In the ‘American Horror Story: Cult’ recap, Kai exerts his influence over his sister, Ally makes a play to get her son back and two more people are brutally murdered….
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
It seems with each passing episode of ‘American Horror Story: Cult’, more and more is being revealed about Kai Anderson’s past and how he walked a dark path towards where he’s at now as the leader of a new movement bred by fear and paranoia.
Through a series of flashbacks that continued with Wednesday’s episodes, we find that Kai wasn’t always the charismatic cult leader who could inspire his followers to commit the most atrocious acts.
Instead, Kai was a liberal, who trolled bible-thumping religious crazies on the dark web, and only wanted to help people until he realized that saving humanity one-by-one was a losing effort and that perhaps burning it all down and starting over again was a better path towards salvation.
Meanwhile, Kai’s female followers started to feel cast out last week and that simmering rage will reach a boil this week as Beverly and Ivy are past a breaking point while Winter attempts to give her brother one more chance to right the ship, which results in a bizarre sexual ritual that seems ripped straight from the pages of ‘Rosemary’s Baby’.
In the end, Kai is determined to tear through anyone and everyone who dares to oppose him and that includes at least one family member who is sick of seeing him fall further and further down the rabbit hole of madness.
With that said, let’s recap the latest episode of ‘American Horror Story: Cult’ titled ‘Winter of Our Discontent’…
Family Issues
Following Kai’s ascent to city councilman and national celebrity after his shooting, he’s built an army of followers stronger than anyone could have anticipated and that includes his older brother Vincent, who is still working as a psychologist in the same town unbeknownst to anyone that they’re actually related. Vincent shows up at Kai’s house to express his pride in what his little brother has been able to accomplish. While Kai is somewhat disturbed that Vincent didn’t even bother to come visit him in the hospital after his shooting — in no small part thanks to the collusion of one of his patients — he’s still happy to reconnect with his sibling.
Of course, Kai is the one who orchestrated his own shooting and Vincent’s patient Ally Mayfair-Richards had nothing to do with it, but he’s still bilking the assassination attempt that earned him a national spotlight.
Still while Kai first believes that Vincent is ashamed of him, he ultimately turns and gives his brother a hug while passing along one tiny request — call him councilman from now on.
It’s just another power play from Kai, who is really starting to sink into his role as a councilman in this small Michigan community. In fact just recently at a meeting he was able to enact a new ordinance for a private security force — made up of his own followers — who will patrol the streets at night. One person on the council did try to raise a concern, but Kai quickly shot him down with a veiled threat aimed at his children and a moment later he had a unanimous vote.
Kai’s power is growing and his influence is still being exerted — and by the end of the episode it’s clear that he’s not going to be toppled any time soon.
Judgment House
At the Butchery on Main, Ivy and Winter are now nothing much more than servants, who hand out food to Kai’s army of followers while enduring insults like being told to smile and perhaps then they’d look more fuckable.
Back in the kitchen, Beverly is glazing the latest dinner rolls while seething with anger that Kai’s proclamation about equal treatment for both genders is now being reduced to nothing more than lip service that helped him get elected. Beverly is ready to rise up and kill Kai once and for all, but Winter reminds the angry women that if he dies, all of this goes away.
She then relays a story to them about what her brother means to her and why he deserves another chance.
Back in 2015, Kai and Winter were trolling ultra religious groups on the dark web when they were contacted by someone called ‘Pastor Charles’, who was impressed with their hard line stance on abortion and other issues. He invites them to his sanctuary called ‘Judgment House’ and while Winter seems skeptical, Kai is quick to accept so he can troll this madman in person rather than over the internet.
When they arrive, Pastor Charles allows them into the house under one rule — they mustn’t tell anyone what they witness inside these walls. As they enter, Kai and Winter are locked into a room with a woman strapped down to a bed, her legs tied up to stirrups while a maniacal sermon plays over the loud speaker. Kai and Winter can’t be sure that this isn’t some staged encounter, but then they realize that the woman on the bed is really bleeding and there’s nothing fake about this house of horrors.
Two more rooms follow — one where a man is tied down being pumped full of drugs like something out of ‘Seven’ and the other finds a man strapped to a contraption rigged to stab him through the heart at the end of the sermon because he’s a homosexual.
Kai has seen enough — he helps free the third man from the shackles while Winter rushes off to try and get help. Unfortunately, Pastor Charles gets to Winter first, but Kai saves the day by knocking him unconscious and tying the twisted preacher to one of his own murder machines.
It’s there where Kai passes his own judgment after discovering that each of the intended victims wasn’t anything like it seemed when they arrived at the house. The woman in the first room, accused of wanting to abort her baby, was actually just a patient at Planned Parenthood looking for treatment for a UTI. The drug addict was actually taken from a rehab facility as he attempted to clean up his life. The third person was a volunteer at an AIDS clinic but he was kidnapped and put on trial for being gay.
Kai realizes that getting Pastor Charles arrested wasn’t good enough — he had to pay with his own kind of sentence being turned against him. So Kai ends up killing Pastor Charles with the same stabbing machine intended for the man on trial for being gay.
Afterwards, Winter notes that the encounter made Kai desperately want to help even more people out of these sorts of messed up situations but he soon realized that there was no way to successful rescue everybody one-by-one. The better method would be to burn the world down to the ground and rebuild a better one on the ashes.
Thus Kai’s mission to become a cult leader began.
The story impresses Beverly and Ivy, who agree to give Kai until the end of the week to turn things around, but if he won’t put them back into his inner circle of power and trust, they are going to eliminate him once and for all.
Messiah Complex
Winter goes to Kai to plead with him to stop treating his female followers with such disregard, but he’s got other plans in mind for his sister. Kai already knows that the women are responsible for killing Harrison last week but he doesn’t really mind all that much.
Now Kai has turned his attention to creating a “messiah” that will continue their work after he’s long gone. He then tells Winter that she will conceive this child with Detective Samuels, who will have sex with her while Kai is simultaneously having sex with him. This “union” will birth a messiah child into the world and the baby will be pure thanks to Kai not actually having sex with his sister to conceive.
Kai sets the scene — complete with the song “I Swear” by All-4-One that will now be played whenever a messiah is conceived — before ordering Samuels to mount his sister to impregnate her. Unfortunately, Samuels can no longer get it up for women and Winter is disgusted by the entire scenario before she leaves.
Fast forward to days later, Winter is dropping trash all over the side of the road as some sort of reformation project because Kai doesn’t believe in global warming and this is her punishment for not following his orders. Detective Samuels arrives with her lunch — a bowl of gruel — which then prompts Winter to ask why he’s Kai’s personal bitch.
Samuels then tells Winter the story about how he met her brother.
It seems Kai was selling prescriptions from a pad he stole from his brother when Samuels busted him on the street. Samuels agreed to let him off so long as he started to split the drug profits with him every week. During one particular drop off at Samuels’ house, Kai finds the cop assaulting a woman in his house before she runs out the front door in terror. Samuels admits that he’s been bedding women for years in an effort to try to find the right one but things keep getting worse and worse for him the more he tries to find the perfect girl.
That’s when Kai’s influence took over as he tells Samuels that perhaps the problem is he’s not meant to be with women who draw power away from him. Maybe Samuels needs a man, who will only strengthen him as they power each other. Kai then has sex with Samuels before luring him into the web of his control.
Now Samuels’ serves Kai and he wants to make his leader happy so he turns to Winter and once again attempts to impregnate her whether she’s willing or not. Thankfully, Winter wrestles away from Samuels, takes his gun away, and then blows his brains out on the side of the road. Just before pulling the trigger, Winter calls him a turd — just like Valerie Solanas taught her in the SCUM Manifesto.
There’s one more of Kai’s loyal followers gone.
Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge
Following the assassination attempt on Kai Anderson, Ally was put into a mental institution and later released on her own accord. When Dr. Vincent pays her a visit, he claims that he’s finally ready to come clean with her and help fix all the ways she’s been broken over these past few months.
Dr. Vincent reveals that he’s actually Kai and Winter Anderson’s brother, although he tells her that he had no idea the depths to which his siblings were torturing one of his patients. Of course, Ally is irate, especially after Dr. Vincent tells her that Kai probably broke into his case files, which is how he preyed upon her every fear in trying to get her to go mad.
But now he wants to help because Ally really is the one innocent victim in all of this.
The next day, Kai Anderson shows up on Ally’s doorstep but not in an attempt to gain her support for his new job as city councilman. Instead, Ally extended an invite to have him over for sloppy joe’s so they could have a conversation.
It seems Ally has information that Kai will want but in exchange he must help get her son back. Kai agrees and that’s when Ally sells out Dr. Vincent, telling the new city councilman that his own brother has turned against him and intends on having him committed or arrested to stop his reign of terror.
Kai smiles and munches down on his sandwich before unleashing his next horrific plan.
The next thing you know, Kai has captured both Dr. Vincent and Beverly Hope and he intends to try them for their respective crimes against him.
First up is Vincent, who tries to convince his brother that he’s not doing anything wrong but only trying to help him. Kai then reminds his sibling that he was the person responsible for teaching him about ‘pinky power’ — holding onto each other’s pinkies while telling nothing but absolute truth. Kai then latches onto his brother’s pinky before cutting it off because he hasn’t been telling the truth for quite some time.
Kai then stabs his brother in the neck as he bleeds out on the floor.
Kai then turns his attention to Beverly, who he accuses of killing Detective Samuels. It seems Winter told her brother that she was having lunch in the detective’s car when Beverly showed up out of nowhere, shot him dead and proclaimed herself one of the proud followers of the SCUM Manifesto. Of course, Winter was lying her ass off and Beverly is irate at the accusations, but it’s already too late for her.
Rather than killing her, however, Kai order that Beverly be placed into the “isolation chamber” as her punishment. There’s no telling what fresh horror is in store for Beverly, but it’s likely we’ll find that out in the coming weeks.
And finally at the end of the execution and sentencing, Kai proudly introduces the newest member to their family. That’s when Ally removes her clown mask and locks eyes with her wife Ivy standing directly across the room from her.
See, Ally admits when she’s talking to Kai that his petty tortures didn’t drive her mad but in fact forced her to face her fears. Now Ally’s not afraid of anything — and that includes her wife. Ivy is shocked to see that the woman she attempted to drive insane is still standing — and now Ally is looking stronger than ever before.
‘American Horror Story: Cult’ returns with a brand new episode next Tuesday night at 10pm ET on FX.
