Rowan attends her second maternal funeral in as many weeks. Ciprien and the Talamasca find who killed Deidre. Carollta loses it.

You get the feeling, around the middle of this episode, of the show slowing down. That’s a lie. Beth Grant’s Carlotta and Harry Hamlin’s Cortland move to the centre of the stage, we get more of a sense of the control of Lasher being central to the Cortland family and we also get a lot of backstory, Lasher has been bound to this family for centuries, and no one is happy about the arrangement. But where the family have excelled at controlling him, Lasher is no longer prepared to let them do so. Deidre’s killer snapping his own neck before Lasher stands up out of him and smiles as his spectral form disappears is one of the purest moments of horror in the show so far and it says a lot about what he is, what he wants and what he means.

For Rowan that breaks down to finding herself in the tug of war between the Mayfair siblings. Hamlin is great here, tempering the ‘WELL AH DECLARE’ OTT cool uncle of the first episode with something more flamboyant and sadder. But his performance really snaps into focus when he shares the screen with Grant You’ve seen Beth Grant in a dozen things, she is the go-to actress for UpTight Possibly Evil Church Lady and she never, ever does bad work. Here she’s asked to essentially speed run Carlotta’s descent from trying to control Rowan to trying to kill her and she nails it. The ending here is gloriously tense, as Carlotta orders the servants to lock her and Rowan in the dining room, tries to exorcise the younger woman and then tries to burn them both to death. Grant is so good you get just a flash of sympathy, especially when we get the chilling implication (or is it delusion?) that Carlotta resisted Lasher and judges all the women who didn’t. She can’t see past her damage, so all she can do is judge those that don’t have it.

Ciprien saves the day, and gets stabbed for his trouble, but the moment still feels like a fragile peace being shattered. Lasher is out, the Mayfair siblings seem on the verge of war, the Talamasca’s lead agent in the field is injured and Lasher is unbound.

Verdict: More southern gothic than ever and just as much fun. 8/10

Alasdair Stuart