In 2020, AMC sunk its fangs into best-selling author Anne Rice’s library of literature when it acquired the rights to the gothic writer’s major works with the grand plans of creating an Anne Rice-verse. Last year, things got bloody with AMC’s first adaptation, Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, a gothic drama series based on the stories in The Vampire Chronicles and starring Sam Reid and Jacob Anderson as the blood-sucking leads. Now, The White Lotus and Percy Jackson actress Alexandra Daddario enters the chat as the lead witch in Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches, a supernatural thriller series created for television by Michelle Ashford and Esta Spalding. Let’s dig in, shall we?
Episode 1, ominously titled "The Witching Hour," starts on an ominous note. We’re introduced to a creepy, gothic-esque mansion with a mossy exterior. Long story short, it needs some tender love and care. Also in need of TLC? The very pale catatonic woman (Annabeth Gish) staring straight ahead as she (not) casually sits upright in a wooden wheelchair. She’s wearing a peculiar necklace (more on that later) and looks like life has gotten the better of her. A polite doctor in a light blue suit and bow tie approaches her carefully on the front porch, but is interrupted by a maid who says, “They don’t like it when her shot is late.” They?
He’s taking over for Dr. Stevens, but he can’t quite understand how this woman could be his patient. She’s 47, but her patient files are bursting at the seams, with more than a lifetime’s worth of medical history. Among the many notes in her file are “severe paranoia,” “delusional,” and “suicide attempts.” While in the study, the doctor’s attention is drawn back to the porch, where he sees a mysterious, well-dressed man talking to the woman in question. But when the doctor inquires, the maid shoots him down, making him feel like he was the delusional one. Alone with his patient, he woefully wonders, “What happened to you?”
We jump from her stark blue eyes to those of a young woman enjoying the ocean breeze on her boat. This is our protagonist Rowan Fielding (Daddario), a young and ambitious surgeon who is trying to figure herself out. She docks the boat like a pro (she’s done this a million times), though, weirdly, she sort of seems out of place. As she pours herself a cocktail, she’s visited by her smiley mother, Ellie (Erica Gimpel), who is thrilled to be celebrating her daughter’s adoption day. It’s clear these two are close and honest about everything with each other. Okay, well, maybe not everything…
In the operating room, Rowan reassures a little boy that all will be fine. She wishes she could handle this herself, but her misogynistic and overall bummer of a boss (Jim Gleason) demands he do the surgery because they are being observed today. Rowan is used to this behavior and does her best to shrug it off, though her colleague wishes someone would put this guy in his place. After all, if it wasn’t for Rowan speaking up during the surgery, the boy might not have survived. Rowan knows, however, that if she were to speak up, there was a good chance of her being fired.
Rowan bumps into her mother at the hospital, who tells her that her latest scan indicates that her cancer is back. Realizing that the man who observed the surgery today was Daniel Lemle (Tobias Jelinek), who runs a stem cell research operation that could potentially save her mother, Rowan nervously asks her boss to put a good word in for her to Daniel, so she could work for him when she isn’t at the hospital. That way, she might have a better chance of getting her mother into the stem cell trial. Between this request and her being annoyed that he was performing the surgery instead of her, he wasn’t willing to go to bat for her. This leads to a tense exchange that’s mostly just him telling her that she’s arrogant and needy, and her trying her best to get through the conversation in a respectable manner. Then things get really weird. An intense ringing fills her head, and she sees the inside of his brain (yes, really). Literally, a vision of an artery bursting overcomes her, and he collapses.
We then switch gears to a confessional with a young woman named Deirdre (Cameron Inman). She confesses reluctantly to the very bored priest as she fidgets with her rosary beads. (One of these confessions includes giving the finger to a nun when she wasn’t looking.) The priest asks if she’s seen "the man," to which she nervously replies, “I hardly ever see him anymore.” The priest isn’t buying what she’s selling, and she admits that this man has always been around, even before her mother died. So, he’s kind of like family to her? Except not as crazy as her aunts. Whatever that means, exactly. She exits the confessional, leaving behind a word she carved into the wood with her rosary beads: “Lasher.”
Lasher (Jack Huston) bears an uncanny resemblance to the mystery man in the beginning. He tells her to not believe what the priest says about him, but she is summoned by her irritable aunt, Carlotta (Beth Grant). “How many times have I told you not to encourage him?” she barks as they enter their home. Deirdre is pretty relaxed about the whole thing and heads to her room. And guess who’s there? Lasher! Deirdre admits that she’s frustrated that she’s always treated like a child. Lasher says it’s because she’s behaving like one, which irritates her even more. She says she wants something from him that they both know is impossible. He creepily segues into a story about her mother when she was her age, saying that she was always heading to a party being thrown by her brother (Deirdre's uncle) Cortland (Harry Hamlin). Deirdre decides to head to one of Cortland’s famous parties and see for herself.
Back to the present, Ellie has a really hard time believing Rowan’s visions are real. Rowan tries to explain that she’s not making it up and that a similar vision happened to her during elementary school. Rowan wants to examine her medical history for an answer, but the only problem is that Rowan’s adoption was a closed adoption, and, no matter how hard Ellie has tried to track down Rowan’s birth parents, the agency will not open the records. As soon as Rowan is out of sight, however, Ellie pulls a strange card out of her wallet and calls the number. A disgruntled woman answers from an office in New Orleans, and Ellie tells her that she needs to speak to the person “assigned” to her daughter’s file because she believes she hurt someone with her mind. She requests that this agent go to New Orleans to see if something is “different.” Whoa, okay, Ellie. Want to explain what this weird office in New Orleans is all about? And what's with New Orleans?
Rowan tries to drown her sorrows at a nearby bar and convince her friend-with-benefits bartender Max (Jordan Cox) to go back to her place. He’s tired of her aversion to a committed relationship and preference toward one-night stands, but agrees to sleep with her. After sex, they compare their different stances on love. Max wants to find “the one,” whereas Rowan is fine with a casual fling here and there. Rowan says that when she was a kid, she had a weird idea that her shadow was a “being” that was part of her. Also, the shadow had a masculine presence and knew what she was thinking and feeling and loved her no matter what. Um, okay.
At Cortland’s party, everyone is shocked—but delighted—that Deirdre “escaped” and made it out for a night of fun. When we meet Cortland, he’s holding a snake (as one does) and recruits a young man to ask Deirdre to dance. Remember that necklace from earlier? Deirdre appears to be wearing the same one. Cortland is even happy she’s wearing it, saying it belonged to her late mother. Deirdre doesn’t know much about her mother, but she tells Cortland that she doesn’t think she jumped off the balcony to her death. He seems to agree. Deirdre gets closer to the young man as the night goes on, and Lasher watches in the distance like a creep. Deirdre ends up sleeping with her dance partner, Patrick, in a potentially-altered state. At one point, his face is covered in a mask and his hands turn into those of a demon, so perhaps that is something to keep in mind. The next morning, Carlotta arrives angry at her niece’s rebellious behavior.
Ciprien (Tongayi Chirisa), the agent assigned to Rowan, arrives at the New Orleans home as requested, and it is the same mansion from the opening scene. He places his hand on the fence, which triggers a portal of sorts to open that appears to be looking at a moment in the past, with a woman in pink hovering above ground and Lasher looking up at her. Lasher makes eye contact with Ciprien, but then he lets go of the fence and calls Ellie to tell her that he feels the man’s presence near the home, so Rowan should be safe where she is, 2,000 miles away. Ellie informs him that her time is running out, and he agrees to watch over her daughter when she passes.
It turns out this Daniel Lemle guy is bad news. He claims to be working toward longevity, but he seems to just want to get closer to Rowan. He tells her to pick the name of a client in the trial and he will remove them and add in her mother. Disgusted by his carelessness and ego, she begins to tell him off, only to have another vision that ends with Daniel collapsed on the floor. Rowan rushes home to her dying mother and sobs about what happened again. Ellie, exhausted from the cancer and fearing for her daughter’s future, begs her to not get sucked into a “sick delusion.”
Deirdre cries to Father Duffy (Joseph Meissner) about her family’s troubled history and how no one believes her. She thinks her mother was pushed from the balcony, but Father Duffy claims she jumped to her death. He also thinks it was “the man” who impregnated her, but she dismisses that idea. After the priest leaves, Deirdre tries to jump off the balcony but is stopped by Lasher’s force. She says she has no reason to live because she just knows that her aunts will never let her baby live the life it deserves. Lasher tells her that he can help her and that the necklace she wears connects them, but it’s up to her if she wants to remove it. She does, and Lasher proceeds to show her who he really is, and if she can face him, he will be “entirely” hers. His face freakishly morphs into different people and creatures, and he says he is everyone, no one, a saint, and a demon. In awe, Deirdre agrees to their partnership and puts the necklace back on.
The final moments of the episode split between Deirdre's timeline and Rowan’s in the present. As Rowan watches her mother die, Deirdre gives birth. Deirdre wants to see her baby, but Carlotta whisks her away to “see the doctor.” This alleged “doctor” was actually a woman she met at a specific remote location. She told the woman to change the baby’s name, never return, never call, and never tell the baby who she really is. The woman agreeing to all of this? None other than Ellie. Carlotta tells Deirdre that the doctor said that her daughter died from a malformed heart and that he would be in shortly to give her a shot to help her sleep. In a major full-circle moment, it’s revealed that Deirdre is the young version of the catatonic woman in the wheelchair from the beginning.
The episode ends with the present-day Deirdre with her doctor, who notices scratching marks around the necklace and removes it. He pretends to give her a shot to please Carlotta, who lurks from within the house, but whispers that he wants to know the person that Deirdre Mayfair is when she’s not on drugs. Rowan wakes up in her boathouse from a horrible storm, only to see Lasher waiting outside her window.