Episode 3 - Cover the Mirrors

Mayfair Witches S02 E03 AMC Networks

From IMDb: Rowan desperately partners with Cortland to try to stop Lasher; Moira assists Sip in capturing him.

Whew!  Now that Alicia and Gifford have both died immediately after encountering Lasher in the flesh, and the Mayfair victims have increased in number, Rowan has realized the number will increase unless she stops Lasher.  While the first two episodes did indeed feel closer to the novels, the third episode takes us more into the onscreen version.  With a surprise or two.

Let's get the first one out of the way now.  Lasher never found himself in the company of a vampire in or out of the flesh, but I suppose it would have been inevitable.  Who better to help Lasher interpret and possibly even understand the effect a returning memory had on him?  Of having maybe been a priest, of kneeling at an altar in a...church?  Cathedral?  Who better than a vampire to recognize the kind of guilt Lasher seemed to be describing in a still somewhat hazy memory?

One small detail that has consistently appeared that might surprise viewers is...milk.  Yes.  Milk.  I might have mentioned this previously.  Lasher grew to adult size and appearance with physical capabilities of an adult in an astonishingly short amount of time.  However, he is still more or less a newborn.  What do newborn humans need, and need A LOT?

Milk.

Seeing empty milk jugs in Gifford's house, among other places, is what tells Rowan that Lasher was there.  Lasher could drink an entire half gallon of milk like it was served in a tippy cup and he was especially thirsty.  And believe it or not, in an episode of Season 1, it was Dolly Jean Mayfair who uttered a phrase that tells what Lasher is.  Well, to humans, anyway.

Walking baby.

And newborn babies need milk, need to nurse.  Because the preferred source--the mother's breast milk--is full of nutrients babies need.

So, what happened to Alicia and Gifford Mayfair, to the girl from the French Quarter, to Lucy?  And what does milk have to do with it?  What do Rowan and Sam Larkin's findings from the genetic tests of Lasher's blood have to do with any of this?

No spoilers, but the phrase to remember is, "walking baby".

One thing I meant to mention from Episode 2 is what Alicia said to Lasher when he showed up at her house and realized it was him.  She described the things Lasher talked about as a ghost, the lives of the Mayfair Witches that he had been a part of for centuries.  Lasher, according to Alicia, had been able to describe the Mayfair Witches when they were still colonial plantation owners in Saint-Domingue, which today is part of modern-day Haiti.  I do go into some detail about this very real period in history on The Mayfair Witches Parlor.  Of when French colonials who owned the sugar plantations up until the Haitian Revolution drove remaining plantation owners out as others were killed and their plantations were sacked and/or destroyed.

Alicia was referring to the Mayfair Witches and Maye Faire, the plantation established by Charlotte Mayfair and her husband, Antoine Fontenay after they left France.  The Mayfair Witches remained there until Marie Claudette Mayfair was able to gather as many family members and possessions as she could and move them to Louisiana.  This is where Riverbend came into it.  

Alicia also mentioned Riverbend.  It was the plantation established by Marie Claudette Mayfair in the early 1800's, but was washed out by the Mississippi River in 1896.  It predated the Mayfair house on First Street by over 50 years.  It was where Julien Mayfair and his sister Katherine were born and raised, and where their mother, Marguerite, conducted...experiments...that will be relevant later, and--oh dear--were the source of the godawful jars in Julien's room in the Mayfair house on First Street.

It was also where Julien learned from Marie Claudette that the way to keep Lasher from hearing his thoughts was to play music.  We also know that there are Mayfairs who have the same ability to read thoughts like Lasher could as a ghost--like Moira Mayfair.  Why a Victrola?  

I hope that's coming up in later episodes, so we'll just wait on that one.  

What is important to point out, I think, is that something else is different in Lasher.  As a ghost, he could remember each and every Mayfair Witch.  He could remember the things they said and did, and what happened to them.  He could remember the other Mayfairs surrounding them and the places they lived and died.  

Now that Lasher is in the flesh once again, his memories of them have begun to fade.  That became obvious when Alicia mentioned the stories he once told about Haiti, and he was puzzled.  Haiti?  What's a Haiti?

Cover the Mirrors S02E03, Mayfair Witches AMC
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Of course, that can take us right back to what Lasher tried to describe to this vampire who appeared to have been young when turned.  From the ever-pronounced accent, I'm going to take a guess that the vampire in life had been a local, or at least someone who lived his brief lifetime in that region of the United States.  If the audience was supposed to think that was Louis, or even Lestat, it wouldn't work in an AMC series.  Anyone wanna guess why?

So finding out more about this vampire should be fun.

The point is, Lasher was describing a hazy memory from a time period when he had been alive the way he was alive to the world in that moment.  He wasn't able to before, but his memory returning is an evolving thing.  He also recognizes Rowan as his mother--by birth.

And what was Rowan doing?  Well, what the Mayfairs did when they realized there was a very real threat preying upon them.  They gathered together.  Safety in numbers.  There are differences, though.  

Here, the intention is to draw Mayfairs together to confront Lasher and destroy him.  With a spell.  What no one knows, however, is that Lasher...he's not exactly as anyone remembers him.  They don't know he's in the flesh.  They don't know exactly what has happened to Gifford or Alicia.  Or that it's already happened to Lucy.  The Mayfairs gathered seem to still believe Lasher is still a ghost, a spirit.  One does not need to cover the mirrors unless there's a spirit involved.

I'm still piecing this all together, but if Rowan is the only one who knows Lasher is in the flesh, then she is the only one who would know that the only way to entrap him in the house once she gets him inside is this thrall.  A regular spell that is for spirits isn't going to work with Lasher if he's in the flesh.  

But what the devil is up with the Talamasca suddenly showing up and whisking Lasher away?  And why would Rowan need to be incapacitated first?  Oh, no.  Even I don't want to speculate too far on this!  Those who have read the novels--shush.

There is one scene where Jojo and her father, Cortland, were talking in Julien's hidey-hole room and Jojo talked of sitting with him under the crepe myrtles.  He told her he wanted her to be her most authentic self.  Until she realized what her father had really done to Deirdre, and even to Rowan, she had felt so loved and accepted by her father.  Now, she questions whether that came from love or a desire to manipulate Mayfair women to gain their power over Lasher.

That is a very interesting point.  Since we have already been introduced to Julien Mayfair, Cortland's father, I'll give this much.  It is a very valid point when you consider the dynamic we saw that existed between Cortland and Julien.  It's also tragic.  Everyone should be accepted as their authentic self as who they are, not how it affects others.  Especially when it's at the expense of someone who is being their authentic, true self.  Or it's being used to manipulate, as Jojo realized.

That's no way to treat people.

Shifting gears, my deep interest in the Mayfair house is being indulged in another thing I love--movie and TV houses.  In the AMC series, the Soria-Creel house on Prytania Street is the one used as the Mayfair house.  In the novels, Anne Rice used her own home on First and Chestnut Streets, the Brevard-Rice house, as the Mayfair house.  If you look at the hardcover first edition of The Witching Hour from 1990 and the Trade paperback edition from 1991, you will see across the title pages a sketch of the Brevard-Rice house.  Rice's house appears again with lightning bolt effects on the Mass Market paperback edition from 1993, as well.

Anne Rice herself has talked about it in interviews and on a Facebook post in 2014 (it's on the Chronicles of the Mayfair Witches Facebook page in the Featured section).  That was the post about the Parlor's Inside First Street page, which I had to make a replacement of recently for get-your-hand-out-of-my-virtual-cookie-jar reasons.  There has been some confusion over the years as to which of Anne Rice's New Orleans properties was used in The Witching Hour, but it's pretty well and clearly established that it was her house on First and Chestnut Streets.

Episode 3 Recap amc+ on YouTube

That doesn't mean I still do not enjoy seeing more of the interior of the Mayfair house as depicted in the series.  Rice's former home and the Soria-Creel house are similar in a lot of ways but also have their differences.  I might have to add some more just because it's fun, but the page of the Parlor about the Soria-Creel house has been restored.  On this web page, I've made a new section for the Mayfair Witches series on AMC, and each link will take you to one of the three pages of the Parlor that discusses the series.  Scroll down a bit; it's after Remembering Anne Rice.  Or you can click on From Page to Screen in the navigation menu at the top, and you'll jump right to the section.

I might watch the episode again...in case I missed anything...