguing new forms, and doling out bits of Mayfair family history alongside its primary narrative. It wasn’t perfect, and its final few episodes were kind of a mess of nonsensical character choices, but it was trying, and that counts for something in my book. 

Unfortunately, however, Mayfair Witches stumbles badly in its second season, abandoning any cohesive focus on the family at its center and counting on its breakneck pace and seemingly endless bonkers plot twists to paper over the fact that we still know so little about various members of the Mayfair clan or the relationships between them. What little we did know—particularly about Lasher and his motivation—is almost completely abandoned in favor of achieving various narrative ends, with little consideration as to whether the behaviors and actions necessary to achieve them make any actual sense. 

The show is eager to drop phrases and character names that will be familiar to fans of Rice’s larger universe but does little of the work to provide the context this story desperately needs. So much of this trilogy is based on the living, breathing, nature of Mayfair history—in the books, we spend multiple chapters with characters like Cortland’s (Harry Hamlin) father Julien (Ted Levine), on Lasher’s extensive, generational manipulation of the family, or the various relationships between them all—but here, almost everyone who isn’t heroine Rowan Fielding (Alexandra Daddario) is treated as an afterthought. But even Rowan’s characterization is frequently all over the place, and her motivations often feel as though they change from scene to scene. 

Season 2 picks up immediately following the chaotic events of the first season finale. Rowan has just given birth to a baby that is actually the demon-esque spirit Lasher (Jack Huston) reborn into a human body. Much like her accelerated pregnancy, the baby is also growing at an exponentially rapid rate, and Rowan is becoming increasingly concerned and frustrated that she can’t figure out what her former lover-now-child’s endgame in all this is. Is it simply to be human again? Or is their something more nefarious at work? (Fair warning, you’ll probably be as confused about this as Rowan is, as Lasher seems to have lost all his memories and also has no idea what’s going on. Adventure!) Things take a dark(er) turn when Lasher, now suddenly a teen and then a young adult, starts sleeping with and killing Mayfair women, with little to no explanation. Rowan decides that something has to be done to protect the family, and that the promise of Lasher’s power isn’t worth the risk. But despite her insistence that she’s capable of killing Lasher and freeing the family from his clutches—is she?

Elsewhere, poor Ciprien Grieve (Tongayi Chirisa) continues to work for the Talamasca even though he knows his boss is regularly erasing his memories. He’s determined to capture Lasher himself, though he has surprisingly little reaction to the fact that the spirit is now also kind of his child. He gets some help from Moira Mayfair (Alyssa Jirrels), a telepath who returns to New Orleans to get answers about her sister Tessa’s (Madison Wolf) death and why Lasher didn’t protect her. And of course, there’s Cortland, who’s still a statue when the season begins, but who doesn’t stay that way for long. None of these characters have much in the way of arcs of their own, and the canvas’ overstuffed nature isn’t helped by the introduction of Lark (Ben Felding), a geneticist ex of Rowan’s who is recruited to help run tests on Lasher’s blood and give her someone to flirt with now that she and Cip aren’t really on speaking terms. 

Honestly, this is all…generally fine? It’s not particularly true to the novels—even more so than the first season, and you really feel the absence of Mona Mayfair and Michael Curry this time around—but it’s not terrible. Perhaps it’s just that our expectations were too high. Mayfair Witches is part of AMC’s Immortal Universe and, as a result, exists in the same world as the sublime Interview with the Vampire (a fact that gets an intriguingly direct nod in this second season). But where Interview finds purpose and joy in the act of adaptation, staying true to the spirit of its source material even as it updates its story for a new medium and a modern audience, Mayfair Witches seems almost dwarfed by the task it has set itself, based on the seven Season 2 episodes available to screen for critics (out of a total of eight).

It’s not that the story isn’t propulsive; in fact, there are plenty of moments where this show is genuinely fun to watch. (An episode where Rowan is literally trapped outside herself is a particular standout.) But so many bonkers things happen in such quick succession that nothing gets any time to breathe. Part of the problem is simply one of scale: After, all Interview took two seasons to adapt a novel that clocks in at maybe half the page count of Lasher, the doorstopper of a middle installment in Rice’s witch trilogy that this second season is based on. But it’s also because by reframing this sprawling saga as predominantly Rowan’s story, every supporting figure in the story becomes essentially interchangeable with everyone else. Even master schemer Cortland often feels like little more than an over-the-top plot device this time around. (It doesn’t help that he also becomes staggeringly dumb this season.)

To be fair, there are some bright spots. Jirrels’ Moira may be a character created for the show —and not an aged-up Mona like I originally assumed—but she brings a welcome shot of bitchy energy into every scene she’s in and is one of the few figures allowed to go toe to toe with Rowan in a satisfying way. And Mayfair Witches is at its most interesting when it allows Rowan to acknowledge her darker side, and both the show and the character would be better served if this season was more overtly focused on her growing love of—and even addiction to—the power Lasher offers her. (Mayfair Witches seems strangely reluctant to have Rowan seem selfish or unlikable, and it’s a mistake.)

In fact, the show is at its best when it acknowledges that every character on its canvas is a terrible person to some degree or other. After all, Interview doesn’t apologize for the worst deeds of Armand, Lestat, or Louis, and Mayfair Witches should behave accordingly. Rowan’s obsession with Lasher, her enjoyment of the abilities he gives her access to, and the seemingly bottomless rage that exists within her: these are all intriguing glimpses at a complicated woman that I would have loved to see more of. Too bad we didn’t get a chance to do so.

Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches premieres Sunday, January 5 on AMC and AMC+.

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

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