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Well that was something, wasn’t it?!
American Horror Story usually waits until the last two episodes of the season to start killing off the cast, but it only took three episodes before everyone — save for the robotic Ms. Mead and Michael Langdon (and, miraculously, Coco’s boyfriend Brock who we last saw in San Diego as the bombs dropped) — was dead. How did that happen?
Langdon was still in the midst of conducting his interviews for the Sanctuary, but it’s still unclear exactly what he’s looking for. While everyone is trying to put on their best face for him, he reveals that he’s not necessarily looking for the most righteous people to accompany him to ‘safety’. And let’s be clear here, we have no idea what this Sanctuary of his is or even where it’s located, even though Ms. Venable believes she can use Langdon’t laptop to find the location and get herself and Ms. Mead to safety.
But no one really knows who — or what — Michael Langdon is at this point. Except perhaps Mallory. During her questioning, Langdon told her he was looking for people with a darkness inside of them, something she claimed (not very convincingly) that she lacked. She was all sunshine and unicorns inside … well, except fot that feeling that there was someone inside of her trying to claw its way out. Getting a rise out of her, Mallory caused flames to shoot out of the fireplace and threw Michael across the room … with her mind. That made him react by showing her his true face, and it wasn’t pretty, and she tossed him across the room again.
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Michael was stunned, and performed a blood ceremony to beg his father for some help because he believed he had eradicated all of Mallory’s kind. Okay, so this ceremony, complete with a bloody pentagram on the floor, has to confirm that Michael’s daddy is the Devil, right? I mean, we know the person who fathered him was the rubber-clad Tate Langdon back in Season 1, but he was a ghost so some supernatural forces had to be at work (and let’s not forget that psychic Billie Dean Howard did predict the child of that unholy union would be the Anti-Christ). But what — or who — is inside Mallory?
Venable and Mead had a nice little chat about Mead’s memories, her first Halloween dressed as Rosie from The Jetsons, her first boyfriend, her first kill as a Mossad agent … but they’re all false memories because Mead is in fact Rosie the Robot, and she believes she’s been programmed to be loyal to Venable. And while her boss cooks up a plan to get to the Sanctuary — and how do we know the ‘Sanctuary’ of the son of Satan isn’t actually Hell? — Mead comes up with a way to ensure their place at that table. It seems The Cooperative has had a case of fresh Red Delicious apples delivered to Outpost 3. Why not go all Snow White on the residents of the Outpost and poison the apples? And it being Halloween, bobbing for apples is the perfect way to do it (it was also convenient that they had all those snakes on hand to extract the venom). Venable just had to make sure they all ate the apples together. They did and, well, that was where we lost everyone: Mr. Gallant, Dinah Stevens and her son Andre, Timothy and Emily, and Mallory. And all the other worker bees in the outpost. Except Coco.
Coco believed she had been dancing with Langdon at the party, and to assure her place in the sanctuary she offered him some ‘butt stuff’, things she never did with her boyfriend Brock. Except she was talking to Brock who somehow survived the blast and made his way through a wasteland of cannibals to try to find the hidden Outpost. Lucky for him, the carriage delivering the chest of apples was going his way so he hitched a ride on the under-carriage, stabbed the Amazonian Outpost guard and stole her key card to make his way in. I suppose he went through the decontamination chamber in order to make his way in undetected, but having been outside in the nuclear fallout for 18 months, is a little decontamination going to get all the radiation out of him? How did he not set off any alarms? I digress. Brock is not happy with Coco for leaving him to die so he stabs her in the forehead! So that leaves Langdon, Venable, Mead and Brock the last survivors in the Outpost.
But Venable and Mead hope to decrease that number by one by killing Langdon to get to his laptop. But … being the son of the Prince of Darkness has its benefits and he drops a bomb on the pair when Venable orders Mead to kill him. Taking aim, she slowly turns and fires the shot at her boss and friend because Michael is the one who programmed her to do his bidding. Everything she’s done has been at his direction, including the whole poisoned apple plot (which would explain why the apples just happened to arrive when they did). All of Mead’s memories have been programmed by him to remind him of the one woman he loved so dearly. He didn’t say who that woman was, but it’s safe to assume he’s referring to Constance Langdon, the grandmother who adopted him after the death of Vivien Harmon and raised him as her own.
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As Mead is attempting to deal with this confusing new information, there is something else going on outside the Outpost. Three robed figures approach the structure and make their way in — again without setting off any alarms — and they turn out to be Coven‘s Cordelia Fox (Sarah Paulson back from the dead), Madison Montgomery (Emma Roberts) and Myrtle Snow (Frances Conroy), there to find their ‘sisters’. Of course all they find are dead bodies but Cordelia revives Coco, Mallory and Dinah, with Madison mocking Mallory’s surprise by saying she probably never expected to see her face again. Madison obviously does not know Mallory, but she must know who is inside of her, possibly her nemesis Zoe Benson (played by Taissa Farmiga in Season 3, but who will be reprising her Season 1 role at some point, so why not put her inside of someone else?).
So that leaves us with a whole lot more questions. How did these three survive and still look flawless? Does this mean Coco and Dinah also have the essences of other Coven witches in them? And why are they here? Will this come down to a battle of good versus evil as the coven faces off against Langdon? Where’s Brock hiding? Is everyone else going to stay dead? Was the whole thing about Timothy and Emily’s genetics just a red herring (and why didn’t the witches revive the one other female in the bunker)? And what exactly is Michael Langdon up to?
Things just got even more interesting.
What did you think of this episode? Who is Mallory? Sound off in the comments below!
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