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If you’ve ever spent any time in church, at least one of the branches of the Christian faith, you know plenty about the Devil / Satan / Lucifer. You know how he seduced Eve into taking a bite out of that apple, and all the other stories about how charming and manipulative he can be in order to drag your soul to Hell. Well, I think it’s pretty clear now that this season of American Horror Story has firmly answered the question about Michael Langdon’s identity. He’s not Satan himself, but he most certainly is his progeny as many have suspected.
The show has tried to play with our suspicions as the season moved three years into the past to show how we got to the Apocalypse of the first episode. Presenting the Outpost where the survivors were holed up as a school for boys — warlocks, actually — as its original function, that’s where Michael was taken after he demonstrated remarkable powers, stronger than any other warlock before him, positioning him to be the next Supreme. And that’s where our Coven characters joined the story, first emerging from the mists of destruction, and now in the past as Cordelia tries to assess Michael’s power. Interestingly, when the witches first arrive, Cordelia was accompanied by Myrtle and Madison. In the past, it was Myrtle and Zoe who came with her to the school, making us wonder if Zoe perhaps meets her end at some point before the Apocalypse.
And Cordelia has a secret — her powers are fading and she’s dying, so she needs to find the next Supreme and she’s not too keen on it being a man. Myrtle and Zoe are almost certain that the better candidate (mainly because the temperament of men cannot be trusted) is their current student Mallory, who has done amazing things like not only erase the fatal wounds of a deer, but regress it back to a fawn. The Coven also has a new member named Coco, whose ridiculous on the surface power is to detect gluten in food. Cordelia puts it into proper context that, with the proper training, she has the power to sense dangerous situations which is a very good thing to have. And now we know how Coco and Mallory met.
After the shocking turn of events of Michael retrieving Queening from the Hotel Cortez and Madison from her own personal Hell, Cordelia has decided that she will now administer the Seven Wonders test to Michael to confirm if he is indeed strong enough to be the new Supreme, over her Coven’s wishes. It seems that one of the warlocks, John Henry, also has his fears about Michael and sets out, against his colleague Behold’s wishes, to find out more about where Michael came from. Unfortunately, a ‘chance’ encounter with Miriam Mead at a gas station left him a pile of ashes … and it turned out the head of the warlocks, Ariel, was in on the plan to eradicate ‘the problem’ so Michael could ascend as the new Supreme. It’s more important for Ariel to have a man in that position than it is to actually recognize who that man is (as Miriam whispered to Michael as Ariel approached them after the deed had been done, ‘Don’t mention your father’).
In a clever, if nonsensical, segment of the episode presented as a silent movie, Michael makes it through the first six tests — and frankly they seemed pretty simple — but Cordelia switched things up a bit for the seventh test which is called Descensium, in which the subject is apparently supposed to descend to the depths of Hell and return but Cordelia wants Michael to descend and bring back her friend Misty Day, who lost her life attempting that last part of the test. Ariel and the others are aghast that Cordelia would pose such a request that no one else has ever had to attempt, but Michael agrees because he knows he can do it and become the Supreme. What he doesn’t know is that while he’s playing the warlocks and the witches, Cordelia is playing him, wanting to see just how powerful he is so she knows what she’s up against.
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Michael descends to Hell and finds our beloved Misty forever locked in a science classroom where she’s forced to dissect a live frog. Misty hates killing, and she uses her powers to bring it back and every time her classmate calls out to the teacher that she’s done it again. I have to say Lily Rabe gives a wonderful performance here showing us the pure anguish of Misty as she is forced to cut the frog open over and over again. And then before the teacher can force her to do the dissection again, he is dissected from behind by Michael. Back above ground Michael rematerializes but without Misty, leading everyone to believe he failed the test … and then she materializes as well and Cordelia knows she’s up against a force more powerful than a warlock. I mean, who else could go to Hell and back with no problem other than the son of Satan? Misty reveals to Cordelia that when Michael arrived and killed the teacher, all of the students in the room began making a horrible sound as if they were communicating with him. So that seems to confirm they know who he is.
Cordelia places a call to the White Witch, Miss Stevie Nicks herself, to help welcome back and heal Misty from her ordeal in Hell and she performs her song ‘Gypsy’. Again, Rabe gives a heartfelt, emotional performances as Misty reacts to Stevie serenading her. But while that is happening, Cordelia and Madison leave the room. Cordelia wants Madison to find out all she can about Michael but their little clandestine meeting was spied by Behold who insisted he was going to go with Madison. He admitted that he also has a very bad feeling about Michael. So Cordelia acquiesces and sends Behold with Madison to where it all began …
The Murder House. Squeee!
What did you think of this episode? Sound off in the comments below!
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