Penny Dreadful - 'The Nightcomers'

Because who said Satanism can't be stylish?

It's flashback theatre time, as Vanessa opens up to Ethan about her past (apparently including stuff she couldn't possibly have seen, but never mind.)

After the first waking of her powers and Mina's plea for help (recounted in last season's flashback,) Vanessa goes to a witch who lives in a lonely cottage for help. Once convinced that Vanessa isn't evil in herself, the Cut-Wife - essentially a herbalist and hedge abortionist - takes her in and trains her to use her abilities, reading people's pasts in their minds and futures in the Tarot. She also shields her from the first attacks of the Nightcomers, and explains that witches can be Daywalkers - insightful, powerful, but human - or give themselves over to the Devil in exchange for greater power and vastly prolonged life. She herself is at least three centuries old - her cottage was given to her in perpetuity by Cromwell - but the Nightcomer Evelyn has not aged in all that time.

The Cut-Wife is my favourite character of the season so far. As this is Penny
Dreadful, this means she dies by the end of the episode. It's actually surprising
that it wasn't the Creature what done it.

Denied and defied, Evelyn seduces the local landowner and - no doubt reveling in the irony and hypocrisy - uses him to whip up a witch hunt. The already dying Cut-Wife is burned alive and Vanessa is branded, but at no point dragged past the ring of protective stones which keep the Nightcomers from getting her, so that's lucky. The Cut-Wife leaves her pupil with her name - Joan Clayton - the cottage and her copy of the not-the-Necronomicon, as well as a warning that if she embraces the Verbis Diabolis and the magic within the Book of Vile Darkness, she will cease to be human and become a Nightcomer.

'The Nightcomers' is, hands down, my favourite episode of Penny Dreadful so far, thanks largely to Patti LuPone's turn as Joan Clayton, and perhaps in part the fact that it doesn't have Dorian Gray in it. In fact, aside from Poole's dominatrix turn seducing the landowner, there's no sex at all, and it's frankly a relief. Also, no babies were eviscerated in the course of the narrative, although there is a middling graphic abortion scene. I also liked the distinction between Daywalkers and Nightcomers, even if LuPone didn't get to tell Evelyn that some motherfucker's always trying to ice skate up a hill, and the fact that this season is overall more coherent than the rambling mess of vampires and Egyptian Gods in season 1.