New Orleans vampires! A DISCOVERY OF WITCHES: Thoughts on Season 3, Episode 3

We’re in the Crescent City for this week’s A Discovery of Witches!

This week on A Discovery of Witches:

In New Orleans, Matthew and Marcus struggle to reconnect with Marcus’ children. In London, Diana and Phoebe find a lead in their hunt for the missing pages.

So let’s talk about Episode 3! Please join us as we share our thoughts on the episode. And while we are at it – there are spoilers below. Lots of them. Read at your own risk.

Teresa Palmer as Diana Bishop in A Discovery of Witches.

Toby Regbo as Jack and Matthew Goode as Matthew in A Discovery of Witches.

THE GOOD:

Roz: Even though Diana and Matthew are separated for this whole episode, I love that we can see them doing what they need to do in order to get to the larger pieces moving in their favor. I think it’s about time we really see their team as a massive unit making change that they want to see because clearly Knox has some plan afoot as well.

Christie:

This is a big episode for Matthew so it was really important that they got the spirit of what was being done and what was happening here. It doesn’t have as much of the danger it carries in the book, though they try, because in the book Matthew is suffering terribly because he’s away from Diana so long, but if you’ve watched the show over the last two seasons you know the weight of Matthew’s role as de Clermont family assassin has always been heavy for him. It wasn’t as tense as it was in the book but it was still a palpable feeling. I think Jack’s pain gets more of a focus here and that helps.

Also it was nice to see Diana actually using her magic. We’ve been missing that. And the fact that Diana and Sarah actually did some magic talk, which really is missing in this season and is disappointing, honestly. The fact is there are no out and about weavers in the 21st century and magic is dying. I know Sarah is grieving for Em, but considering how much she wanted Diana to embrace her magical side, the fact that they have barely said anything to each other about magic in the first couple episodes, given the amount of time that had elapsed, was starting to bug me. (And yes, I know, they can’t cover everything but the books, but they’ve certainly added enough of Sarah whining about being useless that they could have maybe given magic a little love).

Alex Kingston as Sarah in A Discovery of Witches.

THE BAD

Roz: I wanted to see more of the past for why Matthew had such a hard time with all the folks in New Orleans. Please show me this horrible thing so I can get it’s full power.

Sarah’s position is also just odd to me. Why is she trying to leave her only family because of something so so much bigger than herself?

Christie: I have not been happy with Sarah’s characterization this season and this episode really annoyed me. Sarah and Diana were not joined at the hip in book 3, but I simply don’t believe that Sarah would leave Diana completely alone in an advanced stage of pregnancy if she were already there.

Also, is it me or is this pregnancy moving REALLY FAST?

Owen Teale as Peter Knox and Paul Rhys as Andrew Hubbard in A Discovery of Witches.

 

BOOK VS. TV

Christie: 

So lets start with the image above. By the end of book 3, and yes, this is a spoiler for the book and the show but stay with me on this, Knox has clearly unraveled mentally. But we don’t get to see that process throughout the book the way we are seeing it in the show. This is a guy who was a leader of his community, considered one of the most powerful witches around, and now he’s pretty much nothing, but he 1) desperately needs to hold onto his relevancy and 2) is now obsessed with beating Diana to the Book of Life’s secrets. So this scene with Hubbard is intriguing to me. And he has the audacity to try to throw his weight around with a vampire that’s hundreds of years old, in that vampire’s house, for all intents and purposes. Ballsy and dumb. Knox is clearly cracking and I hope they stick with it so we can enjoy what happens at the end.

Speaking of Hubbard — in the book he gives Diana and Matthew the page when he delivers Jack to them. It’s interesting they didn’t do that this time, and I assume it’s because they wanted this extra drama here, and the subsequent scene where it starts to become clear that Diana maybe has more allies than she and Matthew realize.

The book Diana reads in the British Library this episode is the Book of Soyga, a real book that was really in Dr. John Dee’s library, and a copy is really in the British Library and at the Bodleian, which Diana can’t go to for safety reasons, I’m sure. In book 3, however, the book Diana reads is the Voynich Manuscript, a pretty mysterious book that scholars have been trying to decipher for years. That book, however, is at Princeton University. So they obviously had to change the book because they decided not to bring Diana back to America.

Finally — Satu and Benjamin meeting. Whew. Not in the book at all. I think I know what Benjamin has in mind, and if I were Satu, I would stay far away.

Edward Bluemel as Marcus and Parker Sawyers as Ransome in A discovery of Witches.

 

FINAL THOUGHTS

Roz:

I’m just curious about our next steps and I’m excited for this weekend!

 

Christie:

Overall it was a solid episode but I’m not completely happy with some of the things left out or changed. I think this episode was necessary though to get the overall story back on track, so I look forward to the next ep.

 

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New episodes of A Discovery of Witches will be released each week on Sundance Now and AMC+.