WARNING: The following contains spoilers for the Season 2, Episode 5, of A Discovery of Witches, streaming now on Sundance Now, Shudder and AMC+.
On the latest episode of A Discovery of Witches, Diana accompanies Matthew to Sept-Tours, the De Clermont estate in France, after he's summoned there by his stepfather Philippe. The trip has forced her to suspend her training as a witch after finally finding a teacher in London, but Diana has far greater control of her powers than she did before she and Matthew timewalked to 1590. So when Diana is threatened by a fellow witch, she proves she’s become more than able to defend herself.
From the beginning of their visit, Matthew and Diana’s time at Sept-Tours is fraught. Not only is Matthew nervous about seeing his father again, especially since in his and Diana’s time Philippe is dead, but Philippe is hostile to Diana from practically the moment she meets him. While both Matthew’s nephew, Gallowglass, and his servant, Pierre, warned Diana that Matthew would need her when they saw Philippe, no one prepared her for the insidious ways Philippe might try to tear them apart.
Instead of greeting them at the door, Philippe calls Matthew and Diana into his office inside the cavernous estate. Matthew and Philippe immediately have a tense exchange about Diana that demonstrates Philippe’s feelings about witches are much like those of every other non-witch Diana’s met since arriving in 1590. To add insult to injury, Philippe voices his doubts over the sincerity of Matthew’s feelings for her because he somehow knows they haven’t yet consummated their relationship. In his mind this means they aren’t mated as Matthew told Diana they were. This revelation is made worse by the fact that during their journey earlier in the episode, Diana asked Matthew to have sex with her and he refused, telling her it would happen in time. It’s not clear why she was comfortable with him holding out, but discovering that Philippe finds it odd confirms to her that Matthew has no reason to wait.
Given the circumstances, it may be for the best that Philippe insists they sleep in separate rooms as, for the time being, Diana wants nothing to do with Matthew. While Matthew insists to her they are mated, he still refuses to explain why he's unwilling to sleep with her. And their argument becomes so heated that she magically forces him out of her room and slams the door.
The next morning, Matthew has gone out hunting, and Diana encounters Philippe, who offers her the keys to the house. He says it’s a sign of respect but when Diana realizes the keys mean he's putting her in charge of the house’s domestic affairs, her 21st century sensibilities rebel against the notion. Instead of voicing her annoyance though, she asks where the library is.
Later, as she’s looking through the texts there, Philippe brings in a witch who has come to Sept-Tours after sensing Diana’s presence. It seems Philippe has agreed to let this witch see Diana because he believes the affairs of witches aren’t his to interfere in. Diana, however, is rightly suspicious, and becomes even more concerned when she realizes Philippe has told the witch that Diana has no recollection of her past. Instead of listening to Diana when she tries to set the record straight, the witch magically reaches into her mind against her will. When he discovers a vampire has fed on her, he calls her a traitor and then attempts to forcefully use his magic to extract her bad memories, despite her anguished requests for him to stop.
Matthew rushes in when he hears Diana screaming in pain, and Diana magically summons Matthew’s knife to her. As Matthew is stopped from going to Diana by his father, Diana jabs his knife into the witch, murdering him and stopping his attack on her. This whole scene plays out like a sexual assault, especially since as Diana guts him, she makes a point to tell the witch, "I said no."
While this situation has made a murderer out of Diana, it’s yet to be seen how she’ll feel about her actions. It's also yet to be seen how she’ll feel about Philippe since, witch business or not, he stood idly by as someone he let in his home assaulted her.
A Discovery of Witches Season 2 stars Teresa Palmer, Matthew Goode, Alex Kingston, Valarie Pettiford, Lindsay Duncan, Edward Bluemel, Aiysha Hart, Daniel Ezra, Aisling Loftus, Trevor Eve, Owen Teale, Malin Buska, Gregg Chillin, Tom Hughes, James Purefoy, Steven Cree and Adelle Leonce. New episodes are available to stream every Saturday on Sundance Now, Shudder and AMC+.