American Horror Story 8x04 Could It Be... Satan?

 

If you, like me, were starting to get this deep, sinking feeling in your stomach about halfway through the premiere of AHS: Apocalypse, that you and everyone else are about to see your hopes crushed when it’s going to be revealed that the so-called „Murder House/Coven crossover” storyline was supposed to be taken metaphorically… You know, because the season is gonna take place in something like a coven/secret society, but there are also ghosts and shit like in Murder House, but no actual characters from those seasons were ever gonna show up… Well now you can breathe again because nope, the witches are finally here!

Also, almost everyone else we got to know but probably not love in the first three episodes is dead. That includes „genetically perfect” Timothy and Emily, as well as Gallant, Dinah, and Andre, all of whom were poisoned by Miss Venable; Coco, who was stabbed in the head by her not-quite-dead-yet fiancé Brock; and Miss Venable herself, shot in the head by her co-conspirator Miss Meade on the orders of Michael Langdon. The same Miss Meade who is also some sort of android, designed after the only person who looked after Michael when he was a kid, which raises two important questions:

1. Is this what Kathy Bates’ character would have been like had she been in Murder House? A Devil worshipping murder-happy grandma type? Interesting.

2. Not that Constance Langdon being a terrible (grand)mother is anything new, but where was she while Michael was growing up? We know she’s supposed to appear in exactly one episode this season, which will probably address this. It might be a flashback to the times before Michael murders her, and then she can chill with the Harmons and Moira for all eternity. Oh how she’d love that.

Anyway, this was the week when we delved into Michael’s past to find out what exactly went down between him and the witches that made him want to eradicate them. As a teenager, Michael was rescued from jail by a group of warlocks dwelling in the school that eventually became Outpost 3, who were interested in his abilities. Some of them believed he might be strong enough to be their long prophesized Alpha: a male magic-wielder stronger than the female Supreme, something which never happened before since the beginning of time. Others, notably Cheyenne Jackson’s new character John Henry Moore, were skeptical. But after Michael nearly killed them all with his powers during what was supposed to be a simple conjuring of snow, the Coven’s representatives (Cordelia, Myrtle and Zoe) were summoned and asked to let Michael go through the test of the Seven Wonders, to determine whether he could indeed be this all-powerful new „male Supreme”. Naturally, the witches thought the idea laughable, and were ready to depart when Michael went and proved himself by doing the only thing even Supreme Cordelia failed to do: rescue Queenie from the Hotel Cortez.

Queenie’s death, to me, was always one of the most shocking things this show has ever done. To have a major character of one season guest star in another season just so she could be murdered in cold blood, „off screen” of her own story, so to speak? Uthinkable, and I always wondered if it’s ever going to be addressed again. Well, I don’t have to wonder anymore, because thanks to Michael, Queenie is finally free from playing chess with James March for all eternity… and so is Madison Montgomery from her own personal hell, as a bonus I guess. It’s a bit weird because Michael definitely heard Cordelia say that letting Misty Day undertake the Seven Wonders before she was ready and subsequently getting stuck in hell was her biggest failure as Supreme, so why didn’t Michael save her? I know she’s also supposed to appear this season so maybe she’ll come back some other way, or else there’s a reason she had to stay in hell for now.

In any case Cordelia didn’t take this demonstration of Michael’s superior powers too well, which leads us back to the present day, where she, Myrtle and Madison arrive back at Outpost 3, and raise three of its inhabitants from the dead. Apparently Coco, Mallory and Dinah were memory-wiped witches all along, hiding in plain sight so that Michael couldn't get to them. So now the remaining witches are readying themselves to defeat him once and for all, while he claims that he already won because everyone else is dead. I guess my main remaining question is, will anything we learned previously about things like the Cooperative and their Sanctuary even come back into play again, or was the whole thing just a setup for a season-long witches vs Michael showdown? I think I would still like some answers, please.