In the ‘American Horror Story: Apocalypse’ recap, Michael seeks vengeance against the witches and prepares to trigger the apocalypse…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
Ever since the witches from ‘American Horror Story: Coven’ returned a few episodes into ‘American Horror Story: Apocalypse’, the show has largely shifted into a long string of flashbacks to explain the nuclear fallout that started the season.
There have been some complaints that the show has spent too much time looking back rather than moving forward, especially with the season finale next week.
Personally, the long exposition going back in time has really strengthened this season as a whole after the first few episodes were a lackluster and confusing string of stories that tried to explain life during a nuclear winter but really didn’t do much to explain what was really happening until the witches returned.
We still have no clue why those two random characters were introduced at the start of the season — Timothy and Emily — only to have them die of poisoning after just a couple of episodes. Perhaps they’ll play into the finale but it certainly seemed like they played a larger role in the series and then ultimately their stories went nowhere.
Thankfully the return of the witches have more or less turned this season into a sequel of ‘Coven’ which was by far one of the strongest offerings from ‘American Horror Story’.
This latest episode explained what led to Michael Langdon dropping the bombs, the witches who didn’t survive to see the nuclear fallout and ultimately lead into the final showdown between the coven and the Antichrist.
With that said, let’s recap the latest episode of ‘American Horror Story: Apocalypse’ titled ‘Fire and Reign’…
Burn It Down
As excited as the bowl-cut tech twins — Jeff and Mutt (yes, those are their names) — were excited to meet the Antichrist last week, they’ve grown frustrated because despite building Michael Langdon a replacement Ms. Mead, he’s still clueless on what he’s supposed to do in his role.
Jeff (Evan Peters) is fed up with waiting and he’s sick and tired of everything that’s happening in the world and he would just like to burn it all down and start over again. Mutt (Billy Eichner) seems OK with that plan as well and now it’s up to them to lead Michael down the path that will end in the Armageddon.
First things first back at their headquarters, Jeff and Mutt are reminded of an upcoming meeting with the Cooperative — a name we heard at the start of the season as the group responsible for setting up the post apocalyptic outposts — by their secretary Ms. Venable.
Unfortunately, she’s also fed up with her role in the company after they promised her a bigger role but she’s still only in charge of fetching coffee and making sure they have fresh cocaine on their desks everyday. In fact, Ms. Venable is so upset that she informs her bosses that she’s tendering her resignation and will be leaving the company.
Jeff and Mutt don’t seem all that concerned because they believe once she cools down she’ll be back and they’ve got more pressing matters to worry about right now like guiding Michael towards their idea to nuke the entire world and start everything over again.
Meanwhile in New Orleans, the witches at Miss Robichaux’s academy are gearing up for battle with Mallory trying to harness her powers as the new Supreme in order to do battle with the Antichrist. Unfortunately she’s struggling to understand her powers or use them to their fullest extent and the witches are starting to worry about the pending fight.
Cordelia assures them that they are safe behind the walls of the academy because the entire house is protected by all sorts of spells and incantations that will stop anybody from entering. Sadly she didn’t account for the voodoo queen Dinah Stevens making a deal with the devil to break their protection spell so that Michael and Robot Ms. Mead could enter the house undetected in exchange for 13 episodes of a talk show guaranteed by Satan himself.
Once Michael and Mead make their way inside, the witches try to stop them but he quickly displays his power and then he unleashes his robot to open fire on the entire coven. Everybody in the room is gunned down including Queenie for a second time as well as Zoe and even Bubbles McGee is murdered.
Upstairs, Cordelia, Mallory and Myrtle are stunned by the gunfire but they are able to cloak themselves with invisibility so when Michael and his robot assassin come upstairs, they aren’t seen or heard. Michael is livid because the main witches he came there to kill aren’t dead and he’s not sure where to go next to find them.
With only a half-measure to eliminate the witches, Michael is once again at a loss as to where to go next but thankfully he’s got some handlers back at Satan-Corp who have been spying on him this entire time through their Robot Ms. Mead. Jeff and Mutt can not only see everything that’s happening but they can actually control what Ms. Mead is saying to him and they are the ones who ultimately put it in his head to drop nuclear bombs on the entire world while suggesting that he would just be following the playbook laid out for him in the Book of Revelations.
Because Michael has complete trust in Ms. Mead, he decides to follow her wise counsel and return to Satan-Corp and to Jeff and Mutt to begin planning the apocalypse.
The Fall of the Romanovs
In the aftermath of the slaughter at the school, Cordelia is inconsolable as the witches are forced to hide out at Misty Day’s swamp while she’s on tour with Stevie Nicks. Cordelia attempts to go back to the school through astral projection in an attempt to reach the souls of her fallen girls but each one disappears before she can claim it. That’s when Madison shares the information that she discovered at the Murder House — Michael Langdon can actually eviscerate a soul to the point where it’s like that person never existed.
Perhaps the only way to bring them back and to stop Michael Langdon will be through a particular piece of magic that’s so dangerous, the only times it’s ever been attempted the witches who tried it died afterwards. The magic essentially allows a witch to transmutate back in time to affect past occurrences and Myrtle believes Mallory might just be powerful enough to pull it off.
So they decide on a course of action to test her powers — they send Mallory back to stop Anastasia Romanov — daughter of the last Tsar of Russia — from being executed when her entire family was gunned down in 1918. It seems Anastasia was a witch and she attempted to cast a protection spell on her family but wasn’t powerful enough to stop the bullets.
Mallory is able to travel back and nearly stops the execution from taking place but ultimately she can’t hold her form and returns to present day, bleeding from the eyes and distraught that she couldn’t save the witch thus potentially preventing her from stoping Michael Langdon.
Cordelia is convinced that she needs to kill herself so that Mallory can ascend to her full power as the new Supreme but Myrtle has other ideas. She believes that Cordelia is still necessary if the witches are going to stop the Antichrist from unmaking the world.
So they decide on another course of action instead — the witches will travel to the Hawthorne Academy and hopefully convince the warlocks to join them in the battle against Michael Langdon.
When they arrive, Cordelia and Myrtle are horrified to find all of the warlocks have been slaughtered and arranged in the form of a pentagram. It seems the Antichrist already beat them to the punch and now the witches are once again left without a plan to stop him.
Enter the Illuminati
Back at Satan-corp, Jeff and Mutt are preparing for the Antichrist’s arrival so they can introduce him to the Cooperative to enter into the next phase of their plan. Before doing that, they find Ms. Venable clearing out her desk and they finally decide to give her the promotion she’s been begging to receive.
They offer her leadership over one of the outposts they are creating as part of this planned Armageddon where the world will be demolished by nuclear bombs from a hacked Russian silo and she will be in charge of the survivors in her domain. Ms. Venable will have autonomy to make the rules and do as she pleases with the outpost, which explains her weird set of laws and standards when we first met her this season.
As for the techno twins, the final stage of this plan involves introducing Michael to the Cooperative, which is really the Illuminati. They felt like Cooperative had a better sounding name but these are the people who secretly control the world and they’ve all sold their souls to Satan to get to that level of power, which means they are all beholden to his son Michael Langdon.
At the meeting, the members of the Cooperative look like a cross between the Harpys from ‘Game of Thrones’ and the secretive sex cult in ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ but they have all arrived to receive their orders from the Antichrist.
Michael lays out his plans to orchestrate a nuclear attack across the globe and the Cooperative will lead these outposts where the wealthiest people in the world can pay $100 million for entry if they want to save their families. He hands over the orders and they begin going over the strategy to unleash the bombs that will essentially end the world.
How will it all end? Find out in the ‘American Horror Story: Apocalypse’ season finale next Wednesday night at 10 p.m. ET on FX.
