overnights

American Horror Story: Apocalypse Finale Recap: The End Justifies the Mean

American Horror Story

Apocalypse Then
Season 8 Episode 10
Editor’s Rating 5 stars

American Horror Story

Apocalypse Then
Season 8 Episode 10
Editor’s Rating 5 stars
Photo: FX

We did it, folks, we watched the greatest season of American Horror Story and lived to tell the tale. Let’s start with the beginning of the end.

Myrtle Snow (Frances Conroy) arrives at the Silicon Valley start-up currently orchestrating the apocalypse, not unlike our favorite tech company presently dismantling democracy. Myrtle confronts Ms. Venable (Sarah Paulson), who refuses to let Myrtle into the office without an appointment. A Google calendar invite is no match for Myrtle’s magic as she strolls past Venable, reminding her that purple is for royalty, not for middle management.

Standing before Mutt (Billy Eichner) and Jeff (Evan Peters), Myrtle demands that the bowl-cut billionaires make room in Outpost 3 for the St. Pierre Vanderbilt family. Wild to think that the fate of humanity rests in the hands of generational wealth. Just another reason why I am ill-prepared for apocalypse, as the only thing I could offer bunker organizers is some free jokes and my collection of Tamagotchis. At first, Mutt and Jeff are hesitant to listen to Myrtle, but they change their tune when she puts them under a spell. This is when they inform Myrtle that the mind of Meade Bot (Kathy Bates) was erased so she doesn’t remember that Michael Langdon is the Antichrist. Myrtle then kills the men, which is probably the only punishment any malevolent tech billionaire will see this century.

The other witches are still hiding at Misty Day’s shack, or what I refer to as Shrek’s Luxury Condo™. It’s here that Cordelia (Sarah Paulson) explains that Mallory (Billie Lourd) and Coco (Leslie Grossman) must be placed under an identity spell to suppress their magical abilities and ultimately save the world. Furthermore, Coco’s new identity will verbally abuse Mallory to make her doubt her powers as the next Supreme. I think this is the only instance in modern history where the verbal barrage of a woman is “for her safety.”

When Cordelia completes her spell, we immediately cut to Coco and Mallory in the back of a recklessly driven Uber, which we soon learn is manned by Madison Montgomery (Emma Roberts). Mallory and Coco don’t recognize her but they do assimilate into their new roles with Mallory acting as the insecure assistant and Coco acting like… Madison. The OG Madison drops them off at Gallant’s salon, where Coco gets the influencer haircut we grew to loathe in the season premiere. As Madison drops off Coco and Mallory in her coven carpool, she sees an advertisement for Dinah Stevens’s (Adina Porter) new talk show, which she realizes the voodoo villainess received after making a deal with the Devil. I hope that when I achieve success in life, my friends’ first reaction isn’t that I sold my soul but rather that I deserved it. (Although, truth be told, I’d take a talk show either way!) Enraged, Madison shares this information with Cordelia and Myrtle by walking into the room and saying, “I’d like permission to burn a witch.” I hope someone ruins my wedding with this line. Cordelia calms Madison down, explaining that they can’t kill Dinah because that would expose their plan. Thus, the witches must wait for the right time to stab that backstabber back!

And just like that, we are exactly where we left off in episode three, when Michael and Mallory both showed flashes of their real powers to each other in a moment of fear and rage. This exchange awakens Cordelia, Myrtle, and Madison, who had been buried alive to survive the nuclear blast. But now that Mallory’s powers have fully ripened, the coven is ready to make their way back to their sister.

Back at the outpost, they resurrect Coco and Mallory from their ill-fated food-poisoning deaths. At this moment, Langdon offers the witches the opportunity to kneel and pledge their allegiance to him. Dinah, the snake that she is, abandons the witches to go with the “winning team.” For all her business savvy and voodoo expertise, she does not know how to pick a winner because her throat is immediately sliced by Marie Laveau (Angela Bassett). When I saw Angela Bassett on my TV screen I honestly screamed as if the Lord had opened up the gates of heaven and dropped the seasoned actresses from on high.

(Just as a side note, do you understand how privileged we are to watch an episode of television with Angela Bassett, Jessica Lange, and Sarah Paulson? This is like the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit showing up to tuck you in at night. Truly a blessing! My only regret is that I did not see Angela Bassett more this season. Nevertheless, I hope she wins an Emmy, a Golden Globe, and a J.D. Power Award for this brief cameo. But … I digress.)

Apparently, Papa Legba (Lance Reddick) allowed Marie’s escape from the underworld in exchange for Dinah’s much darker soul. With Dinah dead, Meade Bot takes this cue to kill all the witches with her literal firearm. Cordelia stops this by exploding Meade Bot’s body. We watch the robot die, covered in a milky liquid, singing that eerie Daisy song which will no doubt haunt me in my sleep and also be my wedding song.

Losing his beloved robot mentor is too much for Langdon, and things go from bad to worse for him when Madison shoots him with the conveniently severed arm-gun. Unfortunately, while guns do kill people, they don’t kill Antichrists, which prompts Cordelia and Myrtle to take Mallory to a safe place upstairs so they can perform the Tempus Infinitum spell. Myrtle also takes a lock of Michael’s hair which she describes as “smooth as silk.” All seems to be going according to plan for the coven until Brock (Billy Eichner) jumps out of a closet with that deformed hairline of his and stabs Mallory. Injured, Mallory limps into a room as Myrtle burns alive the idiot that put humanity at great risk.

Downstairs, Michael rapidly recovers from his wounds and explodes Madison’s head off, banishing her back to her retail hell. Marie and Coco try to hold Michael off and it’s honestly … laughable. Marie does an elaborate voodoo dust thing that is supposed to keep Michael from passing an invisible barrier. This, of course, doesn’t work. Instead, he stabs her and then eats her heart. Then, it’s my poor sweet Coco’s turn. I don’t know what Coco is thinking when she stabs Michael after she saw him get shot more than 50 Cent and not die. To say that the coven doesn’t have a deep bench would be the understatement of the year. Naturally, Langon murders Coco too. Now that the the coven’s (thin) defenses are down, Michael is ready to kill Cordelia. Like a true bad bwitch™, Cordelia sacrifices her life, stabbing herself in the chest and then falling to her death, which allows Mallory to stop bleeding out and ascend to her role as Supreme. Before Cordelia dies she tells Michael, “Satan has one son but my sisters are legion, motherfucker.” He stands there, mouth agape, realizing that this is the most powerful troupe of women since Destiny’s children were first assembled.

Just like that we are transported back to Murder House in 2015. At Murder House we are treated to an impeccable monologue by Constance Langdon (Jessica Lange) about her horrible grandson, as she discovers this child has just killed a priest. At this moment, Constance realizes she can’t save Langdon, who is the opposite of a garden-variety serial killer (urban planning serial killer?) and she banishes him from her house. As Langdon crosses the street, Mallory hits him with her Range Rover. Then she backs up and runs over him again. Then she puts the car in drive and runs over him a third time (3!) just for posterity, exchanging knowing glances with Constance Langdon. And that is how the Antichrist dies, not with a bang or a whimper, but with some vehicular manslaughter. Constance holds Michael Langdon as he dies, Satan’s son begging for her to take him into the Murder House so they could live together forever. She swerves that request, telling him to go to hell and leaving him to die on that suburban street. It’s mean but so delicious. Death sucks, but honestly Langdon is lucky that Jessica Lange’s face was the last thing he got to see on Earth.

Now that Michael is dead, Mallory attends the Robichaux Academy to live with the coven, staying in 2015. I’m jealous! I wish I could go back to the youthful bliss of 2015 when Barack Obama was president, there was only one Minions movie, and I could ride a hoverboard to work (Which I can still do now but it’s so embarrassing …). While Mallory kept the truth about her saving the world a secret because she’s #humble, she does help her sisters. In fact, she tells Queenie (Gabourey Sidibe) to avoid staying in Hotel Cortez, technically erasing a major portion of the AHS canon. And since Satan’s son is dead, demons all over the underworld are eager to do Mallory favors, prompting them to bring Misty Day (Lily Rabe) back from her dissection hell.

All seems well, but in a flash-forward to the future, we see Timothy (Kyle Allen) and Emily (Ash Santos) making sexy eyes at each other. If you remember the first episode of the season, their bloodline was supposed to be preserved. The two attractive teens meet at a coffee-shop protest and a year later they give birth to a child. Three years after that, this child is exhibiting very devilish traits, as if somewhere between developing object permanence and learning to lift his head, he became Satan’s spawn. One evening, Timothy and Emily return to their house, which is surrounded by a murder of crows and a red sky. The young parents find that their toddler has murdered his babysitter. Which… if your toddler has ever had a tantrum, it’s fair to suspect that they may be the Antichrist. (I’m not saying you should exile your child, but for the sake of mankind, do with that information what you will.) At this moment, our favorite Satanists are standing at Timothy and Emily’s door, ready to embrace their new dark lord. And, thus concludes this season of American Horror Story: Apocalypse, with the birth of a new Antichrist and hope for another epic battle between witches, warlocks, and a Lucifer with luscious locks.

AHS: Apocalypse Finale Recap: The End Justifies the Mean