‘Mayfair Witches’ Showrunner Unpacks Finale Fates, Talks Anne Rice Crossovers and Hopes for Season 3

[This story contains major spoilers for the Mayfair Witches season two finale.]

For Rowan and the other Mayfair witches, the events of the AMC series’ season two finale signal that the game is on, says showrunner Esta Spalding. 

As fans saw on Sunday night, with the help of Ciprien (Tongayi Chirisa) and others, Rowan (Alexandra Daddario) succeeds in taking down the Scottish Mayfairs — headed up by Cortland’s (Harry Hamlin) brother Ian (Ian Pirie) — after they kill Lasher (Jack Huston) for the power of his blood. While Rowan is able to save Lasher, once in the fight to stop Julien, the other Mayfairs and save his children with Emaleth (Henessi Schmidt), he is felled. 

In the lead up to his death, Julien’s intentions behind the sacrifice of both of his sons as well as Lasher come into starker focus, as does Julien’s necessity for Rowan and her power as part of a much larger plan to defy the boundaries of life and death. 

When Julien drinks Lasher’s blood — and Rowan and crew ruin his plan to sacrifice Lasher’s rapidly growing Taltos children — he offers Rowan the opportunity to join him. Unsurprisingly, she rejects his bid for shared power, but once Julien is gone, she ultimately chooses to drink the blood. Imbued once again with a new level of power, Lark (Ben Feldman) questions Rowan’s motivations and decides to part ways, with Rowan ultimately wiping his memories of her. 

She and Moira (Alyssa Jirrels) are then left to return to New Orleans, a trapped Cortland in tow, where they prepare for what’s brewing. For the Mayfair Witches season two finale, The Hollywood Reporter spoke to Spalding about the choices and implications of characters like Rowan, Julien and more, the future of Lasher and the Taltos children, and the potential connections between Mayfair Witches and The Talamasca show while she awaits news about a third season.

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Moira all season has been questioning Rowan’s trustworthiness and intentions, but in the finale, she seems ok with the blood-drinking and it’s Lark who calls Rowan out. Why was Lark the one to question Rowan’s motivations?

Lark is a human, for one thing, so he’s bringing human morality into play. This guy is catching up big time to what this world is, how it operates, and so on. I think he knew Rowan as a human [or] whatever she was, as she didn’t even know she was a witch when they were together. So this idea that the woman he knew, who was amazing and dynamic and sexy but also devoted to healing, is now talking about going to war? He heals childhood diseases. She is a surgeon who’s treating kids with brain tumors, and it felt right that he becomes in some way the moral compass. I think that Moira has seen who these Scottish Mayfairs are. She’s from the world of witchcraft. She would question much less what Rowan does, and in a way, it’s seen as the moment where Rowan understands she has to jettison the human part of herself.

Speaking of Rowan wanting to heal people, part of her explanation to Lark about drinking Lasher’s blood is that she wants to take her newfound power into her medical work. 

I think she really believes she might be able to raise him from the dead. Julien has said to her that the blood has that possibility. So I don’t think [when she first drinks the blood] she’s going, “What can I get out of this?” I think she’s like, is it possible? And then she kisses him and then she goes, “Oh, he’s not coming back, but look what I am now.” That’s where she understands how she suddenly has [power]. To me, that’s where she goes, “Oh, this is delicious.” In a weird way, I think it’s like the end of Robert Eggers’ The Witch, where it’s this delicious life.

In terms of Lasher’s future, there’s a mention of an Ashlar, who we know is from the third book, Taltos. Is that an alias or is Lashar as we know him gone? 

I’ve always thought of them as two different characters. It’s a very strange thing that there’s Ashlar, who is Lasher in Scotland, and then there’s this character Ashlar in book three who’s a toy maker, who’s a Taltos. I think it’s not Lasher, it’s a different guy. I love that character. That’s one of my favorite things in book three — that strange, strange character who gives us the whole history and background of the Taltos.

So the Lasher we know is gone in terms of this story? 

Lasher is gone insofar as anybody is ever gone in Mayfair Witches. The last time he died in the Middle Ages, he became a spirit who was called down by Suzanne. So nobody ever really dies in our world, but I think Rowan doesn’t know how to get him back. There’s a question — and should we be lucky enough to get a season three — of how does he come back? Does he come back? Is now the time? Again, I’m dreaming here, but is season six the time? Who knows? So yeah, Lasher is out there in our universe as a spirit again.

Ok, so Harry Hamlin has made it. Cortland’s still here, just trapped in a music box and now Harry is playing Julien. 

He’s a villain again. Just as he is redeemed. 

What were your conversations with Harry around this season, him becoming Julien and the approach to playing two people? 

Pretty early on in season two, I talked to him about the transfer at the end, that this was a thing that was in the storyline. So he knew that when he was first working with Ted Levine in [episode two]. And then, of course, Julien is much more present in 2.05, the dollhouse episode, and then we see him in the pub in 2.07. I think that Harry spent a lot of time observing Ted’s mannerisms as the character, his voice, and so on. He’s kind of getting to play Ted Levine as Julien now, and he seems delighted by it because it’s a different turn in the character. Of course, Cortland’s still out there, so yeah, he gets both things.

When I asked Alex about whether Rowan would want to bring Cortland back, she mostly said no. Can we imagine the Cortland in the music player making an appearance again?

For sure. I love that character, he’s so fun. He stands out as a great character in the first book, too. I think that we need both characters operating in the new world. But as I say, when you’re writing the end of a season you’re thinking, where is it going to go the next season, should we be so lucky? You’re planting threads and cliffhangers and so on. But we haven’t yet done the rigorous thinking that we would do if we got a season order of, how does it unfold and when would Cortland come back? Is Rowan going to work hard to get him out or just tolerate his coming out, and so on? I mean, she definitely does not want Julien to be immortal. So if it means Cortland getting his body back so that he, who she can control, is immortal, I think that’s preferable. But I totally understand Alex’s point that she doesn’t feel much loyalty to him because there are so many bad things and then a couple of tiny good things.

So we were talking earlier about Rowan, Lark, and Lasher, and we see Ciprien’s response to Rowan professing her love to Lasher. There’s a square happening clearly, but none of these relationships seem to be working out. So is the thing Rowan is really married to her job, a.k.a. her power?

The way I’ve always thought about it is that when she discovered Lasher, there was a fight within herself because it was so intoxicating, the feeling of the power that he had and brought to her and the sexual element of it in season one. And even, I think, Jack Houston and Alex did a fantastic job of feeling the pulse of that underneath the mother-son relationship, feeling that that was there as well, which is very Anne Rice-y of course. So to me, no one can compete with that feeling. Now Lasher is gone and one of the questions she’s probably asking is, how do I get him back or how do I find that feeling here with someone else, that feeling of my witchy power, my sexual energy being connected and fulfilled? 

It wasn’t going to be Lark, he’s too human. He doesn’t understand the stakes of the world she’s in and the sacrifices you have to make. When you have the power she has you can’t just, as she says, sit on your hands and act like a good girl. So I think there’s something in a season three where we would be exploring Rowan’s quest for that feeling again, whether it’s through finding Lasher or finding someone else who could provide it.

Lasher died and left many children behind, which Ciprien helped escape. Can we see Rowan keeping herself connected to them in any way? 

It’s such a good question as we enter [a possible season three]. I literally am like, “oh yeah, that’s got to be on the roster of things to talk about right away.” I wish I knew the answer. I haven’t thought through the calculus of that, of whether those children are going to mean something to her — because in a sense they’re her grandchildren — or whether that is a journey for Emaleth, with whom we have left one of the children. Also, by the way, those children are adults now, which is interesting, and in the care of the Talamasca, which we know can do nefarious things. It’s such a fantastic thread. 

You mentioned the Talamasca, and as we know, they’re getting their own series. As you all exist in this Anne Rice universe and the Talamasca have already appeared in Mayfair Witches, how much would you want Rowan to appear in The Talamasca show?

I love the idea of the crossover connections. I have to say, one of the super exciting things about the Talamasca show is just to see that giant agency that’s the umbrella for all of Anne Rice’s Immortal Universe. It’s in so many of the books and its connective tissue for so many of the stories. We had in our writers room at the end of season two Mark Lafferty, who wrote episode [seven of season two]. He went off our show to co-showrun the Talamasca show. I feel like he took all of the ways we had been talking about the Talamasca and how the organization works, and so on, into those conversations. So there’s a real continuity there and I think it’s going to be extraordinary. 

He and John Lee Hancock are really fleshing out the details — or have fleshed out as they’re done shooting — of characters in that world, how the hierarchy works, seniority, what the motherhouses really look like when you can explore all that. The things they have to think about to make the show have the detail it needs — and for us to be able to feast on it in other series, Interview [With a Vampire] and Mayfair [Witches], and be able to take that and live in that world and think about those characters as part of the universe we’re in — is really exciting.

The final shot of season two has Julien sneaking around a tree staring at Rowan on the porch of the Mayfair house. Rowan is also seen looking back, but it’s not clear if she sees him. Should we expect them to see each other? 

We shot it ambiguously on purpose because we didn’t know if we would want her to be fully aware of Julien’s presence, should we be writing a season three. Or if we would want to suggest that he’s got a leg up on her, he’s there and she doesn’t know it. I think what I can say for sure, in the writing of that moment and then in the performance and directing of that moment, is that Rowan is thinking about the battle to come. She has freed Jojo and Daphne, and as she stands in front of her ruined empire, she knows it’s game on, whether Julien’s there or not. 

Mayfair Witches season two is now streaming on AMC+.