Matthew and Diana travel to America to seek sanctuary with Diana’s aunts and hopefully enlist their help in training Diana to use her powers. Meanwhile, scheming is the order of the day in Venice, as Baldwin tries to buy his brother the time he needs and everyone else grows more suspicious.

There’s this to say about A Discovery of Witches – it’s an odd juxtaposition of extreme subtlety and beating its audience over the head with stuff. This week, we see scenes where an actor conveys whole paragraphs worth of emotion with just a look, next to scenes where what is obvious to the viewer from the action is nevertheless explained patiently by a bit of exposition.

After the tumultuous events of last time out, Matthew decides the best thing is to get Diana to her aunts to hide her from the attentions of the Congregation a little longer as well as to see if they can help in unlocking her abilities. What nobody is counting on in this is the revelations that will come tumbling out when Diana is in a Bishop ancestral home.

And those revelations come thick and fast. First there’s the truth about who spellbound Diana and why, and more specifically who knew about it. That causes some rifts that may not be fully healed for a while. Then there’s the revelation of exactly what it is that ‘activates’ Diana’s powers against what seems to be a singularly unique form of spellbinding that’s been applied to her, and the further revelation of specifically what sort of esoteric powers her father might have had and what he did with them.

What’s impressive is that whether the show is going down the subtle or head-bashing route with all of this (and it mixes both), the emotion conveyed is raw and powerful. Adding a little quirky edge is the fact that the house itself is magical, and not necessarily well-disposed towards any stranger who visits, let alone a vampire.

Or indeed, towards the end of the episode, multiple vampires, although by that point it’s less the house than one of its owners who is displaying open animosity to the new house guests. There’s a lovely moment where Marcus tries his very best to relate to Sarah Bishop, and gets a frosty reception – it’s a nice flip of the expectations, watching a vampire try and earnestly be nice and get bluntly rebuked, and it’s well played by both actors.

Meanwhile in Venice, the plotting and scheming continues. Domenico is somewhat of a rogue player in the game now, Gerbert may have pushed his luck a little too far and it’s rapidly becoming more difficult to ascertain just how bad Peter Knox really is and where exactly Satu’s loyalties might ultimately lie. What is certain is that Juliette is going to be causing some trouble before things come to a close.

Don’t count out the demons either – armed with the revelation that demons can be born of witches, they not only have good reason to challenge the Covenant, but also to demand the equal place at the table they’ve long been denied.

Verdict: Suddenly everything is happening all at once, and a lot of that slow burn build-up feels like it makes a lot more sense. The finale promises to be incredibly interesting. 8/10

Greg D. Smith