A Discovery of Witches: Season 1, Episode 8

The final episode of A Discovery of Witches and I am immensely frustrated. Oh, British TV shows, every part of my soul wants to say how inherently superior you are to American shows - but no we have to have these teeny tiny seasons where absolutely nothing gets space or time to be developed!

It’s something American shows TEND to do better (I say “tend” because they also tend to have marathon seasons of So. Much. Filler).

So we reach this last episode with Juliette the disposable and pointless threatening Diana and dramatically declaring she was created by Gerbert expressly to seduce Matthew and Matthew just rejected her and so she’s just been his whipping girl and servant and now is totally jealous of Diana.

And oh dear gods this character. We will revisit this in the conclusion when I have had a drink and can handle the level of cringe here. The cringe is high

Juliette decides to stab Matthew after making him kiss Diana because, well, she’s not a character, she’s a caricature of woman scorned. Matthew ends up bleeding and dying and Diana pulls another magical power out of her back of Deus Ex tricks and shoots Juliette with a bow made of fire. Bye Juliette.

Oh and that “fire was the only element she doesn’t have” of course she has it?

She worries about poor Matthew who is now dying and she prays and begs saying she’ll do anything to get him back. Thankfully the goddess is all into that, warns her there’ll be a price but Diana’s all ANYTHING FOR HIM and feeds him her blood and lets him bite her.

Y’know if blood was what he needed they had 2 other witches, 2 vampires and I’m sure a passing bunny or something to help spread the load. Someone could even sponge up Juliette.

She also throws up a magic circle to stop anyone else interfering so he can drain her to death

Which of course he doesn't do because that whole “craving” thing just means nothing and was kind of thrown in the first couple of episodes for some Twilight-esque shout outs but then never actually went anywhere. Diana does realise he does crave her and has been resisting tearing out her spleen and sucking on it every minute they’re together

She thinks this is sweet and romantic

There’s something badly wrong with this woman. She needs help. She needs an intervention.

A Discovery of Witches: Season 1, Episode 7

Diana and Matthew make their goodbyes to Ysabeau and Marthe (who are now totally on side with Diana now) and get in a helicopter to go to Diana’s aunts in America

Can a helicopter cross the Atlantic? I assume it’s just taking them to the airport.

Anyway they arrive in Madison and their aunts house - which is haunted - or magical; either way it’s extremely nifty, fun, a little creepy and an extremely convenient source of Deus Ex Machinae since it can do a whole lot of stuff. The house likes Matthew (of course) and if your magical house doesn’t even keep undead blood drinking monsters from your door, what’s the point.

They meet Emily and Sarah - Emily is super welcoming, Sarah would rather have a squad of MAGA hatted zombies vomiting on her porch. But Diana’s main concern is to confront them in a rage demanding to know if they knew she was spellbound. Sarah is horrified at the idea that she had been spellbound… but Emily suspected that Diana’s parents were involved

Sarah is horrified - her emotions run from high to outerspace - and Diana is devastated at the idea that her parents thought she was such a terribad awful monster that she needed to have her magic bound (remembering that this is generally only done to evil witches who are terribad awful). The house steps in to give us a useful flashback

Her parents magically bound Diana when she was a small child to try and protect her from Knoxx who is terribad awful and was heading over to examine her magic and discover her specialness. Because they bind her they stop her being revealed to Knoxx.

With Diana safe, her parents then leave because they know Knoxx will hunt them now and they leave Diana with Emily and Sarah… Emily suspected something was going on

Diana mopes a little but it quickly turns into this romance of awfulness because her mother talked all about her Shadow Prince. And that’s probably why her spell binding broke. Because they were meant to be

Hey, remember when he craved her blood and he had to flee to Scotland in order not to murder her? Anyone remember that? No?

Emily and Sarah have their own angst - because Sarah is deeply upset that they didn’t tell her about all this. She’s hurt but also somewhat guilty - thinking Rebecca (Diana’s mother) couldn’t trust her because she’d fly off the handle and go into a rage while Emily would be careful. I mean, we’ve barely seen these characters but… yes? Emily’s even sensible enough not to challenge this pretty accurate assessment of her character - but pulls out the plus of this. Rebecca trusted her to look after her daughter - knowing she would be a passionate warrior and carer for Diana.

This little snippet of their beautiful relationship really makes me wish they’d appear more often

A Discovery of Witches: Season 1, Episode 6

Diana has been captured by Satu. Who can fly - this is apparently a witch thing. And she has been delivered to Gerbert the evil vampire

Honestly, Satu, you’ve got Gerbert the evil vampire and Knoxx the evil witch - you need better friends.

When she arrives Gerbert starts getting all gropy but Satu steps in - she’s her’s first before Gerbert

She then tries to convince Diana she’s a friendly kidnapper, appeal to her witch solidarity (though she seems shaken when Diana reveals her parents were killed by witches before falling back on the witches must have had a good reason) before getting to the core - she wants to see Diana’s power.

And Diana throws some witchwind about but it’s not all that impressive and Satu isn’t going to be moved by it. She tries to frame it as a chance to help - if she teaches Diana magic she can then protect herself from Gerbert and Matthew. Of course Diana objects to the idea she needs protecting from Matthew and Satu’s attempts to convince her that a) Matthew is using her for the book and b) that Matthew killed Gillian are also not exactly convincing

It’s not like Diana even likes Gillian and disparages her as just another puppet of Knoxx’s - just like Satu. Well… she’s not wrong Satu.

Satu keeps magicing at Diana which involves some fire effects, lots of throwing her around and some glowing lines on Diana’s back while she screams and Satu demands to know her secrets. She also has an ominous box

Gerbert is interviewing his headless witch: beware the witch with the blood of the lion and the wolf which will destroy the children of the night. Can someone write this down so she can stop repeating. It. Gerbert would quite like to know whether Diana or Satu is the witch of prophecy (probably Diana I think)

More screaming and woo-woo and Satu collapses, apparently not getting what she wants, so she drags Diana to an oubliette and drops her in (they’re in Gerbert’s ruined castle). Gerbert arrives to demand he be tagged in and Satu needs to get Diana out  - but she can’t. Using woo-woo on Diana has cost her her powers.

Welp, Knox did warn you Satu.

Knox locks her up in a room with the severed witch head which duly freaks Satu out that an ancient powerful witch has been kept in such an appalling condition for so long. The witch is apparently Meridana (THE Meridana - so clearly important) - and Satu borrows some of her magic so she can escape - with the head.

While Diana dreams about her parents who take a long time to explain that to get out of a room with a hole in the ceiling one has to fly

I would say it shouldn’t take this long to explain things to her but given her decision making to date… maybe.

Of course the rest of Team Good Guy aren’t standing around. While Matthew snarls and manhandles his brother Baldwin and even bites him for the actions of the Council, Marthe investigates and discovers a flying witch must be behind the abduction (something Knoxx cannot do). They call Knoxx anyway and he lies and claims Satu is with him - it’s not a convincing lie. But a witch invading vampire lands is justification for a war...

A Discovery of Witches: Season 1, Episode 5

I am never going to get used to this title card.

Diana is still in France with Ysabeau and she HASN’T had a tragic accident falling down all those stairs yet. I know I was surprised too. Ysabeau, you are not creative.

Instead she decides to try and scare Diana off by taking her hunting and have Diana watch her kill a fox for blood. For she is a vampire RAWR. Honestly it’s… not horrifying? I mean she could have killed say, a deer and wrapped the entrails round her neck like a stole and covered her face in blood. This was… really clean and quite neat? “THIS IS THE REALITY YOU WILL LIVE WITH IF YOU’RE WITH MY VAMPIRE SON!” uh-huh, I know rich people in silly clothes here in England who are waaaaay more evil when hunting foxes than Ysabeau.

Unshockingly, lack of vegetarianism does not send Diana running for the hills. So Ysabeau decides to tell her of Matthew’s human life 1500 years ago when he had a wife and child who died of fever and he may have actually committed suicide in response. She sired him when she found him dying and he was all ragy and savage. She is convinced that Matthew has not mated since then because he’s not over this human who died in medieval times. Look, not to  destroy a good true love narrative, but someone who is grieving for fifteen centuries needs therapy. That’s not healthy. Oh Ysabeau doubles down -  Diana is also mortal and will die and leave him all sad and tragic.

Ysabeau is pulling zero punches here. No it doesn’t work… can we remember that this epic love is based on about 2 weeks acquaintence?

Marthe also tells Diana how awesomely powerful she is but, in a moment of almost insightful thinking, Diana isn’t excited about this because it’s basically even more power she can’t control. This is a good insight. Now she needs to actually do something about it

Also she needs to tell these vampires to get the hell out of her bathroom while she’s bathing.

Diana calls her aunts to catch up and ask why she wasn’t told about the Congregation and the Covenant to have the excellent response that how could they when she resists all mention of magic. Fair point. She also tells her aunts she loves the vampire she hasn’t known for a month yet, which her aunts thinks this is a very very bad idea. Diana insists that they must surely understand

To which her lesbian aunts should get on a plane to France right then so they can personally slap her upside the head for that completely uncalled for dig at their relationship and comparing marrying a vampire to marrying another woman. Discovery of Witches, you’ve put your lesbians safely on a different continent, don’t make it even worse.

In Oxford Matthew checks his lab and finds nothing stolen - but does smell out the witch who broke in. It’s Gillian - and he hunts her down. She doesn’t really explain herself beyond “vampires are awful, RAWR!” so he bites her and drains her blood (which also gets her memories of what she saw) and steals her phone which had photographs of his lab. Gillian staggers with extreme severe blood loss to Sylvia’s house

Miriam is not happy with Matthew for drawing all this attention to him with his witch mating - because everyone knows this is happening. Yes he’s not been subtle. But Matthew is sure that it wasn’t about his lab - but about Diana’s samples. Because it has to about Diana it seems. Personally I think the witches may be more interested in the fact he’s illicitly examining their DNA after digging up their ancestor’s bodies. I mean they might have issues with this… which isn’t exactly… out there?

Marcus is equally concerned about this witch love and calls Baldwin, head of their family and Congregation to explain what’s happening but how he’s totally sure Matthew has it together. Baldwin not so much and is pretty sure that Matthew will drag them all down and he absolutely cannot help him. He’s not making politics easy and there’s not a lot of good will on the Congregation

At the Congregation, Knoxx is freaked out about Matthew experimenting on witch DNA - but is pretty blase about him attacking Gillian because a) he doesn’t want his fellow Congregation witches to learn that he put her up to breaking into his lab and b) while having sex with a witch is super bad, nearly killing her is totally ok so long as she broke into your home first

A Discovery of Witches, Season 1, Episode 4

Matthew and Diana have gone on holiday to France to the ancestral castle where everyone knows them. Matthew assures him that his mother is totally looking forward to meet her

Unshockingly she really isn’t

In addition to find warm bloods poorly educted mongrels who can’t speak classic French, she’s also super super not into witches. And she hates change as well. Diana is as welcome as that bloke who knocks on your door at 8:00am on a Sunday morning to tell you all about Jesus.

We also have Marthe who seems to be the family servant and/or exposition aide.

Back in Oxford Juliette shows up looking for Matthew and after slapping Marcus around and then getting set down hard by Miriam she asks after him. Miriam snarks about Juliette chasing a man who doesn’t want her for all eternity and it’s a definite good hit. Go Miriam.

So why does Ysabeau hate witches? Well Matthew’s step dad died in world war 2 - by “her kind”. Matthew insists that she can’t blame Diana for what other witches did and both angrily and sadly laments that once she used to love all people for how they were

Aunt Sarah and Ann hear that Diana is in France and insist she leave because Ysabeau is a renowned witch killer who slaughtered entire covens in South America. Of course Diana stays and isn’t even overly freaked out by this news. She does ask about Phillipe’s death and does put 2 and 2 together about some witches working with the Nazis (this may also make Ysabeau’s little rampage more… targetted since historically fleeing Nazis did run to South America such as Mengele and Eichman. So maybe Ysabeau slaughtered those covens with good reason)

What she is freaked out about is the revelation that her parents were murdered by other witches - Matthew found evidence of a magic circle on the photographs.

Since Diana has a death wish and kissing the vampire who craves her just isn’t getting the job done she tries plan b: asking Ysabeau about how those witches murdered her beloved

This woman wants to die. There is no other explanation.

But her appeal that she’s a good person, that her dead parents are good people and the existence of some evil Nazi witches does not, in turn, make witches evil - and adds that she’s doing her utmost to not judge Ysabeau despite the things she’s heard about her. Point to Deathwish Diana.

Ysabeau has some advice for Diana - get revenge. Sure it doesn’t make pain go away, but it helps. And points to this show for breaking the trope where eveyrone who has killed in vengeance is supposed to tell us all how it’s totally a bad idea. Nah, Isabeau has Zero Regrets.

Discovery of Witches, Season 1, Episode 3

This voiceover is happening every episode. Really, this is happening? These are the credits?

So I’m going to mix the order up a little more this episode so it flows better for a recap just because I’m lazy and I really hate view switching storylines almost as much as I hate stories not in chronological orders.

So in, I’m going to assume Venice because it’s wet, we have the Congregation which seems to be an all powerful ruling body for the three supernatural races (or, I guess, more than three since there could be more) It’s run by a human in a male inherited role which a visiting Satu is snarking about.

She is there to research Diana (and gets a file including pictures of her dead parents( but the witch archive is invaded by the Venetian investigator Dominico and there’s some magic and lots of strangling. We’ve seen Satu open a pit into the floor - I think Dominico is very very casual about strangling her one handed. He may be asking for some severe combustion

Anyway he learns about Diana and rushes to boss man Gerbert (and I still can’t get over Trevor Eve in this role) to tattle that Matthew is totally messing with witches and if they can prove it they can get him in trouble. Apparently this is is something they want

Gerbert doesn’t think that Matthew is going to be that daft as to play into their evil hands. But he consults a mummified head in a box which mumbles something about a witch with the blood of a wolf and a lion (I think. I am so against cryptic nonsense prophecy I refuse to rewind to find out). So he sends his daughter. Who he bathes and kisses extremely inappropriately before sending her off. Uckies do not want

Right now we can head back to Oxford to where Matthew reports to Diana that the Bodleian is now utterly full of Creatures all looking for Diana to get the book so instead invites her to his country house. But first she runs into Gillian to tell her she’s the worst betraying supposed friend ever. While Gillian admits she’s not nice but that knoxx is awesome becaus he’s *gasp* CONGREGATION. And she needn’t spend time with “that.”

“That” being Matthew. Again, everyone on this show is so utterly incapable of being endearing even slightly. Like everyone in this book needs to charm Diana onside and they’re all really really bad at it. I mean, super bad. Like everyone can tell Diana is really put off by this anti-vampire rhetoric so consider toning it down? Maybe?

So to Matthew’s house because his whole Craving her blood thing means it’s an excellent idea for him to take her out to some isolated house in the country where they can be alone together. Yes. It does give them chance to explore Matthew’s past, hid Frenchness (all vampires are French. It’s a rule. Damn you Anne Rice. And all werewolves are Scottish - no-one to blame for this. It’s something about the hairiness. It’s a rule) his age (he was born in the 6th century), his family and his brother’s alchemy books. It actually manages to be a full conversation with minimum creepiness

They also establish that Diana’s magic is instinctive - basically she just wants something and it happens, sort of. Personally I’m not a lover because it makes magic a bit too effortless and too much of a deux ex. But he points out since she’s using magical all the time without knowing she should really get behind her super powers already

And I still don’t buy the idea that someone can have magic and decide not to use it. Nope nope nope. I don’t care if their parents were eaten alive by rabbits pulled out of hats, there’s no reason.

A Discovery of Witches: Season 1, Episode 2

So, after a random side encounter which isn’t going to be relevant for some time, this second episode opens with exactly the same ominous voice over as we had last episode

Really? And they even add ominous title cards. I’m going to have to quote them:

It begins with absence and desire

It begins with love and fear

It begins with a discovery of witches

Tell me you’re not tempted to laugh. Tell me you don’t find this ludicrously melodramatic. I think it’d be far easier to get into this show if it didn’t try so very very hard.

Matthew has gone on holiday to Scotland to be hosted by a demon friend Hamish so he can hunt deer and try to forget about Diana. It seems he “craves” her which is some damn Twilight bullshit

Dear Vampire Fiction: can we not have romances built on a foundation of the vampire wanting to kill and eat the human. I mean, is this is a straight people thing? “Oh my lover may rip out my throat for snack food. Isn’t he dreamy?!” Have a word with yourselves.

Anyway he eats the stag and then talks to Hamish on two main topics: One that the book could be super important for demons as well as they’re also having problems with escalating mental health issues - homelessess, suicide etc. The book is needed by everyone. He also references the fact that demons are generally considered 3rd class citizens in “Creature” culture.

The other is that Matthew relies on Hamish to be his conscience. And he’s telling Matthew to stay well away from Diana so he doesn’t eat her and then feel all guilty about it.

Back in Oxford Diana is dealing with spooky dreams and the fact lots and lots of Creatures are now stalking her. Specifically Peter Knoxx introduces himself dropping evil vibes all over the place. He name drops her mother to make her talk to him - he would totally have seen her before but her aunt were super protective

Which to me would be a big warning signal - I mean often if your protective relative decides this guy needs to be nowhere near you then you want to stay away from them. Not have tea with them

They talk revealing with Knoxx telling her that the book was lost is lost and only she is able to get i back which he’d really rather she did. Knoxx has a theory that witches created vampires and how with the book they’d totally be able to uncreate them. Diana hears about his plan to wipe out an entire species and is totally “what the fuck is wrong with you” about this. She is not on side for genocide at all and is now officially done with Knoxx

To check she calls Emma her aunt’s partner who confirms he was obsessed with her mother, her parents didn’t trust him and he was super into dark magic as well.

Satu the creepy also decides to stalk Diana and start messing in her head. Because everyone here is like super good at building rapport and trust.

Gillian keeps trying to push Diana towards Knoxx but her own dismissal of genocide doesn’t especially thrill Diana, especially since Gillian backs it up with clear loathing of vampires without every speaking to one: which makes Matthew way more tolerant of witches than witches seem to be of him which strikes a bit of a chord for Diana. Even if she does still insist she wants a normal life.

She does wonder how Knoxx is learning so much about her… when she catches him at Gillian’s house and naturally feels very very betrayed by this. Knox continues to try to press her, Ambushing her at a party to convince her that genocide is totally ok; when she walks away from him he starts mentally messing with her - causing headaches and intimidation with telepathy. Until she cracks and lashes back at him to stay out of her head - breaking the window and staggering him at the same time.