'American Horror Story' Heads into Uncharted Territory
by EG
American Horror Story has never been afraid to unsettle its fans - in fact, that's pretty much the whole point of the series - but after a season that spent a lot of time revisiting the past, this week's season finale delivered a surprising look at the future. Read on for details.
[This story contains spoilers from the finale of FX's American Horror Story: Apocalypse, "Apocalypse Then."]
American Horror Story: Apocalypse ushered in the end of the world and, after 10 time-jumping episodes with enough crossovers to satisfy the most diehard of viewers, the FX horror anthology reversed course.
The eighth season of the Ryan Murphy series laid the groundwork for the 11th-hour twist to reveal itself in the penultimate episode, when Apocalypse all-but confirmed that witch Mallory (Billie Lourd) is the key to saving the world — and the AHS universe.
Ever since the plot of Apocalypse was revealed, questions loomed about how the supposed world-ending nuclear event that kicked off the season muddled the timeline of the inter-connected AHS cycles. Even though the series is an anthology, all cycles are linked — as Apocalypse clearly proved with its many Easter eggs and callbacks to earlier seasons, Murder House and Coven most prominently. The wrinkle in the timeline occurs when lining up the Apocalypse with season five's Hotel: the finale of Hotel flashed forward to 2022, but the apocalypse supposedly happened in 2019.
The Apocalypse finale solved that problem by revealing Mallory as the all-powerful next Supreme. She traveled back in time to kill Michael Langdon (Cody Fern) when he was still a growing boy and living under the care of his grandmother Constance Langdon — which welcomed back former leading lady and returning guest-star Jessica Lange. In 2015, years ahead of the would-be Armageddon, Mallory killed Michael. She ran him over in the street, stopping his timeline of destruction before it even began. Michael died in Constance's arms and his grandmother denied his dying wish: instead of letting him die in Murder House so his soul could live on for eternity, she told him to go to hell.
"Nothing ever truly dies," Mallory explains when she reappears at Miss Robichaux's Academy for Exceptional Young Ladies, the Coven academy for all the familiar witches, in 2015. Though none of her fellow witches know what happened, she is aware that she has set the world on a new path. "We are all made of energy and energy can neither be created or destroyed," she says in a voiceover. "It can only be transferred from one form to another. The trick is to be able to go back and pick the right moment in time and let it play out from there."
Get the rest of the story at The Hollywood Reporter.
Are you happy with this season of AHS? Let us know in the comments below.