‘Mayfair Witches’ Finale: Inside Rowan’s Ending & What Her Choice Means
Spoiler Alert
[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for the Mayfair Witches Season 1 Episode 8 finale, “What Rough Beast.”]
Mayfair Witches Season 1 has come to a close at AMC and AMC+, and the finale answered the season-long questions while teeing the narrative up for its impending second season. Alexandra Daddario‘s Rowan went through the wringer to learn the full truth of her place in the family prophecy. And through some key reveals, we learned who the real bad actors of the plot were all along.
“What Rough Beast” began with Rowan still bleeding from her Episode 7 gunshot wound. She avenged Tessa’s (Madison Wolfe) murder with Lasher’s (Jack Huston) help, and in the aftermath, he took her into the memory world previously seen via Ciprien (Tongayi Chirisa). Her body laid defenseless in the woods, and Uncle Cortland (Harry Hamlin) took her body to the Mayfair mausoleum to prepare her for “the witching hour.”
Alfonso Bresciani/AMC
After learning his Talamasca boss had the power to erase memories, Sip used his power to learn the haunting truth about Cortland: he raped the young Deirdre, making him Rowan’s biological father.
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Cortland’s actions were driven by his desire to personally benefit from the Mayfair prophecy being fulfilled. In the memory scape, Lasher shared with Rowan all of Suzanne’s (the first family witch’s) supernatural knowledge, finally giving her the answers she had been looking for. But after the two made love in this other realm, Lasher left Rowan to go through a haunting tour of her family lineage.
To her horror, Rowan’s pregnancy rapidly progressed in this transition, revealing the purpose of the 13th witch in this prophecy: she was the doorway for Lasher to come into the real world. Rowan seemingly gave birth to Lasher with the spirit Suzanne’s aid. The baby grew rapidly in size and ability within the first minutes of its life. As Suzanne (Hannah Alline) explained, Rowan could accept or deny him. If the former, she would be granted immense power. If the latter, she could walk away.
Ultimately, Rowan chose Lasher, and her power grew. Knowing everything Lasher knows, she was now privy to the truth about Cortland. He made this deal with Lasher to gain immortality, so she froze him in stone.
Sip tried to take the baby in the end, saying it was for her protection. The season ended with Rowan leaving Sip behind with the baby on her side, empowered by her new magical abilities and knowledge.
The first season of Mayfair Witches had its share of confusing moments, but viewers shared Rowan’s confusion as she tried to understand her new circumstances. Episode 8 was a story about the importance of bodily autonomy and informed consent that just so happened to be written the month Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022. Here, showrunner, writer, and executive producer Esta Spalding explains the Mayfair Witches finale to TV Insider and the Season 2 narrative it sets up.
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The themes I took away from the finale were that of the importance of bodily autonomy, informed consent, and a person’s right to choose.
Esta Spalding: Yes!
With Roe v. Wade being overturned in June 2022, I wonder if that had any effect on the show narratively?
[It was overturned] while we were filming in New Orleans.
Could you tell me the timeline of all of that?
I was writing the finale right when that was all happening. The finale filmed in August, and so those issues and those thoughts, they’re so much in that book anyway and in the ending of The Witching Hour, which from the very beginning, [executive producer] Michelle Ashford and I had set out to finish the season with that great, great, great final sequence in the book where she gives birth to Lasher.
That was always the landing place, but thank you for noticing that, because it very much felt like those issues were in the zeitgeist and people were talking about it and feeling it. The whole experience of Cortland transporting her body, I think so much of the images of that came through the feeling that we were all talking about this thing that had happened.
It’s a lot of men who are withholding the information about Rowan’s place in this prophecy from her, too. The other women in the family, I’m not sure how much they knew/know about that. But Cortland knows, and the Talamasca certainly knows.
Right. And we have the sense that Cortland learned it somehow through his father or others in the family, that this was part of why the women ended up the way they did in the last generations — why they’re dying young, reproducing young, all that stuff. You had this sense that even though it was this powerful female family, there was this background to it in which everything was moving towards this prophecy.
It felt really important to me given that, and given the feeling of the end of the book as well, that we not have what happens to Rowan at the very end feel like it is done to her, but in fact she makes a choice. She does not have to take that baby, she does not have to assume the mantle of what that power is. Cortland is saying, “Give it to me, give it to me.” That she chooses it and takes it felt really an important part of the way forward for her.
For sure. For me, it was like she became her most powerful when she made the choice for herself. But that could only have happened after she got all of the information. That’s the informed consent aspect. She doesn’t want this new, supernatural life. She doesn’t understand it, so she’s scared. And then she gets all the information — she knows what Lasher knows — and so she can make the informed choice for herself. That’s when her power comes into full force, it seems.
Oh, cool. I hadn’t thought about it exactly in those terms, but that’s so interesting.
One thing I always go back to, and I was really pleased with the shape of how it turned out, is that essentially by the end of the season, Sip — who is this character I hope we love and think is wonderful — has become Carlotta [Beth Grant]. He is willing to take a baby away because he thinks it’s the greater good to get Lasher away from her. And that’s exactly the choice Carlotta made about her. We can, at the beginning, despise Carlotta and maybe still do by the end, but to watch a character we love go through [the same] makes you really understand the conundrum of the Mayfairs, in a way.
AMC
So you were writing the finale during the month Roe v. Wade was overturned. Did anything in the episode change because of that, or were those themes pretty much there already?
It was so much about the end of the book, and I really, really wanted to at least nod to the 13 generations of the witches, which is a huge central section of the book. We don’t get to tell the story of all of those witches, but to at least have Rowan go through that and learn about that ancestral lineage, even as it’s driving her towards this prophecy, that all felt like it was in place beforehand. I feel like the theme maybe came to the surface more because of the circumstances at the time I was writing it, but that was really what it was going to be.
Yeah. So it was largely coincidental, but turned out to be very prescient.
I think you’re exactly saying it right, which is, as I was writing it, I was like, “Oh my gosh, Anne Rice was writing about all of these things so long ago. And now here I am writing this in the middle of a moment that feels about these themes of hers.”
In the pilot, Rowan says, “if I had power, things would be different.” And it takes her the whole season to choose to have all of the power she can possibly have, both destructive and creative, but she takes it at that end of that finale. I feel like the exciting thing in the second season and beyond is how will she use this power now? If women had all the power on the Earth and could be the dictators of the world, would they use it any differently than men? Would they make better choices? I don’t know. So we’re going to ask that question through this character and experience that through this character in a way that I think, I hope will really just ask questions about what power is more than anything.
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I remember early in the season, I think it was Alexandra Daddario who told me the series’ big question is, who are we when we get power?
And again, she had to decide to take it in this season, and so that question isn’t really beginning to be answered. It’s like [Season 1] is the prologue [laughs].
We were looking at the book and looking at all of the different ways that power operates … And I like to think of that love triangle — Rowan, Sip, and Lasher — as being less about who she’s romantically interested in and much more about asking, if she’s she drawn to what Lasher’s saying, which is, “Take on your power. Inhabit it. Create, destroy. Do all of it. Own the universe”? Or is she [drawn to] what Sip is saying, which is, “You have this amazing power. Take care of it. Hold onto it. Cushion it. Put gloves on it. Learn how to use it. School yourself in it”?
Which way is she gonna go? As opposed to which guy is she gonna end up with, it’s like which version of power will she take on? There are risks and costs to both. And of course, we’re gonna see what happens now that she’s made the decision she’s made. What does it mean to have taken on Lasher and that power? What is that deal that she made? How will it change her, and how will it cost her?
Mayfair Witches, Season 1 Streaming Now, AMC+
