Last week’s pilot ofAnne Rice’s Mayfair Witcheson AMC dropped a lot of plot points onto our plate! We metAlexandra Daddario’s Rowan Fielding, a surgeon experiencing witchy psychological encounters with people, which often results in them bursting an artery in their head and either dying or becoming seriously injured. This week, we get up close and personal with Deirdre, take a brief and disturbing detour to 17th-century Scotland, find out the inside scoop on Ciprien, and join Rowan in New Orleans. Grab your broom and get ready to dive into Episode 2, “The Dark Place.”
We travel a bit this week, in distance and in time. The episode opens in 1681 in Donnelaith, Scotland in a small cobblestone home, with a haggard woman tending to a sickly man. She panics and tells a young woman named Suzanne (Hannah Alline) to take her younger sister Florie (Emma Rose Smith) to get more willow bark and burdock before nightfall. Their time picking herbs is interrupted by a strange, hat-wearing man (is he a human?) lurking behind a tree, who threateningly tells Suzanne that she doesn’t want to keep him waiting. It kind of seems like this is something that Suzanne has been through before, and she tells Florie to go and recite the names of the herbs they picked as she visited the man. As the man leans against a tree, Suzanne, deeply disgusted, pleasures him. The whole situation is weird and gross. Then, a murder of crows squawks and flies across the sky, capturing her attention.
RELATED:‘Mayfair Witches’ Series Premiere Tops ‘Interview With the Vampire’ on AMC+
Ah, modern day! A distraught and confused Rowan sits on the floor of Ellie’s home and goes through her items and files. She calls up the alleged agency that handled her closed adoption in 1991 and tells them that her now-deceased adoptive mother Ellie had called for years for information on Rowan’s birth parents, but could never get answers. Now that she’s gone, perhaps permissions changed and Rowan could get some answers. The confused woman on the phone informs her that there is no way she could’ve been adopted from that agency as it didn’t open until 1995. Overcome with paranoia and a sense of betrayal, she hangs up the phone and stares ahead.
While walking on the dock at night, Rowan notices a mysterious black car that seems to be following her, then decides to shrug it off (for now). She attempts to process these lies that she’s been fed about her adoption but ultimately turns to the drink. By the end of the night, she’s drunk and alone in her boat next to an urn of Ellie’s ashes. She hears some whispering voices, then drifts to sleep. We’re then brought to Deirdre (Annabeth Gish), who is under a transparent sheet and listening to the same whispers as her daughter. Lasher (Jack Huston) reminds her that he told her that her life would one day change and that everything would be better. That “change” is on the horizon, as he found her daughter, Rowan. (Remember he was creeping out on her boat?) She’s alive, but in a dark place, and if she wants to see her (which she does), then she must wake up and “take control.” Easy enough, right? A wide-eyed Deirdre on the mansion’s front porch “wakes up” from her catatonic state to see the maid feeding her. A single tear falls down her cheek as she comes to terms with her troubled reality.
A hungover Rowan makes breakfast and listens to the news, which mentions that the body of a charred woman was found in Phoenix. Rowan is preoccupied with the fact that her boss (who has since recovered from the medical emergency) seems to have taken her off the rotation. (She also notices the same black car outside her window.) She tells her boss that all her surgeries since her mother’s passing have been successful, though he says she’s off her game and needs to be cleared by Dr. Davis on the psych team before returning to work.
While Rowan has a reluctant session with Davis, Ciprien (Tongayi Chirisa) scopes out her boat, where he notices opened packets of the drug Alprazolam and a glass with leftover alcohol. Rowan lies about her sleep habits and anxiety to Davis, as she just wants to get the greenlight to return to work. Ciprien grabs a glass and is able to see Rowan from the previous night crying in a ball on the floor. He then grabs her bag, which triggers the moment Daniel Lemle collapsed and died. Rowan gets noticeably irritated when Davis inquires about Lemle’s passing, which leads to Davis receiving a sharp head pain. The pain, however, does not seem tied to Rowan, with Davis claiming she gets the pain frequently. But, then Rowan starts to hear the whispers again and Davis gets a nosebleed. Freaked out at the situation, Rowan leaves the session abruptly.
A frazzled Rowan approaches her car and notices that it is covered in bird poop. Could her day get any worse? A bunch of crows squawks in the tree above her and she stares at them, which then triggers her mind to go into that strange space it does right before her witchy powers take over. The birds fly away, but then drop dead onto her car. Freaked out, she wraps the dead birds in her jacket and puts them in her car. Ciprien, meanwhile, watches from a distant parking space and takes pictures, ultimately following her to the beach. Distraught, she buries the birds in a shallow sandy grave, pops a pill, and lies down. In her dream, she’s in a green dress in front of the New Orleans mansion and is being called by a healthy Ellie.
Ciprien talks on the phone to the agency as he watches Rowan sleep, telling them that he’s struggling with her and feels like she should know who she really is. They insist that she needs to be observed longer, especially because she killed someone (Lemle). Ciprien reminds his co-worker on the phone that before he was taken in and given this job, he was ready to kill someone, too, and was seen by his mother as the devil. He’s reminded that Ellie did her best for 30 years to keep her out of New Orleans, and if she finds out who she really is, she will want to visit. But Ciprien wonders… would that really be all that bad?
In a bit of a foggy, trance-like state, we meet up again with Lasher and Deirdre. He tells her that it seems like she is waking up, and asks if she remembers the electroshock in the hospital when she didn’t know her own name but managed to connect with him nonetheless. She tries to recite the words that her mother taught her that brought her to Lasher but wakes up on the mansion’s front porch instead. The nice doctor from last week is pleased that the medicine seems to have worn off, and he says he has a lawyer he thinks can help her with her situation. He pretends to administer the shot, and Deirdre pretends to still be in that trance-like state.
Rowan is forced awake on the beach by people throwing a late-night party. She walks off disoriented, and, seeing the black car again and feeling followed, she yells behind her. Ciprien surrenders, insisting he isn’t a threat, though Rowan isn’t buying it. She tries to leave, but he grabs her hand, which causes him to collapse. An ambulance whisks him to the hospital and Rowan steals his phone and discovers he has many pictures of her. Also in the pictures is one of an old family (the same one from the New Orleans mansion) and one dated 1990 of what appears to be Ellie outside the mansion. And is Lasher in the background of one of them? Ciprien escapes before he is admitted to the hospital.
It’s a major blast to the past for Deirdre, who goes back into her childhood bedroom. She puts on the necklace and Lasher appears, telling her that he’s been communicating to Rowan in her dreams for her to come to them. Turns out it’s working, as Rowan just boarded a flight to New Orleans. And okay, this is super weird. So Deirdre and Lasher have sex, and Rowan, who is asleep on the plane, seems to also, sort of, experience an orgasm? Back downstairs, Deirdre overhears Carlotta (Beth Grant) and the maid talking about a meeting, and Deirdre plans to crash it. She leaves the house, and the maid lets her, as she is happy to see her in a normal mental state.
An exhausted Rowan arrives at her hotel, oblivious to the fact that she walked past Carlotta in the lobby, who is engaging with people before that sketchy meeting. (She wouldn’t know who it was, anyway.) Deirdre relives her past yet again when she walks through Uncle Cortland’s (Harry Hamlin) house, and the memories of his lavish parties flood back to her. He’s shocked to see her standing in his house all these years later, and expresses his deep regrets about not trying to save her from her aunt when he had the chance. He asks if “he” is still around, and she lies and tells him that after all these years, she still doesn’t know.
At the hotel bar, Rowan asks a tour guide if she’s seen the mansion in her photo before. She immediately recognizes it to be the old and infamous Mayfair house and says that the family paid to have it removed from the tour. With a little bit of bribery, the woman agrees to show her where it is. She also says that the family is known for a lot of things, but it’s mostly known for its witches. (Gulp.) Deirdre puts on Cortland’s daughter’s old green dress (similar to the one Rowan had on in her dream) and Deirdre says that anytime she would wear a dress that he gave her, her mother would find them and destroy them. She grabs her necklace and speaks the words that her mother taught her. Her head shoots back, and her eyes turn white, and a white-eyed Lasher appears in Rowan’s hotel room. In a matter of seconds, Deirdre is able to sense that she is already in New Orleans, and makes her way to the hotel.
Ciprien tells Rowan that he works for the Talamasca, and Ellie recruited him to protect her. They agree to meet and talk about Ellie’s secrets at Rowan’s hotel. Carlotta is utterly baffled to see a normal Deirdre walk into the hotel lobby and says she is going to bring her back home. Deidre refuses, saying she needs to find her daughter, though Carlotta tries to convince her that Rowan is dead and that she is crazy. Deirdre tells her that since she is awake, so is “he,” and Carlotta gets weak. Deirdre enters the elevators and the whispers return as she holds tightly onto her necklace. The elevator door opens, and the mother and daughter pair lock eyes for the first time since Rowan’s birth. Rowan smiles, knowing right away that Deirdre is her mother. The episode ends on a chilling note, with Deirdre’s throat being slit by an invisible force. She bleeds out and collapses, with Rowan screaming and cradling her limp mother. Could Deirdrereallybe dead?
