Review: Rowan embraces her heritage in Mayfair Witches Episode 7

At least Mayfair Witches is going out on a high note! After a season of a monumentally slow burn, both last week’s episode and this week’s delivered, and it looks like the finale is shaping up to be action-packed, too.

I still have a lot of grievances with this show, like the strange lack of exposition or actual witchcraft, but at least the last two episodes have been genuinely entertaining and seem to be moving things in the right direction.

Spoilers ahead for Mayfair Witches Episode 7

When we left off with Mayfair Witches, both Tessa and Ciprien were in trouble. Internet trolls-turned-witch-hunters have kidnapped Tessa while Ciprien gets trapped inside a memory. Because Ciprien and Arjuna used the skeleton key necklace to enter the memory and no longer have it, he will have to find his own way out. The best way to do that is through death.

Ciprien quickly learns that this memory, like everything else in this show, is being controlled by Lasher. Lasher makes his presence known to Cip, gloating shamelessly about how Rowan will eventually return to him as they are bound to one another. In this episode, we find out that Rowan is pregnant with Cip’s baby. Lasher tells Cip as much.

Instead of freeing him from the memory trap, Lasher vanishes, leaving Cip trapped there. Luckily, Cip realizes he’s stuck in a witch’s house (Suzanne Mayfair’s), which is probably the best place to be if you need to kill yourself in a pinch. He ingests henbane and wakes up back at the Talamasca.

Unfortunately for Cip, this turns out to be a case of getting out of the fire and into the frying pan, as we learn that the head honcho of the Talamasca is in league with Cortland Mayfair and, by extension, Lasher. All Cip wants to do is get to Rowan and help her find Tessa, but that’s not an option as his boss drives him away from Rowan to inform him that she will save herself by calling Lasher, allowing him to re-take control and fulfilling an old prophecy.

It would be cool to know the full extent of this prophecy, or what Lasher plans to do. At this point I’m assuming we won’t get any legitimate answers until the finale, which is way too long when we’ve not gotten anything else of substance thus far.

Rowan finally embraces her powers

Speaking of Rowan, she finally embraces her part in the Mayfair family. In Episode 6, she was ready to return to her life in San Francisco, but Tessa’s kidnapping changes things. She feels guilty since Tessa came to her first, and she refused to help.

Rowan offers her blood to the family’s scry so he can locate Tessa. Since Lasher has not gone to Tessa like everyone thought, she’s at the mercy of the hunters, who tie her up and prepare to burn her unless she shows them magic so they can catch it on tape.

Tessa’s only power is to convince men to do things for her, which can only work if she can genuinely connect one-on-one like she tries to do with Keith. Without Lasher, she certainly can’t take on the entire group alone. Thankfully, she doesn’t have to because Rowan arrives in time to save the day, using her powers to dispatch every witch hunter save Keith, who gets away with a gun. He shoots Tessa just as Rowan saves her from the flames.

How fitting that the witch died by gunshot instead of fire in 2023. Like Cip, Tessa gets out of one bad situation to find herself in an even worse one. She looks dead by episode’s end.

With Tessa’s blood on her hands, Rowan takes the necklace back and summons Lasher, this time fueled by rage and hungry for revenge. I’d love to see Rowan go fully dark side. Let’s see if the show embraces witchcraft like Rowan finally has in the season finale.

Episode Grade: B

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