Father Hubbard in A Discovery of Witches Season 3 Episode 2

A Discovery of Witches season 3 episode 2 recap: Jack Blackfriars is back

Season 3 of A Discovery of Witches opened on Sky Max in the UK on January 7, 2022, and reached Sundance Now, Shudder and AMC+ in the United States a day later. It runs seven episodes and adapts the final book of Deborah Harkness's All Souls trilogy. The second installment, directed by Jamie Donoughue and written by Helen Raynor, pushes the season's two big threads forward. One is the line of vampire murders that has been unsettling the creature community. The other is the family history Matthew has spent centuries keeping buried.

The episode's first big event is a reunion. When last seen in season 2, Jack was a young boy whom Matthew left in the care of the Earl of Northumberland, while Diana gave the priest Father Hubbard a single drop of her blood as payment for looking after her adopted son. Now, in the present, Matthew and Diana leave the South Kensington lab and find Hubbard waiting in the underground parking lot. He has come to return something that belongs to them. Out steps a grown Jack, played by Toby Regbo, and Diana recognizes him at once.

Back at the Mayfair townhouse, Jack and Hubbard explain the missing years. Jack caught a fever and was dying when Hubbard stepped in and turned him into a vampire. Matthew is furious, since he sees vampirism as a curse more than a gift. Father Hubbard answers that Jack was already a young man making his own choice, and that Matthew and Diana had left him with a responsibility they then passed to someone else. He adds that Jack went to the docks every day for years hoping his parents or news of them would arrive. Diana apologizes, and Jack says he knew they had time-walked.

The row between Matthew and Diana

That night, the news that Diana struck a bargain with Hubbard before they time-walked sets off a fight. Matthew is angry about the deal. Diana replies that she used her magic to make sure Hubbard received only a single drop of blood, containing some of her secrets and none of his. She says the priest could not let Jack die, could he? Matthew answers that he chose death over life without his wife and son, and Diana asks if he wishes he had. His face softens. No, he says, because he would not have met her, and he has a chance to be a father again. She tells him this is Jack's second chance to have a family with them.

The scene is a good example of how the show writes married conflict. Diana does not apologize for protecting her son, Matthew does not pretend the arrangement was safe, and the argument ends in a reconciliation that carries the whole season's theme of choosing family over fear.

Baldwin and the blood rage

The peace does not last. Baldwin, played by Peter McDonald, arrives while Gallowglass and Jack are working on motorcycles. Jack has blood rage, and it flares when the head of the de Clermont family starts throwing his weight around. Baldwin takes him back to the townhouse and bites his neck savagely to learn that this is the vampire behind the recent murders. He learns Jack's history with his brother and Diana, and he is furious that Matthew would shield him.

Diana responds on instinct. Her maternal rage powers her magic, and she wraps a steel chain around Baldwin's neck until he releases her son. When she lets go of her own power, Baldwin shows the couple images of Jack's victims and tells Matthew he knows what has to be done. Diana asks her son if it is true, and Jack is in too much agony to answer. Matthew bends the knee to Baldwin and swears he had no knowledge of the blood rage. Baldwin tells him to kill Jack. Diana pleads, and Jack runs.

What Father Hubbard reveals

Matthew and Diana go to Hubbard, who explains that Jack begged him not to tell his parents. Asked whether Jack inherited the blood rage from him, the priest drops a bombshell: his sire is Benjamin Fuchs. That makes Hubbard Matthew's grandson and Jack Matthew's great-grandson. He also describes the trauma Benjamin inflicted. Benjamin wanted to cultivate the blood rage in his grandson, as a weapon against the de Clermonts, and he told Jack he had to prove he was Matthew's son by killing and torturing humans. Hubbard tried to stop it and could not, because he still had other lost souls in his care. Jack swore to him many times that he would not kill again, and Hubbard understood it as an addiction.

At the townhouse, Matthew weighs the options. If the Congregation finds out Jack is the killer, they will execute him, or Baldwin will, or Benjamin will do something worse. To save Jack he would have to openly defy the head of his family, a war the couple cannot win. Diana says a father protects his children, and Matthew goes searching. Upstairs, a shaken Marcus tells Phoebe that creatures who show blood rage are killed by order of the Congregation, and that his own father was once charged with killing his children and their children in New Orleans because he was a carrier. Little of the family survived.

Gerbert's allies, Matthew's scion and the episode's verdict

The reunion under the bridge is the center of the episode. Matthew finds Jack, who shows him a set of miniatures he killed a man to obtain. He says he did not know vampirism would make him sick, and that because he was dying already, what difference would it make. When he could not control himself, he did not want to live. Philippe told him to wait for Matthew, who could teach him control. Jack says he will not fight if Matthew has come to kill him. Matthew answers that he has regretted a great deal in his life, and that Philippe was right that things change. The two go home together. At the townhouse Fernando explains to Jack that all he taught Matthew was pause and reflection, and that the disease does not have to be a destiny.

The aftermath carries two story hooks, and a final note on Father Hubbard: after this episode he is no longer just a sympathetic priest but a link in the de Clermont bloodline. In Venice, Gerbert, played by Trevor Eve, shows Domenico an old scroll of the de Clermont family tree and says the family has hidden things it does not want known. Benjamin walks in. Domenico thought he was dead, and Gerbert is ready to go after his mortal enemies. Back in London, Matthew decides to form a scion, taking responsibility for everyone who has inherited his blood rage, and plans to travel to New Orleans with Marcus and Jack to win the loyalty of Marcus's descendants. First, he takes a risk. Chris and Miriam need more help to speed the search for a cure, and Matthew reveals the existence of vampires, witches and daemons to a group of graduate students, who sign nondisclosure agreements. At the airport, Benjamin calls and sends a video of Jack killing two frightened humans at his urging. He wants a family reunion.

The episode works because it treats blood rage as an illness and an inheritance, not a simple monster story. It also quietly enlarges the family. The discovery that Father Hubbard and Jack are Matthew's descendants gives the season's themes of lineage and secrecy a concrete shape, and it raises the cost of every decision Matthew makes in the next scene. Regbo captures both Jack's innocence and the horror of what he has done, and the scene under the bridge lets Matthew see himself in the young man. Fernando's moment with Gallowglass, telling him he knows about his feelings for Diana, is a long-awaited beat for fans of the book characters. Diana's display of power against Baldwin is the high point of the hour. A season that could have leaned on action chooses to spend its second episode on family, and it is stronger for it.

Sources

• A Discovery of Witches (TV series), Wikipedia — cast, characters and season details