(Warning: This post contains spoilers for the season finale of “American Horror Story: Apocalypse”)
Hail a different Satan?
If you just finished the “American Horror Story: Apocalypse” finale, you probably have a lot of questions racing through your mind. But the biggest has to be, “What the heck just happened at the end there?” Yes, the season closer for the eighth installment in Ryan Murphy’s FX anthology series simultaneously gave us way too much information and not even remotely enough context for that information in the last couple minutes, which resulted in us knowing even less than we did going into this finale.
So what happens here is those two teens who were kidnapped and brought to Outpost 3, who haven’t been seen since Episode 3, popped up with just a few minutes left on the clock. We see them in the new timeline after Mallory (Billie Lourd) turned back the clock so she could kill Michael Langdon (Cody Fern) before he rose to power, eliminating the threat of the Antichrist and canceling the nuclear apocalypse once and for all — or so we thought.
Right, so these two — their names are Emily (Ash Santos) and Timothy (Kyle Allen), and it’s OK if you don’t remember that because who even are these people — meet randomly in that new, apocalypse-free timeline. She’s protesting in front of a coffee shop and they bump into each other in a meet-cute and then we cut to a year later and she’s having his baby. Things seem OK-ish, but then we’re already meant to have a bad feeling as it looks like someone is spying on them from the shadows?
Then we cut to three years later, and the teens are now parents coming home from a date night. They complain about how their now 3-year-old son is so angry all the time and how it’s nice to have a break. Emily and Timothy head back into their home and go to relieve the babysitter. But as they do, Timothy notices bloody handprints smeared on the wall going toward their little boy’s bedroom. They rush to the door and see the little guy sitting in a rocking chair, covered in blood while his dead babysitter lies motionless on the carpet. He’s killed her, a la Michael Langdon as a toddler.
This scene is basically a shot for shot shoutout to when Constance found her grandson at the end of “AHS: Murder House.” Only Emily looks horrified, and Jessica Lange’s character was a little giggly.
So while these two are freaking out about what their son has done, the doorbell rings. Timothy goes to answer it and we see the Black Pope Anton LaVey (Carlo Rota) and Mead (Kathy Bates) — the Satanists who once came looking for Michael Langdon and performed the ceremony that turned him fully into the Antichrist — now searching for this new son of Satan.
Now none of this makes sense, because up until now there’s been no indication there is anything special about these two — even after they were taken to Outpost 3 for supposedly having something unique or great about their DNA worth saving. And they certainly don’t appear to provide anything like the pedigree that Michael Langdon, who was born of a union between a ghost and a living woman, had.
So, presumably the takeaway here is that Emily and Timothy were taken to Outpost 3 because of whatever they had in them that ended up creating this other Antichrist baby. But, like, in that timeline the Antichrist was already around and actively destroying the world — why would the Cooperative need them, given they’re already superfluous?
We probably shouldn’t ponder any of this too hard, because there’s no way to figure it out without speculating wildly. So we’ll just leave it at that.
'American Horror Story' Seasons Ranked, From Campy to Creepy (Photos)
The countdown to the end of the world has begun -- so naturally the TheWrap is going to spend our final few hours ranking the first seven seasons of "American Horror Story" from the most outlandish to the truly stomach- churning. And because the next installment in Ryan Murphy's FX anthology series, titled "Apocalypse," is a mashup between "Murder House" and "Coven," these listings should give you an idea of where Season 8 will fall when it debuts Wednesday. Click through the gallery to see our definitive rankings.
Murphy brought Lady Gaga in to lead the fifth season, set at a hotel in California that is truly inhospitable to its living -- and dead -- guests, after franchise alum Jessica Lange exited the series at the end of "Freak Show." So, yeah, "Hotel" is -- and probably always will be -- the campiest of all the seasons, given the over-the-top headliner brought in to carry the narrative.
The third installment, a story of past and present witches in New Orleans, was Jessica Lange at her Jessica Lange-iest. The queen of Murphyland played the "Supreme" aka the head of the titular coven, who is fighting to remain in control as her body deteriorates. And she went toe to toe with newcomer Emma Roberts -- a cocky young witch looking to dethrone her elder -- which brought all the camp up to 11.
A season that centered around the 2016 presidential election was bound to be a little melodramatic, given the real-life events it had as a jumping-off point. Things get real dark -- but then Evan Peters (bumped up to lead alongside Sarah Paulson for the first time) rubs Cheetos all over his face and Billy Eichner makes his debut. So it oscillates wildly between horrifying and hilarious.
"Roanoke" was a unique season, a story-within-a-story that does the job of linking all the previous years together, therefore officially declaring a shared "AHS" universe. But because of the way the season was broken up, it jumped between horrific events in the past and more mundane incidents in the present. So "Roanoke" goes right here in the middle.
The camp of "Coven" disappeared come the fourth season, when Murphy brought things back to reality with his cast of freaks. It was a season filled with more internal fears, centered around characters with external features that set them apart from the rest of society. But it was also Lange's farewell installment, so she got to chew the scenery -- and sing more than one song -- as Elsa Mars, the flamboyantly costumed leader of the outcasts.
"Asylum" was, as the on-the-nose title suggests, set in an insane asylum -- in the '60s, meaning out-of-date treatments and mindsets about the mentally ill. The season also pulled in a religious motif that would send shivers down the most lapsed Catholic's spine.
The one that started it all ends this list as the creepiest of the creeps. The episodes follow the Harmon family as they move into the titular dwelling, completely unaware of all the bloodshed it's seen before them. "Murder House" ends with the whole clan dead, stuck inside their forever home -- with Michael Langdon aka the Antichrist (whom Connie Britton's character Vivien died giving birth to) alive and well, growing up right next door. Oh and...
... come "Apocalypse," Michael is an adult, played by Cody Fern, and rocking a seriously extra 'do. And it's literally the. end. of. the world. So, yeah, at the moment we'd say the mashup of Season 1 and Season 3 is going to be a real coin-flip between camp and creep.
As Ryan Murphy’s ”Apocalypse“ approaches, TheWrap looks back at FX anthology series’ seven previous installments
The countdown to the end of the world has begun -- so naturally the TheWrap is going to spend our final few hours ranking the first seven seasons of "American Horror Story" from the most outlandish to the truly stomach- churning. And because the next installment in Ryan Murphy's FX anthology series, titled "Apocalypse," is a mashup between "Murder House" and "Coven," these listings should give you an idea of where Season 8 will fall when it debuts Wednesday. Click through the gallery to see our definitive rankings.