Review: Anne Rice's Mayfair Witches

This review has minor spoilers for the Mayfair Witches episode “The Witching Hour”

AMC’s second entry to Anne Rice’s Immortal Universe has premiered with the series Anne Rice's Mayfair Witches. As I eagerly devoured the first show, Interview with the Vampire, and put it as one of my top shows of last year, I certainly wanted to give these witches a try. Though, unlike Interview which I had read forever ago, I really don’t know anything about the Mayfair Witches books other than that they exist. I know that these characters have some crossover with The Vampire Chronicles books. So, I’m assuming since this is an entire Immortal Universe with AMC, there will probably be a show crossover at some point too. I’m always here for a chance to see more of Sam Reid as Lestat. So how did Mayfair Witches’ first episode “The Witching Hour” hold up?

As much as I hate to compare the two shows together because Interview and Mayfair are completely different stories doing different things, I couldn’t help but do that throughout the course of “The Witching Hour.” I do think that Interview has the luxury of being more well-known. It is the novel that kicked everything off making it the most recognizable. It has a movie adaptation, part of the story was used in the Broadway musical Lestat (which is underrated), and the same characters were used in the movie adaptation of Queen of the Damned. This means the AMC show could be bold with character choices like making Louis a black man, making the queer subtext actually textual at the forefront, and changing the time period. These characters are well known enough that transformative changes, even in just the first episode, make the story fresh and new.

Mayfair Witches doesn’t have as much leeway. These characters are known in Anne Rice fandom of course. I’ve heard of them from my super fan best friend. But unlike Interview, they don’t have the same pop cultural foothold. There are probably a lot of new fans, like me, experiencing the Mayfair Witches for the first time. This pilot episode has higher stakes to execute its story. Since I don’t know how true it was to the source material “The Witching Hour” was, I can only judge it as an episode of television.

And the first episode was very hit-and-miss for me.

There were two clear standouts in “The Witching Hour.” I adored Rowan, played wonderfully by Alexandra Daddario. Her relationship with her adoptive mom is so sweet. That drive to find a way to save her mother’s life is the perfect backdrop to her magical powers awakening. The fantastical twist adds a horror element to the real fear and grief that comes with the prospect of losing a parent making for a very interesting story. The other awesome character was Deirdre, played by Cameron Inman. She so masterfully wove in a fine balance of whether she is simply a rebellious teenager or is she actually a prisoner in a horror show. I want to see so much more of her Deirdre, because Inman absolutely shined in her role.

I don’t know how I feel about the rest of the characters. The show has a mystery element so that’s very much the point. But this is where I think the execution of the opening few scenes threw me off. There are very specific kinds of shorthands with visual media that guide a viewer through an episode. In “The Witching Hour,” the first scene ends with a close-up of one woman’s eyes and the next scene starts with a close-up of Rowan’s eyes. In most circumstances, this is shorthand to say that both of these characters are Rowan. I spent the majority of the episode not sure if I was in the past, present, or future because I had the understanding that woman in the opening scene was a form of Rowan. It left me no clue who Cameron Inman’s character was this entire time. It wasn’t until the final twenty minutes that it becomes clear that the woman in the opening scene was never Rowan.

I don’t know if this is brilliant or underhanded. What I do know is it left me frustrated for a chunk of the pilot being led down the completely wrong path. There are ways to execute commonly used shorthands to turn the story on its head. It made me think of another series that’s sort of in the same vein being The Haunting of Hill House. It’s a horror series with a mystery element to it. What Hill House does with the mystery of the Bent-Neck Lady is it uses those already established horror tropes and shorthands that are so deeply entrenched in pop culture to both push the characters and build the story. When it is revealed who the Bent-Neck Lady is, it recontextualizes the entire show. “The Witching Hour” does this too in the final twenty minutes which was some fantastic television. Once it’s revealed that the woman in the opening scene is not Rowan, everything suddenly makes sense and it’s great. The journey to get there, though, was so maddening because the execution of media shorthands was off in those opening scenes. It damaged how I viewed every single character outside of Rowan.

Everyone else felt like stuff was happening to them in the midst of beautiful scenery, fantastic costume work, and a banger musical score that I’ve already come to expect from this Immortal Universe project thus far. I have no sense of anyone’s motivations. Maybe that’s the point! Maybe I’m supposed to think that Uncle Cortland is a villain. Or maybe he’s just as much of a victim to the equally mysterious Lasher that seems to hold the Mayfair family hostage to a degree. When all the characters outside of Rowan feel like they have multiple motivations and none of them are clear, it’s a muddled mess for a new viewer like me.

I haven’t had the chance to rewatch “The Witching Hour.” Now that I know what’s going on and how the first episode came together, I think this pilot would be a solid rewatch. I think it went out swinging a bit too aggressively, trying to keep up with its sister series in tone, suspense, and execution. It needed to be more of an introduction versus throwing new fans headfirst into multiple storylines.

Actually, I would love to know if this is how the book is written. If you’ve read the book and this first episode is super faithful to the source material, then please let me know in the comments. That would really help. Because watching AMC’s Interview made me want to reread The Vampire Chronicles books I knew or tackle the ones I never got to. “The Witching Hour” didn’t make me want to read any of the Mayfair Witches novels for the first time.

“The Witching Hour” is very much a testament to hanging in there on the wild ride that can sometimes be a pilot episode. I’m a very firm believer that pilots are the hardest to execute since there is so much that must be established in such a short time. I’m torn between if Mayfair Witches was a masterclass of weaving stories or simply a mess that got flattened out in the end. It’s a shame because this was my first major introduction to these characters. The only ones that stuck with me coming out of the pilot were Rowan and Deirdre. I guess that’s a good thing because Rowan’s the protagonist. I do want to see what happens to her.

I’m going to still watch Mayfair Witches. It’s an okay start with a banger final 20 minutes for a pilot. I want to see if this show has magic that will continue to charm me for the entire season.

Also, if you’re a huge Anne Rice fan and you’re really into the books, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below! I really want to know how super fans reacted to the pilot episode.