In the ‘American Horror Story: Apocalypse’ recap, Langdon runs into an old foe, Venable and Mean hatch a plan and some familiar faces from the past return…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
A season filled with somewhat confusing and admittedly less than interesting storylines finally paid off in a big way in the latest episode of ‘American Horror Story: Apocalypse’.
What has been promised all season long as a crossover between the infamous ‘Murder House’ and ‘Coven’ seasons of the show, the actual characters popping up thus far on ‘Apocalypse’ have been few and far between.
That was until the new episode on Tuesday night, which featured the long awaited return of some witches from the ‘Coven’ and a hell of a closing line from Emma Roberts.
Before we get to the witches, there were some other stories unfolding this week.
Langdon continued to test people from Outpost 3 to see who will join him at the Sanctuary and he makes several references to some past foes that might just be those same witches that arrived at the end of the episode.
Meanwhile, Ms. Venable and Ms. Mead are determined to get to the Sanctuary even if it means killing everybody else inside the Outpost.
And a blast from the past comes calling from the nuclear wasteland to pay a visit to Coco.
With that said, let’s recap the latest episode of ‘American Horror Story: Apocalypse’ titled ‘Forbidden Fruit’….
Who Are You?
Langdon is continuing with his interviews to find out who is worthy to join him at the Sanctuary with hopes of repopulating the Earth in his image. He chats with Gallant and informs him that his nightmarish image of slaughtering his own grandmother was nothing more than a dream when in fact she died peacefully in her sleep.
Langdon then tells young lovers Timothy and Emily that they were spared from execution because he couldn’t allow one minor infraction of Venable’s rules to rob the future of two potentially vibrant young people poised to give birth to the next generation.
The more interesting conversations start when he sits down with Dinah Stevens, who Langdon apparently knows from some kind of interaction in the past. And then comes Mallory, the mousey assistant to Coco, who was forced into servitude after coming to the Outpost with her employer.
Langdon describes how he can see into the darkest corners of anybody’s soul and he sees something inside of her. Mallory tells him that she doesn’t always feel like herself — as if somebody is living inside of her just trying to claw their way out.
When Mallory attempts to leave when the conversation gets uncomfortable, Langdon grabs her and she forces him away while causing an explosion in the room. Landgon is shocked but then comes after her again while transforming into a ghastly demon that is likely his true form as the Anti-Christ.
In response, Mallory fires back — literally — as she turns the flames in the fireplace into an inferno. Langdon immediately backs off and asks ‘who are you?’ and Mallory responds in kind by asking ‘who are you?’.
From there, Langdon decides to perform some kind of ritual as he cuts himself open and uses the blood to smear a pentagram on the floor while reaching out to his father for guidance.
“I thought I destroyed them all, but one survived!”
~ Michael Langdon
As the blood begins to boil and pop, a group of snakes come slithering out of the ooze, which once again seems to reference the witches from ‘Coven’. At the end of his chanting, Langdon offers up a ‘ave satanas’, which is ‘Hail Satan’ so obviously he was speaking to his father, the Lord of Darkness himself.
The Garden of Eden
In the middle of the wasteland that is the United States, a figure emerges from the shadows — scarred and balding, covered in sores — but he’s on a relentless hunt to find his girlfriend. It turns out to be Brock — the left behind boyfriend of Coco St-Pierre Vanderbilt, who was stuck in Santa Monica traffic when the bombs were headed for Los Angeles and there was no time for the escaping plane to wait for him.
Brock has transformed rather dramatically since the nuclear fallout — he’s handy with a knife and even quicker with a shotgun when encountering a group of cannibals led by a reality TV chef, who is currently cooking up a human leg for dinner. Brock wants to find Coco and he’s desperate for any kind of information on where she could be located.
That’s when a beacon arrives in the form of another horse drawn carriage — just like the one that brought Michael Langdon to the Outpost.
Brock hitches a ride underneath the carriage, which takes him directly to Outpost 3.
Meanwhile inside, Ms. Venable tells Ms. Mead that she’s already been ruled out of making the cut to go to the Sanctuary after her meeting with Langdon. Ms. Mead then reveals that she actually is some kind of Westworld like robot — but also a copy of a person who actually existed many years ago with memories that include several Halloweens where she was a kid going trick or treating, a teenager on a first date and then a paid assassin. Ms. Mead also remembers caring for the most beautiful young boy but she can’t quite place his face.
With Langdon likely shutting them both out from the Sanctuary, they decide the best course of action would be killing everybody inside the Outpost — including Langdon — and then making their way to the Sanctuary.
An opportunity arises that gives them the perfect plan to execute when that horse-drawn carriage arrives with no passenger inside but a trunk filled with fresh, ripe delicious apples. After checking them for radiation, Ms. Venable and Ms. Mead decide this would be the perfect way to kill off all of the people inside the Outpost.
They poison the apples with snake venom and then announce that they are throwing a Halloween bash for everybody in the Outpost.
Meanwhile, Coco and Gallant mock Mallory when she tries to tell them about her mystical powers while believing that perhaps she became some kind of mutant as a result of the nuclear fallout. When she can’t reproduce the same powers as she did earlier, Coco and Gallant just end up laughing at her even more.
Finally at the Halloween ball, everybody is bobbing for apples — the poisoned ones — with Venable and Mead watching on from the staircase. Coco ends up dancing with a mystery man she believes is Michael Langdon and in an attempt to secure her spot in the Sanctuary, she takes him upstairs and offers him a backdoor surprise as payment.
When the mystery man takes off his mask, it’s revealed to be Brock.
Coco tries to talk her way out of the situation but Brock ends up burying a knife in the middle of her forehead.
Downstairs everybody inside the Outpost ends up taking a bite of those poisoned apples and a few seconds later, they end up vomiting rather violently before they all expire in a pile of venomous puke.
Venable and Mead are rather pleased but they still have one more person left to go.
They end up making their way to Michael Langdon’s room with plans to execute him with a bullet since he didn’t come downstairs for the apples. When they arrive, Langdon doesn’t seem all that scared about a gun being pointed at him because one glance at Mead and she’s suddenly turning the gun on Venable instead.
A second later, Mead fires the gun and Ms. Venable falls dead.
She can’t be certain why she just killed her friend but then Langdon explains that he’s the one who had her commissioned in the first place and she was modeled after somebody who took care of him as a child — thus the flashbacks she was having earlier in the episode.
Surprise Witch
Langdon seems overjoyed that everybody in the outpost is dead — in fact he was ready to offer Ms. Venable a spot at the sanctuary until she attempted to kill him, too.
That’s when the fog starts to move outside the Outpost and three people arrive shrouded in hoods. A moment later it’s revealed to be Cordelia Foxx, Madison Montgomery and Myrtle Snow.
Harness the power of the apocalypse with GIFs from this season of #AHSApocalypse. @GIPHY https://t.co/Rn9212HJBP pic.twitter.com/A3HkWbSK7D
— AmericanHorrorStory (@AHSFX) September 27, 2018
The three witches make their way inside and down to the main room where everybody is laying dead. Cordelia instructs her fellow witches to gather their sisters — and they soon bring Coco, Dinah and Mallory to the floor in front of them. Cordelia then releases a breath over the bodies and all three wake up suddenly.
Madison then leans over Mallory and says ‘surprise bitch, I bet you thought you’d seen the last of me’.
"Bet you thought you'd seen the last of me." @RobertsEmma #AHSApocalypse pic.twitter.com/smYBxPoxph
— AmericanHorrorStory (@AHSFX) September 27, 2018
Now this is just an educated guess but the episode took place on Halloween, which means the spirits of the dead are able to walk free amongst the living. It seems entirely possible that Cordelia, Madison and Myrtle are actually just spirits — because we know Madison and Myrtle were both dead at the end of ‘Coven’. Perhaps they’ve returned on Halloween in an attempt to resurrect their sisters currently occupying the bodies of Coco, Mallory and Dinah.
In fact, Mallory might just be the perfect doppelganger to Zoe, one of the witches who survived the Seven Wonders back in season 3.
At least the witches are back and we’ll find out more about what they’re doing here when ‘American Horror Story: Apocalypse’ returns next Tuesday night at 10 p.m. ET on FX.
