Season 3?

La Parlor's Mayfair Witches Key Fountain

So far, there has been no word on whether or not there will be a Season 3 of Mayfair Witches on AMC.  Seasons 1 and 2 can be streamed on amc+, and Season 1 can also be streamed on Netflix.

In the meantime, I've managed to get into my 3D model of the Mayfair house of the novels (the Brevard Rice house on First and Chestnut Streets in the Garden District).  Not in time for Mardi Gras, but I managed to put together a basic spread in the dining room of a traditional St. Patrick's Day Irish stew, cabbage something or other, bread, potatoes, and beer.  There is a tray of Shamrock cookies on the sideboard, and you can see a silver soup tureen sitting on the counter in the butler's pantry.

St. Patrick's Day 3D Dinner in the Mayfair house

The 3D model is a HUGE file, so whatever changes I make, I have to show some restraint or the whole thing will crash.  This is a real problem for the garden model, which is extremely complex due to all the different plants, trees and shrubs.  Many of them are flowers--different kinds.  I'm hoping to finally find a way to address that because Easter is coming.  What's Easter without an Easter Egg hunt?

Several months before Season 2 aired, one thing I did create is something I put where, in the real garden, there appears to have been a small, simple pond (a koi pond, maybe?) set in the patio off the side porch.  I put a fountain that looks like a fountain typically seen in the courtyards of New Orleans houses in the French Quarter.  But instead of the typical round pool, though, it is one in the shape of the emerald design in the emerald key of the Mayfair Witches series.  Around it, in the tile, is the design of the gold setting and design of the key.  The round brick border, also typical of these New Orleans garden fountains, is where the words surrounding the emerald design in the key.

Design of the Emerald Key
(AMC, Immortal Universe)

What did those words say?  No idea.

I did manage to find four different designs for the key, which was described as "medieval".  Only one of the designs was used for the key that was seen in the series, though.

Now, while it is true that Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles is the most well-known of her novels.  The Lives of the Mayfair Witches series is what I would say the second most popular of Rice's novels.  Many people did not like the AMC adaptation of the Lives of the Mayfair Witches novels for various reasons.  The biggest reason seems to be because the storyline of the series was too much of a departure from the novels.  Fans were angry that the characters of Michael Curry, a major character, and Aaron Lightner, a Talamasca agent who also appeared in the Vampire Chronicles, were completely removed.  The character of Ciprien Grieve, not in the novels, seems to have been created as a combination of the two characters, but only as far as him being the Talamasca agent watching the Mayfair family and Lasher, and for having the ability to "see" with his hands.  Grieve wore the gloves Michael Curry wore to control the visions he saw when he touched things and had a brief liaison with Rowan that resulted in her pregnancy with what would become Lasher's mortal form in present day.  The similarities, for the most part, ended there.

I could go into some differences that are trivial, like the fact that the Mayfair house of the novels did not have a basement, but a crawl space showing the chain walls of the house went straight down to the ground (think of them as something like bulkhead walls, like the support structure of the house).  But what are trivial differences and what differences are so pronounced that they create too large a departure from the novels?  Can those differences be categorized that way?  Perhaps.

As I was watching the show itself, I started to ponder something that I hadn't really pondered before to any real extent.  When it comes to Lasher versus the Mayfair Witches, who was really using whom?  Considering Lasher's history--the part that pertained to his mortal life in Donnelaith, Scotland and Italy--and his brief return to the flesh through Rowan and Michael on Christmas Day (in the novels) and Rowan and Ciprien in the Mayfair crypt (in the AMC series)--is he a more sympathetic character than he might appear to be?  When present-day Mayfair women began dying of uterine hemorrhages after being with Lasher, did he intend for them to die?  

Well, no.

To explain that, to explain what Lasher was and why he needed the Mayfair Witches to be able to give him the doorway he needed to reenter the world of the living, there is another being in Anne Rice's universe of immortal beings that would have to be explained.  The Taltos.  Did Season 2 tell the audience enough about this unusual human-like being, or would the audience be receptive to this being a central plot of Season 3?  There are, after all, three novels in the Lives of the Mayfair Witches series.

So, was Lasher pure evil, or was he like the Mayfairs in his apparent belief that the end justifies the means?  Does it make either side pure evil that they both seemed to operate according to this belief?  Were some Mayfairs simply misguided in their beliefs, or did they become vulnerable and therefore guilty simply because they accepted that "it's just the way things are"?  Have the Mayfairs used Lasher for their own ends just as much as he used them?  This is something explored in plain sight in Season 2, and did come from the books, as it was explained in one of the featurettes.  I think it's safe to say at this point that both sides--Lasher and the Mayfair Witches--paid a terrible price for their mutual exploitation.

Instead of really getting going here, I'm going to try to contain myself.  I'll close this with two things.  One, I have been looking at my website's social media (yes, I have personal profiles, but they are private).  Just about all of them have the featurette about the dollhouse on them.  On TikTok, I've found some of amc+'s brief featurettes and clips for Season 2.  One in particular is a brief clip of The Talamasca Files, where Harry Hamlin discusses the origin of the Mayfair emerald key.  There is another where Hamlin gives us a bit of a tour of Julien's third floor room of horrors before he has to leave, it's so disturbing.  Yes, me too.

Mayfair Witches 3D Fire and Candlelight

On YouTube, I have playlists created that cover various topics related to Anne Rice, New Orleans, and history associated with and used in the Mayfair Witches novels.  There are also playlists for AMC's Interview With the Vampire series and the 1994 film.  I've split the playlists of amc+ videos about Mayfair Witches into Season 1 and 2.  If you look in the Season 2 folder, you'll find three one-hour long ASMR ambience type videos of the Mayfair Witches Yule log for Winter Solstice.  I only just found out about these a few days ago, actually.  But I am still going to share these here, because they are quite beautiful!  In fact, they are very similar to a 20-minute video I made of the fireplace in the Mayfair Witches dining room at Christmas with a roaring fire in it.  It is also an ASMR ambience type video.  I'd make mine longer but for my old f**t of a laptop (I say this with love).  Either way, the Yule log video is truly beautiful and uses the fireplace in the Mayfair Witches house of the show.  If you enjoy these types of ASMR ambience videos, I think you'll enjoy this one.  Especially if you are a fan of the show.

AMC Mayfair Witches Yule Log Ambience

Finally, here's a page to screen tidbit I might have mentioned before, but if I haven't...

In Season 2, it was revealed that when Lasher was last alive (long before Suzanne), his birth mother had been Anne Boleyn.  Because he was a "walking baby" that could not be presented to Henry VIII as the heir to the throne of England, his mother had him smuggled out of the birth room to his birth father, who then took him to Donnelaith, Scotland.  Henry VIII was told the baby had died at birth even though Anne Boleyn knew this would mean her death.

That was indeed in the novel, Lasher.