Mayfair Witches Season 1 Episode 5 Review: The Thrall
Lasher’s influence leads Rowan down a dark path on Mayfair Witches Season 1 Episode 5, “The Thrall.”
After spending half the season dancing around their official encounter, Rowan and Lasher finally make real contact. Before, Lasher was manipulating and toying with Rowan to get her intrigued. Now is where the real terror sets in place.
“The Thrall” focuses on illuminating the potential wickedness within Rowan, forcing the audience to think deeper about the spell placed on the First Street House.
While Rowan goes through the steps of figuring out how to get free without feeding into Lasher’s advances, he makes a point to let her know the spell is acting on her wishes.
It’s a simple mind game that alters Rowan’s thoughts about herself and forces the audience to speculate if there’s some truth behind his statement or if it’s all a game to coerce her to the dark side.
After all, Rowan has plenty of reasons to wish harm against Carlotta. If it weren’t for her, she’d have known about Lasher and the prophecy of her lineage long ago.
Carlotta’s death is much deserved. She keeps Deirdre comatose, fakes Rowan’s death, tries to kill Rowan, and still tries to coerce Rowan to kill herself after being saved from Lasher. Her actions were horrific and inexcusable, whether she was acting on her beliefs of protecting the greater good or not.
Pictured: Tongayi Chirisa as Ciprien Grieve
What’s most intriguing is what Rowan’s next steps will be. Carlotta’s death is the first time she’s deliberately used her powers for harm, and it not be an accident. It’s debatable, but it’s likely that Rowan would still make the same choice even without Lasher putting the thought in the back of her head.
In Carlotta’s last moments, she reveals she killed Antha Mayfair, Rowan’s grandmother, by throwing her off the balcony of their home. The same balcony she’s insisting Rowan jump off to prevent Lasher from ever receiving power.
Carlotta Mayfair: I should have killed you when you were a baby.
Had Carlotta taken a completely different approach towards Rowan, there’s no telling if she could have successfully figured out a real solution. One that didn’t result in Rowan having to die.
The series’ pacing is morbidly slow, hindering the storytelling at times. However, “The Thrall” is the first episode of the season to feel like the pacing is properly done, even while being stuck in one central location for the majority of the episode.
That said, the ball is dropped when it comes to revealing information. It feels pointless to spend so much time on Lasher and not reveal any further backstory about the character.
We still know very little about Lasher, even after having almost an entire episode dedicated to him. Instead of having Rowan tippy toe around the subject, she should have been grilling the entity on his connection to the family, when he became part of their history, etc.
The framing of the ending shot suggests that Rowan’s departure from the home is to a world that is not hers. It’ll be interesting to see where the connection between Lasher and Rowan goes and how it will progress over the last three episodes.
Stray Thoughts:
- With the amount of time spent on the world-building and trying to intermix background information, it’s disappointing that we never get any explanation for Millie vanishing in and out of the mortal plane.
- It’s infuriating that we continue only to get four or five minutes of focus on the original Mayfair witch storyline. Hopefully, in Season 2, we’ll get more time to focus on that aspect. I would love a sole episode dedicated to that storyline before the end of Season 1.
- Rowan gets pregnant in the book series, but with the father character eliminated from the tv adaptation, I wonder if we can expect that same storyline. If so, everything is hinting toward Ciprien being the father.
- Beth Grant has been serving in each episode, and while I’m not fond of her character, her performances will be sorely missed.
What did you think of this episode of Mayfair Witches? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Mayfair Witches airs Sundays at 9/8c on AMC.
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Cade Taylor
Cade Taylor is a television and film critic living in St. Louis, Missouri. He is a Senior Writer for Tell-Tale TV. His love for television developed at a young age, with a concentration on queer stories, sitcoms, teen dramas, and science fiction thrillers. In addition, he works full-time as a news producer, telling the stories of Missourians and helming "Produced in the Bi-State," a segment spotlighting actors, musicians, and entertainers from the St. Louis area. He can be reached by email at cade@telltaletv.com.
One thought on “Mayfair Witches Season 1 Episode 5 Review: The Thrall”
This episode (The Thrall) disappoints. Too many “is this real?” or “a dream” or a “Lasher manipulation”. All of a sudden, Rowan and Cip are in love??? Honestly, I fast forwarded through it. If the next episode is this disjointed, I’m out.
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