Solid. That’s one word to describe this week’s episode of ‘American Horror Story: Coven’. Another would be – Awesome. I’m not sure about you gentle viewers, but last night’s episode really rocked my socks off and you’re about to find out why. Zombies. Eyeballs in silver bowls. Chainsaws. Acid. Zombies. Fire. Showdowns. New powers. Mind reading. And more zombies.
We open in 1833 with Madame LaLaurie and her daughters at their annual All Hallows Eve party. One of her daughters, Borquita (awesome name) has her eye on a handsome young suitor. LaLaurie coaxes him into her ‘chamber of horrors’ to see what he’s really made of. She persuades him into touching the eyeballs and intestines of her poor slave victims that she’s carefully concealed into silver bowls. At first he takes this as a joke (peeled grapes for the eyeballs, etc.) but quickly finds out she’s producing the real deal. He flees the scene, rightfully so, and leaves Borquita heartbroken.
Later that night, the three LaLaurie sisters plot to murder their mother, when she comes upon them in their room, ordering them to return to the party. Once asleep, a very pissed LaLaurie orders two strong slaves to drag her daughters out of bed and bring them up to her torture chamber aka the attic aka the REAL chamber of horrors. There, they are shoved into cages and given a severe talking too, for being such ungrateful blasphemous daughters. LaLaurie even gives one of the slaves permission to break her daughters leg if she didn’t cooperate.
Back to present day New Orleans, where we see LaLaurie looking into the very dead faces of her three daughters, whom have risen from the grave along side a serious troop of other zombies. A bewildered coven scrambles to figure out their next step, as they can’t reach Fiona.
Where is Fiona, you ask? She’s at the hospital bedside of her ailing daughter, Cordelia, as she’s been burnt horribly with acid in the face. She lays there unconscious, while Fiona wanders the hospital in a catatonic state, looking for meds and answers. At this point, she’s thinking it was the voodoo priestess Marie that has bestowed this affliction of blindness on her daughter, but a hooded figure in the hospital leads her to believe otherwise. Also in her wandering, Fiona comes across a young mother who has just given birth to a still born baby girl. She scoops up the dead baby, and puts her in her crying mothers arms. The mother is devastated and has no idea why Fiona is making her look at her deceased child nor does she understand why she makes her recite such coos as ‘I’ll be your mother for as long as you live”, “You are beautiful”, etc. Shortly after she does these things, however, Fiona places her hands over the child’s head, and she remarkably comes back to life. Clearly Fiona was feeling powerless to help her own daughter in this moment, so she bestowed the gift of life on someone she could help.
Back at zombie central, Zoe takes the reigns, and orders everyone to close the curtains and doors and to get away from the windows. Foolish Luke, convinced it’s just a prank, goes outside and taunts the statuesque zombies into leaving. Two innocent bystanders are awe struck by the garden of zombies (also thinking they we’re Halloween joksters with amazing makeup on) start to poke and prod them as well. At that exact moment, Marie orders the zombies to ‘begin’. Oh boy. From here, they begin to rip apart one of the innocents, and throw a sharp object into Luke’s back, rendering him powerless and kind of a pansy. Zoe is convinced at this point that there’s nothing they can do for him now, and orders everyone upstairs into the higher rooms. Nan has some serious love goggles on and dashes outside in hopes of saving Luke, by carrying him to safety but they only make it to one of the girls empty cars. Zoe notices Nan’s absence and runs outside with a pot and pan to distract the zombie menace away from the car. She locks herself into a nearby shed and prays to every God imaginable that she’s not dead meat (pun intended). Or more than likely she’s pissing her pants, but I digress.
Meanwhile LaLaurie is overcome with emotion and allows Borquita into the house in hopes that there’s still some shred of her daughter’s soul in her rotting corpse somewhere. Don’t let the blank gaze fool you lady, your daughter is dead as a door nail. Borquita lunges at her mother and chases her to an upstairs hallway, where she bludgeons Spaulding with a candlestick holder. Queenie, whom has locked herself in a nearby bedroom, hears his cry and opens the door to see what the commotion is. She’s greeted by blood thirsty Borquita, runs back into her room, locks the door but that doesn’t stop this zombie from smashing through it. Queenie uses her voodoo doll power, and begins to slash her throat, etc. but nothing works on the zombified debutante. In rushes LaLaurie with a fire poker she thrusts into her daughters chest, killing her once and for all. She thinks its the only kind thing she ever did for her daughter, and begins to weep at her own shortcomings as a mother.
Back outside with the world’s worst zombie survival couple, Nan and Luke try to make a run for it back to the house, but to no avail as the zombies notice them trying to leave the car (shocker). All seems bleak for these two but fret not viewers, its SUPER ZOE AND HER MAGICAL CHAINSAW TO THE RESCUE!! This chick is seriously hard core and solidifies herself here as resident badass as she tears through each corpse one by one, each in a delicious new way (she splits a guy in half for crying out loud, Ash from ‘Evil Dead’ would be so proud!). During this fantastic montage, Nan and Luke flee to the safety of the house. Once Zoe is down to her last zombie, however, her trusty chainsaw begins to malfunction and the zombie before her looks to have the upper hand. She stops panicking, puts her hand out and recites what I’m assuming is an old Latin spell, because it kills the zombie right then and there and puts a stop to Marie’s tyrannical reign, which drops her to the ground and out of her trance. Once Marie is revived, she mentions to her cohort that ‘there is some real power in that house now’. Perhaps this is foreshadowing as to whom is going to be the next Supreme seeing as the only power Zoe seemed to have in her possession until now was killer sex, poor judgment and a trembling feeble chin you want to just smack.
Back in the much less exciting hospital, Cordelia’s husband, Hank arrives much to the dislike of Fiona. She goes on about how she knows he’s full of sh*t, how it’s a blessing he never knocked her up and how she begged Cordelia not to marry him. He defends himself saying that Cordelia hates Fiona and she was never there for her when it mattered and needed her most. He states that Cordelia loves him and she knows that he loves her and that he’ll always be there for her. Fiona is fed up and allows him 15 minutes alone with Cordelia, after which he must leave her forever. Once Fiona is out of the room, Hank puts his hands on his unconscious wife, telling her he’s there and he loves her, when all of a sudden, Cordelia gets a flash of Hanks infidelity and pulls her hand away from him in disgust. So maybe Cordelia is inheriting a new kind of vision from her accident, which should prove interesting seeing as her husband is a murdering cheater.
After the dust settles the next morning back at the Witchhouse, Fiona instructs the girls on how to properly dispose of the body parts left behind from the army of darkness. She gives Zoe thanks and allows her to go upstairs to shower, but Zoe does not reveal at this time her secret Latin power. Nan also takes leave to attend to Luke’s wounds, while Fiona and LaLaurie share a moment in realizing they’re horrible mothers. Fiona has the last word, and slaps LaLaurie’s hand of friendship away (metaphorically speaking), she is after all the maid.
At this point, the council of witches arrives to put a serious halt on Fiona’s powers as Supreme, stating that she’s unfit and the coven is in shambles due to her negligence and absentee teaching methods. Fiona rebuttals with an unforeseen counterattack on Myrtle, stating that she’s been destroying the coven from the inside for a long time now. She reveals evidence that she and Spaulding have collected against Myrtle – that she’s been staying under the alias Veronica Lake (excellent pull) in a nearby hotel during the time of Madison’s disappearance, plotting against Fiona (she has pictures to prove her hatred) and finally that she was the hooded figure in the hospital and therefore the one who threw acid into Cordelia’s face. Fiona seals the deal by pulling Myrtle’s red glove off to show the chemical burn that is exactly the same to the one on her daughters face. Ouch Myrtle, you’ve been caught red handed, so to speak.
The council takes no time to turn on Myrtle, who shockingly enough is pretty ok with their ruling of burning her at the stake. Its been an uphill battle for Myrtle and she’s tired of fighting for a losing team. Once the decision has been made, all the witches get into their Sunday best, and march Myrtle to an abandoned area, conveniently equipped with a stake already in place. Her last words are along the lines of beware Fiona, she’ll get you before you can even realize what’s happening. The witches in training are stunned to learn that ‘burning’ a witch is taken very literally, as they stare on while the flames rise, torching Myrtle’s body.
After all is said and done, Queenie approaches Fiona in private, asking if she just helped frame and kill and innocent witch, aka Myrtle. Flash back to the scene where Fiona shows Myrtles’ burnt hand, while Queenie is hidden in the wings, and puts her hand in acid right as Fiona makes this big reveal. If Queenie hadn’t have participated in the ruse, Fiona wouldn’t have gotten her crown jewel of evidence, therefore making her a very important accomplice. Fiona assures Queenie that no one is innocent, and then seduces her into forgetting about what just transpired by alluding to the fact that she may very well be the next Supreme. Queenie takes the bait hook line and sinker and agrees to keep the secret between them.
As the episode comes to a close, we see Misty coming upon the burnt remains of Myrtle (alas, there isn’t any Fleetwood Mac to comfort us in our time of need) and low and behold, she bends down and brings back the extra crispy Myrtle to life. Whoooo nelly that was a great episode!
Let us know in the comments section below what you think is in store for our lovely witches next, how you felt about this weeks events, or any particular moment of zombie slayage you enjoyed most. Until then, see you next week!
