[ENTERTAINMENT] ‘AMERICAN HORROR STORY: APOCALYPSE’ FINALE RECAP

by sloppyvinyl | Nov 15, 2018 | Entertainment

The finale of “American Horror Story: Apocalypse” goes back to Murder House once again, yields the return of the Antichrist’s “Interview with a Vampire” wig and turns back time just like everyone’s second favorite Cher song.

“Apocalypse Then,” Evan Peters’ “AHS” directorial debut, starts with Moira (Frances Conroy) whose “hair is an eternal mystery never to be fully understood,” breaking into the robot lab. She puts Venable (Sarah Paulson), Jeff and Mutt (Evan Peters and Billy Eichner still in those ridiculous Coconut Head wigs) under a spell and gets her witches spots in their Outposts. Basically, Myrtle’s trying her best to tie up all the loose ends so we can finally get back to the post-apocalypse.

Frances Conroy played quite possibly the best character of the season, Myrtle Snow.
Photo courtesy of spoturn.com

When she looks at the “guest list” for the apocalyptic bunkers, B. Cooper has a spot reserved at Outpost 3. Are you telling me Bradley Cooper has been hiding in plain sight this whole time? Definitely not; this isn’t “The Haunting of Hill House.”

Cordelia (Sarah Paulson as the Supreme Witch) puts memory spells on Mallory (Billie Lourd) and Coco (Leslie Grossman). Coco’s new personality — so her character in the first half of the season — was based on Madison (Emma Roberts), which explains why I found her so unbearable in the earlier episodes. No one can do bitchy like Emma Roberts.

As Mallory and Coco prepare to have their memories wiped, they say goodbye to the surviving witches (excluding Misty, for some unexplained reason) and it’s easily the best acting Lourd and Grossman have done all season. That’s not necessarily saying much, since Mallory hardly spoke at all and Coco was just a bad impersonation, but that scene was honestly really good.

Madison, under the façade of an Uber driver, drops off Mallory and Coco at their new lives. She notices an ad for Dinah’s (Adina Porter, Voodoo Witch) new show, which obviously means she sold the Coven out to the Devil. I know that’s what happened because I saw it in last week’s episode, but is it really that easy of a conclusion to jump to?

Evan Peter’s first character of the season, Gallant, shows up to cut Coco’s hair. Billy Eichner is sitting in the chair next to Coco and tries to hit on her. Is he Brock from the first half of the season or is he Mutt finally getting a different look? Are they the same person? Does it matter? No. The one good thing about this scene was seeing Peters and Eichner without those horrendous wigs.

We don’t get a different perspective of the nukes going off or anything. We flash forward to Langdon (Cody Fern) confronting Mallory at Outpost in Episode 3 when he shows his true form and she makes fire appear.

Then we cut directly to Cordelia, Myrtle and Madison rising from their swamp graves. They strut into the Outpost as the unofficial “Coven” theme song plays. They bring Coco, Mallory and Dinah back to life.

This is as close to a climactic showdown as we got with “AHS: Apocalypse.”
Photo courtesy of twitter.com

With this whole nonlinear narrative, I totally forgot about the cliffhanger stand-off between Langdon and the now revived witches. That was just before we dove headfirst into flashbacks. Dinah tells the witches they’re dumb for bringing her back because she’s going to side with Langdon, but she doesn’t know the Coven has a secret weapon.

ANGELA BASSETT IS BACK! At the end of “Coven,” Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau (Bassett) was in Hell, endlessly torturing Delphine LaLaurie (Kathy Bates’ season 3 character). We cut to their shared Hell, when Nan (Jamie Brewster) and Cordelia show up to bring Laveau back to life.

Laveau comes out from behind a pillar and, in the badass way that only Angela Bassett can do, stabs Dinah in the neck with a cleaver. Cordelia blows up robotic Kathy Bates, causing her machine gun arm to fly off.

Angela Bassett is back as her “Coven” character Marie Laveau.
Photo courtesy of comicbook.com

Madison picks up the gun and goes full “Scarface” on Langdon, unloading rounds into his back as Cordelia and Myrtle try to find a safe place for Mallory to go back in time. When he gets off the ground, alive and well, Madison delivers another great line “I guess it’s back to retail” before he makes her head explode.

Who else forgot that radioactive Billy Eichner is still in Outpost after stabbing Coco in episode 3? He shows up and stabs Mallory in the stomach because it’s somehow her fault that he couldn’t get to the airport on time before the bombs dropped.

Coco and Laveau try to hold Langdon off so Mallory can time travel, but they can only do so for so long before he rips Laveau’s heart out of her chest and literally snaps Coco’s neck. Angela Bassett hasn’t even been back through a commercial break and she’s already dead? It’s better than nothing, I guess.

It’s the “all is lost” moment as Mallory looks like she’s about to die, so Cordelia goes to confront Langdon. She takes the knife from him and stabs herself with it. As a dead Supreme, her powers automatically transfer over to the next Supreme, who in this case is obviously Mallory (especially since almost all the other witches are dead). As Cordelia’s dead body lies in a pool of blood at the bottom of the stairs, Mallory is able to go back in time, and what a moment she returns to.

Mallory (Billie Lourd) going back in time.
Photo courtesy of bleedingcool.com

We’re back at Murder House in 2015, when Constance (that’s right, we’ve got another Jessica Lange appearance!) walks into Langdon’s room and finds a dead priest. Without a hint of irony, Constance lectures/monologues her grandson about killing people. It’s no surprise that Lange brought her A-game; just look at her screaming as she kicks Langdon out. He tries to choke her, but he can’t do it, so he runs out of the house instead. As he’s crossing the street, who else but Mallory pulls up in an SUV and runs him over three times.

Quick refresher: In Season 1, Constance’s youngest daughter, Adelaide, was killed in a hit and run just outside of the Murder House. She died as Constance desperately tried to get her body to the house, so her ghost could stay with her, but she couldn’t hold on long enough.

Jessica Lange makes a final appearance on the FX show.
Photo courtesy of thewrap.com

In a seriously amazing parallel to that, Constance comes out of the house and looks over Langdon as he dies in the street. He asks her to bring him into the house so he can stay with her, to which she responds “Go to Hell” and walks away.

So the big climax is that Mallory ran Langdon over with a car. No big confrontation between the Witches and the Satanists. No final showdown. Just a hit and run.

Since she killed Langdon in 2015, that’s when the timeline is reset, which means Cordelia is alive and well as the reigning Supreme. Cordelia and the witches don’t remember Mallory, since in this new timeline they never met, but Malloy still remembers everything she’s been through this season. The worst part about the 2015 reset is that since Cordelia has no reason to bring her back to fight, Myrtle is still dead.

Mallory is also able to convince Queenie (Gabourey Sidibe) not to stay at the Hotel Cortez as she goes on “The Price is Right” nullifying her Season 5 cameo. Since she “got blazing street cred with the demons of the underworld” for killing the Spawn of Satan, Mallory is also able to bring Misty (Lily Rabe FINALLY) back from Hell so the Coven is one big happy family — minus Myrtle.

Excluding Myrtle still being dead, it’s a big happy finale for the Witches of the Coven.
Photo courtesy of variety.com

The young Adam and Eve couple from the first three episodes (who literally no one cares about) still meet, but this time under better, not impending doom circumstances, and once again fall in love. They have a baby and three years later, they sit in their car after a night out, talking about how hard it is to raise their son. They walk inside, not noticing the red sky and the crows circling their house, only to find that their son killed the babysitter and is now sitting on a rocking chair, just like toddler Langdon in the “Murder House” finale. The doorbell rings and it’s the Satanists from episode 6— The Black Pope and his two Cardinals, Satanic Kathy Bates and the actress who played Pepper in “Asylum” and “Freak Show.” They flash freaky smiles and say they want to help.

That’s how it ends, so basically this season didn’t matter, because at the end of the day, even if you kill the Spawn of Satan, another Baby Devil will show up. Is this Ryan Murphy’s way of saying that the apocalypse is inevitable?

Cody Fern made his “American Horror Story” debut this season as Michael Langdon, the Spawn of Satan.
Photo courtesy of thewrap.com

Overall, this was a better finale than I was anticipating. We were back in the post-apocalyptic timeline within the first 20 minutes, which made me happy, and I literally screamed when Angela Bassett showed up, but Langdon’s anti-climactic death and the overall lack of scares left me wanting much more. At least Jessica Lange showed up for one final appearance.

That’s it for “American Horror Story: Apocalypse.” I hope you enjoyed these recaps as much as I enjoyed writing them, and please keep a look out for my overall review of the entire season. Let me know what you thought of the finale in the comments below!