Talamasca Showrunners Provide Answers to That Complicated Season 1 Ending

This article contains spoilers for Talamasca: The Secret Order episode 6.

While Talamasca: The Secret Order is the third installment of AMC’s Anne Rice television universe, it’s the first to truly strike out on its own path. Based on an original concept rather than a specific piece of source material, the series follows the story of the titular organization that is used as a kind of connective tissue throughout many of Rice’s novels. This move gives the show a certain kind of narrative freedom that its sister series, Interview with the Vampire and Mayfair Witches, lack, and Talamasca takes the opportunity and runs with it, crafting a story full of paranoia, double-dealing, and secrets. 

In many ways, the series’s first season feels almost like a prequel, setting up characters, relationships, and vendettas that only fully come into clarity in the closing moments of its final episode. And while several of the biggest questions introduced over the course of its six episodes are answered, those answers only go on to open up more possibilities for where the show might go in the future.

Here’s a rundown of the big reveals from the Talamasca’s first season finale and what they might mean for the show’s future, with a little help from the series’ creators and cast.

The Location of the 752 Is Revealed

Much of the series’ first season has revolved around the hunt for the mysterious 752, an object that contains centuries of the Talamasca’s research and knowledge about the immortals and other supernatural creatures that populate the world. (The name “752” refers to the date of the organization’s founding.) In the wake of the destruction of the Talamasca’s Amsterdam library, it’s now the only location of key knowledge — including the identities of vampires and other supernatural beings around the world — and, as such, is a pretty desirable bit of leverage for almost everyone on the series’ canvas, whether human or vampire. 

The finale’s big twist, of course, is that the 752 isn’t an object at all — it’s a person. Doris, the girl who’s kept popping up repeatedly at key moments to help Guy out of various jams, isn’t actually a witch as many of us had presumed. She’s Helen’s twin sister, originally named Emma, whose supernatural gift is a sort of superpowered eidetic memory that allows her to perfectly recall…well, literally, everything. Any book she’s read, any person she’s met, any piece of information she’s been given, even the weather she experienced on a given day, all appear to essentially live forever inside her head. Turned into a vampire on the Talamasca’s orders, she’s been forced to become a living (well… technically undead) repository for the entirety of their knowledge and history. 

“We didn’t know from the very, very jump, but we knew well before we started writing the season,” showrunner Matt Lafferty told Den of Geek when asked about the decision to make the 752 a person rather than a physical object. “It was something that emerged over the early days of the writers’ room, and it just seemed right. If the Talamasca is an organization that watches and is always there and is always gathering information, what would it mean to put that kind of knowledge inside of a living being?”

The late-in-season revelation does shake up many of our assumptions, as viewers, about what we’ve spent the previous six episodes watching, both in terms of our understanding of how the Talamasca operates and what might happen to Doris should her secret become common knowledge amongst the show’s various competing factions. 

“It just felt right for our story and, obviously, it creates real stakes,” Lafferty said. “If you’re trying to look for a book — a book can’t get hurt. A book might get burned, or it might disappear, and that might be a certain sadness. But the peril that an actual being is in if they’re the one that’s being sought after just felt like a new and interesting idea to us and something that could only live in a world like this.” 

Guy Comes Into His Own

Guy initially serves as our entry point into the world of the Talamasca, a young law school graduate struggling to control his mind-reading abilities who learns that pretty much everything he’s always assumed to be true about his life and the world around him is a lie. Not only are supernatural beings like vampires real, but his entire existence has essentially been manipulated by the Talamasca, from his placement with a foster family to his law school admission.

The bulk of season 1 has essentially followed his (often incredibly clumsy) search for answers, including a search for the mother he thought was dead. 

“In a very short period of time over the course of the first season, Guy has gone from someone who didn’t even believe in supernatural beings to someone who’s neck deep in association with them,” showrunner John Lee Hancock said. “He’s found out his entire life has been curated, and he’s essentially up to his neck in Talamasca. It’s a dive into the deep end for him, for sure, and that’s always a really fun and exciting place to go. We look forward to seeing him trying to, let’s say, navigate his way out of the pool.” 

Part of that effort going forward will undoubtedly be his search for his mom — and with literal living encyclopedia Doris seemingly remembering something concrete about where she might be located, it seems as though he finally might have somewhere concrete to start looking. Plus, per the series showrunners, it also sounds like we’re just at the beginning of finding out what Guy can really do. 

“Guy is somebody who started out trying to repress this ability he has to read other people’s minds, to reject the idea that he might have some sort of supernatural capability at all,” Lafferty added. “By the end of the season, I think you find that not only has he started to accept that ability but, in letting go and not keeping so tight a grip on it, he’s seen that ability develop and stretch. He’s now seeing images instead of just hearing voices. So… I think we’ve put Guy through boot camp a little bit and now he’s coming into his own.” 

Jasper Ends Up a Prisoner — or Does He?

While things are — at least in a slightly twisted fashion — looking up for Guy, the same can’t really be said for Jasper. The vampire, whose (to be fair, well-founded) animosity toward the Talamasca and furious determination to track down the 752 has put him at odds with what feels like every character on the series’ canvas at one point or another this season, has really been through it in the past couple of episodes.

Betrayed by Guy, burned to a crisp by Doris, and taken prisoner by the Talamasca before he was even fully healed from his injuries, Jasper is definitely not living his best life at the moment. (Unless you count the fact that he’s gotten to kill a whole bunch of people along the way.) 

But when he’s dragged in chains to the Talamasca’s Amerstam motherhouse, he’s introduced to the mysterious director known as Houseman, who offers him an unexpected deal: Make vampires for the group in exchange for his freedom. Initially, this strange opportunity seems like something of a gift — and a chance to perhaps do something he’d wanted to do anyway. (Jasper’s been fairly adamant about the fact that he thinks the world needs more vampires in it.) But the man who plays Jasper isn’t so sure. 

“Jasper’s in a situation right now that is not of his own control. When he says to Guy the first time, ‘You know how many vampires there are in the world? Not enough’ — that was [said] on his turf and his terms,” William Fichtner said. “But that’s not the situation he’s in right now. Now, someone else is pulling the strings and telling him what to do. Jasper’s left looking at a room full of people, and he’s told, ‘You want more vampires? Make ‘em.’ So I’m not sure if this is exactly the way Jasper wanted this to go. In fact, I know that it isn’t.”

Though Talamasca has been tight-lipped about many of Jasper’s larger motivations, including why he seems to think the world needs more vampires in it than it currently has, it’s clear that this is a unique chance for him, a trade that could at least keep him out of a Talamasca prison. Whether he’ll take it — considering the source it comes from — remains an open question.

“You’re left wondering what’s gonna happen, and I really don’t know what Jasper’s gonna do,” Fichtner said. “There’s no given that he’s going to… I mean, do you think Jasper’s going to suddenly roll over and become someone else just because one person throws a stun grenade and wraps him up in a carpet? Oh, no, no, no. I never thought that. And, listen, I truly don’t know what the future would hold if we did a second season. But I can tell you from what I think about Jasper, from what I know about the things he cares about and the things he wants—this situation right now that he was left in is not one of them.”

What’s Next for Guy and Jasper’s… Whatever They Are

Unfortunately, the Talamasca season 1 finale doesn’t really get the chance to circle back to the series’s most intriguing relationship, the unorthodox connection/friendship/flirtation between Guy and Jasper. When last we saw the unlikely duo of vampire and his mind reader bestie/frenemy, Jasper had just discovered Guy’s duplicity — and didn’t exactly take it well. Guy escaped Jasper’s wrath thanks to the intervention of Doris and a makeshift flamethrower, and the two haven’t exactly had a minute to talk it all out, what with everything else that’s been going on. 

But, according to Fichtner, the lying is going to be a bigger thing for Jasper to get past than many may expect. 

“Jasper’s the only person on this entire show who tells the truth all the time. It’s kind of a thing for him. And as an actor, that’s an interesting character trait to [play] with,” he says. “He has no reason to be dishonest about anything, and he’s very clear about what it is that he wants. And after reading the entire first season, I thought that one of the most pivotal moments between Guy and Jasper is when he says to him at the beginning of episode 5, when they’re sitting in the car, ‘Don’t lie to me, cause I don’t with you.” And then he finds out that he did, and that’s… well, it’s an explosive thing for Jasper.”

The pair walked a frequently blurry line between adversaries and kindred spirits throughout the season, drawn to one another in a way that seemingly crosses boundaries between such things as species and sides. 

“I think it’s obvious in the writing and obvious in the storytelling over the season that Jasper likes Guy. He understands him in a lot of ways, and his upset about where he’s at in his own life,” Fichtner said. “Because Jasper has a lot of similarities [with him] in terms of his own past and his experience with the Talamasca. Exploring this dynamic between the two of us has been my favorite part of the first season, for sure.”

In some ways, Jasper’s… let’s just call it over-the-top response to what was a fairly innocuous lie about Doris’s identity, is a sign of how important that burgeoning bond was to the vampire.

“I look at it this way — if somebody does something that you feel like betrays you, and you don’t care about that person, you can let that negative energy out of your life really, really quickly. But if you feel like somebody betrayed you and it really affects you, it really impacts your feelings, you might have a reaction that’s probably pretty close to Jasper’s,” he said. “It upset him what he did. There’s emotion there. He took a chance on [Guy], and he feels like he didn’t follow through on whatever sort of relationship or friendship was beginning here. He feels betrayed, and he hasn’t let it go.”

And while the season certainly ends in a place that leaves both characters on different (and separate) journeys, Fichtner fully expects the pair to come back together again.

“So is there something [between them] down the line?” he said. “Listen, we don’t know right now because we really don’t know about a second season, but I will tell you that I’d be shocked and amazed if the relationship between Guy and Jasper was not explored way deeper than it is right now.” 

What Talamasca Season 2 Might Involve

The fallout between Guy and Jasper isn’t the only story that as-yet-unannounced Talamasca season 2 would have to focus on. The series’s first outing ends with Doris and Guy on the run as Helen allows herself to get arrested to buy them time to escape. Where they’re headed to and whether Doris’ knowledge will be able to help Guy figure out where his mother is are questions only a second season can answer, but those are questions the series’s showrunners are well aware they need to answer. 

“Well, we know that Guy and Doris are headed off, escaping the British Isles. We know that Jasper’s deep in the bowels of the Amsterdam MotherHouse, having made a quid pro quo agreement with Houseman,” Lafferty said. “We know Guy wants to find his mom. We know Jasper says he wants to make more vampires, and it looks like he’s been given that chance on a silver platter. I think, should we get the chance to keep telling the story, we’d make sure that we follow those trajectories and see where they go.” 

A second season would also likely dig deeper into the conflicting agendas and loyalties at the heart of the Talamasca itself.

“It’s not about painting the Talamasca as evil, but rather illuminating that this is a big, complicated world and it’s full of lots of different and occasionally darker personalities. The idea of the Talamasca — “we watch and we’re always there” — it kind of lends itself to the idea of monks sitting and transcribing and keeping records,” Hancock said. “But Anne herself realized that, well, unless they leave the library, they’re not very interesting characters. So they insinuate themselves into situations, into lives, sometimes changing themselves in the process.” 

There’s also an inherent contradiction in the idea of the erudite Talamasca as we’ve seen it presented throughout the AMC television universe (or even within Rice’s books) and the darker, more overtly manipulative underbelly that sits at the center of the series that bears its name. And that’s a contrast the series’s showrunners sound eager to explore.

“Another thing we’re really interested in exploring, should we get the chance, is that obviously, there is a good and formidable and forthright version of the Talamasca out there, and that faction butting heads with these other elements might be something that creates conflict within an organization,” Lafferty said. I think we’re starting to see the first little buds of that here in season 1. But we want to suggest that this is a very complex, complicated, sprawling world, and there are so many other stories that can transpire within it.”