‘Mayfair Witches’ Season 2 Ending Explained – Rowan Unlocks Her Full Potential in A Messy Finale

Let’s be frank here – the ending of Mayfair Witches Season 2 is a mess. It’s full of action, deaths, twists, and moral ambiguities, and while some of it works fairly well, a fair amount of it doesn’t work at all. Episode 8 is a mixed bag of a finale that looks distractingly cheap and smacks of a show that has no real idea of where it’s going – even though it ends with a pretty obvious setup for Season 3.

So, what do we make of it? Do we award points for the satisfaction of Rowan and Lasher letting loose, for Julien’s surprising turnaround, and for the one-two shock of Lasher’s first and second deaths? Or do we moan that a lot of it looks really silly and it’s difficult to know what to make of any of it? Milage, I suppose, may vary.

The Mayfairs Have Big Plans for Lasher and His Kids

There’s a relatively slow build before the chaos ensues. The Scottish Mayfairs are breeding Lasher and Emaleth with a good helping of mysterious Taltos magic so that they can pump out a litter of sprogs in record time, while Rowan is being kept around, and Julien/Cortland is visibly scheming. You can feel something coming (no pun intended, of course.)

I will concede that a few plot threads entwine rather neatly here. Sip and the Talamasca arrive at about the same time that Moira breaks free of captivity, so everyone comes to the same conclusions through slightly different means. The gist of it is this: The Taltos aren’t the object of the Mayfairs’ worship – they’re the sacrificial lambs that empower them. The point of Lasher getting married and siring children is that they can be fattened up for slaughter, and the Taltos blood can empower everyone who drinks it. Including Julien.

This amounts to Lasher’s first death. This one’s temporary, but it’s a bit of a shock because it occurs quite early on. It’s rare you see a major character’s throat get sliced open so their blood can leak into a bowl. Needless to say, Rowan’s not exactly thrilled about it.

Lasher’s Second Death and Julien’s Plan

Rowan is able to revive Lasher just in time for a smackdown with the Scottish Mayfairs, which is made possible thanks to Julien, of all people. As it turns out, Julien isn’t devoted to the Scottish side of the family. He’s just looking for power. Given Rowan’s still rather inscrutable significance and skillset, power rests with her, so Julien reveals that he undid the stitch that Ian was bragging about. He’s no longer connected to Lark. Which means he and his family can be harmed.

And boy, are they harmed. Between a newly revived Lasher out for vengeance after his betrayal and Rowan throwing brain hemorrhages and lightning bolts around, the entire clan gets messed out. But Lasher doesn’t get out of this unscathed. He takes a hatchet to the chest, and this time his heart stops irreversibly. He’s dead.

Julien’s plan for God-like power is pretty vague but goes a little something like this. He has already chugged a fair helping of Lasher’s blood, which has given him the power to imperiously levitate like Magneto. But he knows that if Rowan drinks the blood, he can combine his powers with hers, amplifying both to unimaginable levels. Rowan’s stuck in a moral quandary. Drinking the blood would give her the power to save Lasher, but it would also mean letting a supercharged Julien loose on the world. What to do?

Alexandra Daddario in Mayfair Witches Season 2 | Image via AMC

Rowan Unlocks Her Full Potential

The big moment of Mayfair Witches Season 2, Episode 8 is Rowan drinking Lasher’s blood and becoming the very best version of herself. It’d probably be a nice uplifting girl-boss moment if it wasn’t for the problematic witch element. Curiously, this doesn’t revive Lasher either, which means that either Julien was lying about her gaining the power of resurrection or the fact Rowan drank the blood after the fact, away from Julien, meant they haven’t done the conjoined power-up yet. I’m guessing the latter.

The reason Julien is distracted is because Sip and the Talamasca manage to grab Lasher and Emaleth’s kids and spirit them through a really dodgy-looking CGI portal to safety, and despite Julien chasing them and trying to literally smite them with lightning like some kind of capricious Old Testament god, they’re all able to escape with the notable exception of Polina, who gets her boots smoked.

But this is, for Rowan, mission more or less accomplished. Lasher is dead, which is a shame, but she can leave Scotland and return home with enough power to free Daphne and Jojo from the thrall, which she does, though not before taking a moment to wipe Lark’s memories of her. As it turns out, as hot as Rowan undeniably is, the all-powerful witch thing and barely concealed bloodlust is a bit of a deal-breaker, romantically speaking.

But Rowan hasn’t “won” just yet. The ending of Mayfair Witches Season 2 finds Julien lurking outside the Mayfair house, ominously watching on, surely about to ruin the celebratory atmosphere. It’ll be interesting to see if there’s a Season 3 to allow him to do that.