Dr. Rowan Fielding, a skilled neurosurgeon, has become a rising star in her profession. However, she's soon faced with two crises. First, her beloved adoptive mother has cancer again. Second, she nearly killed her boss with her newfound telekinesis. As she struggles to get her mom the care she needs while dealing with her new power, Rowan learns she comes from a dynasty of witches with a dire problem of their own...
Tropes:
- Artistic License – Linguistics: Ciprien's Talamasca file lists "Belgian" among the languages he speaks. There is no singular language called Belgian. Belgian people speak either French, Dutch or German (the first two are on his list, too). Even if it meant a regional variant, it would have to be specific about whether it was referring to Belgian French, Belgian Dutch (which is more commonly called Flemish) or Belgian German.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: It turns out that Cortland was promised immortality by Lasher in exchange for helping bring him into the world. After he succeeds, Rowan is unable to kill him. So she turns him into a statue forever.
- Black Dude Dies First: Elena, a black woman, is the first person to die in the present.
- Broken Pedestal: Jojo is appalled to find out that her father Cortland raped her cousin Deirdre.
- Child by Rape: The first season finale reveals that Rowan's biological father was not Patrick, but Cortland, who raped Deirdre on the same night that she slept with Patrick, and then had Patrick killed to cover it up.
- Compelling Voice: Tessa uses this against Keith when she's captured and imprisoned, which appears to work better while she's looking into his eyes too. The hold is broken however when someone calls to him. Later it turns out Rowan can do this too, compelling Cortland to let her go.
- Composite Character: Ciprien Grieves is a combination of two different characters from the books, Michael Curry and Aaron Lightener.
- Cunning Linguist: According to Ciprien's agent file at the Talamasca, he speaks English, Dutch, French, Spanish, Mandarin, Russian, Yoruba, and the non-existent "Belgian". In the third episode, we see that he speaks Louisiana Creole as well.
- Dead All Along: In a few flashbacks and modern day scenes, we see Carlotta Mayfair speaking with her sister Millie, who also lives in the house on First Street. Then in the fifth episode, after Lasher has put Carlotta in Suspended Animation, Rowan finds Millie crying in the bathtub, saying that without Carlotta she can't hold on and it's like she's dying all over again, revealing that Millie is a ghost. This is hinted at in the fourth episode by her name appearing on a gravestone in the cemetery. Underneath Rowan's name (from Rowan's death being faked as a baby), which implies she died between the flashbacks to when Deirdre was young and the present.
- Deceptive Legacy: Elena was a Mayfair cousin who took Rowan under orders of Carlotta Mayfair, changing her last name to Fielding, never contacting the family again while keeping all knowledge of them secret from Rowan, and pretending it was a closed adoption so she can't tell her anything about her birth parents.
- The Dulcinea Effect: Ciprien very quickly becomes invested in protecting Rowan, starting when he vows to her adoptive mother to do so before he's even met her.
- Emotional Powers: Rowan getting really angry with someone results in her telekinesis activating to induce an aneurysm that kills or at least harms them.
- First-Episode Twist: At the end of the first episode, it turns out that Deirdre and Patrick are Rowan's biological parents. Or so it seems, as it later turns out that Rowan's biological father was actually Cortland.
- Happily Adopted: Rowan and her adoptive mom clearly have a close, very loving mother-daughter relationship.
- Heir Club for Men: Inverted with the Mayfair family, whose matriarchs have passed down their property only through daughters for centuries, also practicing Took the Wife's Name. The only exception was Julien Mayfair (father of Carlotta, Cortland, Millie and Antha), whose sister Katherine voluntarily transferred her connection to Lasher to him for unspecified reasons.
- Imperiled in Pregnancy: After it turns out Rowan's pregnant by Ciprien, Lasher tries to use her baby as a "doorway" into the world so that he can be born in flesh and no longer just a spirit.
- Inadequate Inheritor: In "Transference", Rowan tries to pass on her connection to Lasher to someone else in the family. Unfortunately, the recipient, Tessa, is a spoiled, naive girl whose first impulse is to try and use her new powers to get revenge on a gang of witch-hunters... before bothering to check if she actually has the powers. It ends very badly for her and Rowan ends up taking the power back.
- Irony: Situational irony: The first of the Mayfair witches, Suzanne Mayfair, was just an innocent medicine woman and midwife until witch hunters tried to burn her at the stake for having the knowledge of healing. Then she invoked Lasher to save herself and became a real witch.
- It's Personal: One of the witch-hunters who kidnaps Tessa was a former employee at Mayfair Auto. She and her husband lost their jobs to the Mayfair family's personnel cuts... while their daughter was undergoing chemotherapy at the Mayfair hospital. Needless to say, her interest in seeing Tessa burn goes well beyond mere witch-hunting.
- Mama Bear: Rowan petrifies Cortland after he tries to take her baby.
- Mind over Matter: Rowan learns she is capable of telekinesis by unwittingly causing an aneurysm through rupturing her boss's artery, seeing right inside his brain as she does so. It also makes her realize she'd earlier caused a girl whom she fought with in her childhood to have a seizure this way as well. She also rescues Tessa by killing multiple witch hunters this way too.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Rowan is horrified to learn that she almost killed her boss inadvertently with her newfound telekinesis. Then it happens again, leaving Rowan distraught.
- Necromancer: Cousin Dotty Jean Mayfair describes Julien Mayfair as having practiced necromancy.
- Never Suicide: Rowan's grandmother Antha didn't jump from the balcony. Carlotta pushed her.
- Occult Blue Eyes: Rowan's striking pale blue eyes help to highlight that she has powerful telekinesis. She shares these with her biological mother, Deirdre, and the first time we see Rowan in the pilot is a cut from Deirdre's eyes to hers meant to make it obvious they're related. She has inherited her ability from Deirdre.
- One-Night-Stand Pregnancy: Deirdre became pregnant by Patrick from the single night they had together. However, it turns out she'd actually been raped the same night by Cortland, thus conceiving Rowan.
- Parental Abandonment: Patrick, birth father of Rowan, died prior to her birth. It turns out her birth father was Cortland, however, as a result of rape. Her adoptive mom Elena had brought up Rowan as a single mother after this. Elena then dies after her cancer relapses, and Rowan initially doesn't know about her birth mother Deirdre, who's alive.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: After one of the witch hunters, Keith, murders Tessa before Rowan can save her she finally invokes Lasher to hunt him down. Keith hides in a shed which Lasher sets on fire with his mind, using the same means planned to kill Tessa originally as a witch.
- Power Incontinence:
- Rowan has no control over her telekinesis at first. She nearly kills her boss without even realizing what happened initially just by getting angry at him, which causes her to rupture a neural artery.
- Ciprien has an extrasensory touch that he can barely control, and needs to wear gloves to avoid being overwhelmed.
- Really Gets Around: Rowan is known to have lots of sex with men, preferring one night stands over monogamous relationships. In season one alone she hooks up with a bartender named Max, Ciprien, and Lasher.
- Sex Starts, Story Stops: Rowan and Ciprien's sex scene is abrupt, without buildup, also probably unnecessary to show their relationship.
- Shout-Out: In the pilot, Rowan tells Maya, "Remember, the slow blade penetrates the shield," which is a reference to Dune.
- The Show of the Books: The show is the adaptation of the Lives of the Mayfair Witches books by Anne Rice.
- Someone to Remember Him By: Deirdre discovered she was pregnant from her tryst with Patrick after his death (which she believes was a murder to keep them apart), and was very depressed for much of her pregnancy as a result. It's later revealed however that Rowan's father was Cortland, due to him raping Deirdre, who's still living.
- Spotting the Thread: Rowan's realization there's more to her past than it seems is when she tries to call the agency her mother claimed handled her "closed adoption" only to learn it hadn't opened until four years after she was born.
- Surprise Pregnancy: Rowan becomes unexpectedly pregnant from Ciprien.
- Taken for Granite: Cortland, after he tries to take Rowan's baby, gets petrified by her.
- Toplessness from the Back: Rowan shows this as she and Lasher are having sex.
- Villainous Incest: The first season finale reveals that Cortland raped Deirdre (his niece) when she was a teenager, and thus he is Rowan's real father.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Lasher has this ability, demonstrating it to Deirdre by rapidly changing his face in succession, putting on many faces of different ages, sexes and races, but also some horrific inhuman ones.
- The Witch Hunter: In the scenes of Scotland from the past, the first Mayfair witch is nearly burned at the stake by a witchfinder who comes to hunt witches. Then in the present we see a misogynistic extreme Christian sect whose leader openly advocates this to modern witches (who he claims are a secret cabal of women in power marginalizing men), taking credit for one woman being burned alive recently.
- Would Hurt a Child: The modern witch-hating Christian extremists kidnap Tessa Mayfair, who's just a girl, after having openly advocated burning witches alive (she's one). She's later killed by one, Keith.
