Summary
Mayfair Witches Season 2 feels like it’s approaching an ending in Episode 7, with a very weird wedding forming the centrepiece of the penultimate chapter.
Nobody really likes other people’s weddings, but it turns out a Scottish pagan witch wedding is quite a thing. Episode 7 of Mayfair Witches Season 2 takes a while to get there, but when it does, it at least turns up the weirdness to some noteworthy levels. The whole thing’s still quite rubbish holistically, but a more palpable sense of danger – and even more of a predicament, on multiple levels, for Rowan – lends the whole thing that penultimate episode feeling, if nothing else.
We should start with one of the broader plots since it quite neatly pays off some of the earlier stuff with Julien’s eternal stasis and also adds a sad grace note to Cortland’s attempted redemption arc, since a part of me doubts he’s going to get out of this one. But then again perhaps he deserves it for not seeing such a breathtakingly obvious plan coming together.
But it goes thusly. Cortland and Ian spend some time together while poor Cortland tricks himself into believing that he’s making some progress with his long-lost brother thanks to a shared hatred of their awful father. But Cortland gets too enthusiastic and gives too much away, most notably his gift of immortality. This resonates with Ian, who suddenly sees a means to return his father back to the mortal realm in a new vessel.
We’re not supposed to know this is happening, though. Ian instead claims that Julien intends to return through Hamish – that old “firstborn” chestnut – and makes such a song and dance about it that Cortland believes him. He volunteers to accompany Ian to Julien’s spiritual realm to essentially refuse him as a united sibling front, and also because Rowan has tasked him with finding out what Julien is up to in order to redeem himself.
But he plays right into Ian’s hands. Of course, it was a ploy all along. With Hamish sitting on the other end of the magical safety rope, Julien and Ian depart the realm, leaving Cortland behind, with Julien taking over Cortland’s body (“Can you still get it up?”, he asks him before leaving, reassuring himself with a reminder that they have pills for that now, so it doesn’t matter either way.)
But if there’s one major thing to take away from Mayfair Witches Season 2, Episode 7, it’s that Julien is loose. And Rowan doesn’t know, still believing that Cortland is himself and her ally. And she’s certainly short of those.
Lasher and Emaleth’s weird wedding in Mayfair Witches | Image via AMC
At least she’s not stuck in the tunnels anymore, where she found herself at the end of the previous episode. They happen to lead her to Ian’s wife, Amintha, who tries to keep Rowan sweet with a vial of Lasher’s blood. But Rowan turns that inch into a mile and intimidates Amintha into taking her to Moira, who is still being held hostage. Moira isn’t much use since the family won’t let Rowan go anywhere with her nearby, so terrified are they of her mind-reading powers, so she’s once again left behind, which is a shame because she’s probably the most interesting character. But no matter. Rowan also bullies Amintha into taking her to Lasher, but he’s thoroughly brainwashed and has totally bought into his prophesized fate as the life-bringer Taltos.
We get a bit of background on this, both from Lasher himself and also through Sip, who is asked by the Talamasca leadership to read the memories of a corpse from the 1500s who turns out to be Saint Ashlar himself, Lasher’s original incarnation. In short, Lasher was born of a Scottish lord and a witch queen, but the fact he grew so quickly that it was visible in real-time alarmed everyone to such an extent that he was considered a demon. His father, though, believing him to be an angel, took him to Scotland to rejuvenate the highlands, which he still has a bit of sense-memory of, hence him buying into his own destiny so completely.
Being able to see that Lasher is head-over-heels for Emaleth and utterly determined to go through with the nuptials, Rowan agrees to stick around for the wedding and give him away. And the wedding’s predictably bonkers, featuring both Lasher and Emaleth bound by ropes, straining against the bindings to get at each other like rabid animals. Eventually, they’re released to meet in the middle, and curtains fall to obscure whatever they’re getting up to. At this point, it could be anything.
All of the Mayfairs except Moira are in attendance for this, as is Lark, which proves to be Rowan’s undoing. Despite not picking up on Cortland obviously channeling Julien, she nonetheless senses something amiss, but Ian has prepared a contingency. After ritualistically binding Lark to him, anything that happens to him – he cuts his palm to prove the point – happens to Lark. So now Rowan is trapped on all sides, under threat from Cortland and Ian, and unable to do anything without risking the lives of Moira and Lark.
And you thought your family wedding was complicated?
