In the penultimate American Horror Story: Hotel recap, Liz and Iris try to finish the job but the Countess doesn’t go down without a fight …
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
It’s only been a few weeks since we last visited the Hotel Cortez on American Horror Story: Hotel but for some reason it felt much longer. Thankfully, the show didn’t skip a beat although sadly this was the penultimate episode ahead of the finale one week from tonight.
As a refresher for what happened the last episode — Liz and Iris fed up with their shared suffering at the hands of The Countess decided to take back the hotel and seek out some much needed vengeance as well. So the two of them came into the Countess’ penthouse, guns blazing like a scene out of a Quentin Tarantino movie.
Meanwhile across town, John Lowe’s fractured psyche finally pieced itself back together again as he was reunited with his wife and his son Holden after he was kidnapped all those years ago. Since that time, John became the Ten Commandments killer, but only after James Patrick March saw a darkness in his soul and cultivated it to turn him into one of the greatest mass murderers of all time. Now with his family beside him, is John still a sinner or has he found a way to be a saint again?
Not to mention this week finally brought this season together with another season from the past as a familiar face checked in but the better question might — did they check out?
A lot unfolded this week so let’s recap the latest episode of American Horror Story: Hotel titled ‘Battle Royale’ …
Never Leave Me
Liz and Iris have no problem firing off round after round aimed at their respective targets but it’s amazing how bad their aim could be at such a short range. Not only did they miss hitting the Countess in any vital organs, but Donovan sacrificed himself by jumping in front of the bullets to save the woman he loves.
Iris finally calls off the attack to check on her son, who she can’t seem to figure out if she loves or hates these days, but he’s already near death. In the confusion, the Countess slips away and this does not bode well for the would be assassins. Iris tends to her son but Donovan knows he’s going to die — he just doesn’t want to die at the Hotel Cortez. He doesn’t want to spend the rest of eternity with the rest of the Countess’ lovers.
So Iris and Liz drag him outside where he finally expires — Donovan is sadly dead.
The deadly duo has bigger problems inside, however, because the Countess has not only made it through the hail of gunfire, but she ran into Sally, who took her to the basement, pulled out the bullets and began to sew her up again. The Countess isn’t sure why Sally is playing Florence Nightingale all of a sudden but her motives soon become clear.
Sally is saving the Countess because she’s mortified of being alone but her worry isn’t about the hotel’s longest living resident. Sally wants to save the Countess so she can lure John back from his happy new family life and then kill him inside the Cortez so they can be together forever.
Sally then explains how she first came to visit the Hotel Cortez.
It seems back in 1993, Sally was a successful musician, penning potential hits for rising stars while also serving as a drug dealer for a childhood friend who drew up and became one of the biggest pushers on the west coast. Eventually, Sally was drawn into a three-way with the couple she wrote songs for and they ended up at the Hotel Cortez, lustfully clawing at each other while plunging heroin into every vein that could be tapped.
Amidst the drug induced haze, Sally decided she wanted to bond them together permanently so they could never be apart. Unfortunately she meant this literally and Sally actually sewed the three of them together, needle through flesh, but in the process both the girl and guy she was enamored with died from a combination of drugs and blood loss.
Sally called for help but Ms. Evers had no desire to save a bunch of drug addicts and so there she laid for five days with her friends’ rotting corpses laying beside her. After two days, the addiction demon showed up and tortured her for another three days until Sally finally had enough and she broke free, literally ripping her skin loose from the dead bodies.
For all these tales of woe, the Countess really doesn’t give a shit because she’s got her mind on more important things — namely healing from the blood loss and gunshot wounds. She needs blood but not the normal, everyday variety. She needs blood from someone like her but that’s when Sally has to break the bad news to the Countess — Donovan is dead.
The only alternative is for the Countess to drink from her two remaining ‘children’ and the blonde headed babies are more than willing to sacrifice themselves for their mother. She drains them both and the Countess is on her way back to full health but that’s the least of her problems as it turns out.
Blast from the Past
Knowing that the Countess is still alive, Liz and Iris turn to the only place where they can find help and a person who hates the eternal bitch even more than they do — Ramona Royale.
The dastardly duo breaks into the steel plated room where Ramona was stashed, but they quickly find out that she already broke free (thanks to Will Drake) and she’s thirsty for revenge. But blood won’t do the trick — she needs to take a life and then drink it dry to really feel alive again.
So Liz and Iris head downstairs to find a (not so willing) victim and that’s when they run into a guest checking into the hotel — and it’s none other than Queenie from American Horror Story: Coven!
She’s arrived in Los Angeles to attend and play on The Price is Right and Queenie didn’t come just for the show — she came to win and win big.
“That’s actually guaranteed. My Supreme did a little something, something to my ticket so it’s enchanted.”
~ Queenie
When Liz realizes who this is — a member of the famous coven of witches from New Orleans — who came out a few years ago and are now considered celebrities. He’s enamored but more importantly, she’s full of powerful blood that will flow through Ramona and give her the strength to take out the Countess.
Upstairs, Queenie gets a bad vibe from the room — like a really bad vibe — but Liz and Iris insist she stays. Queenie finds out why a few seconds later when a ravenous Ramona pops out of the shower, ready for dinner.
“Bitch, when was the last time you saw a dermatologist?”
~ Queenie
Queenie definitely gets the line of the night but she’s got bigger problems to deal with — namely Ramona is thirsty and there’s only one thing quench that hunger.
“I ain’t nobody’s protein shake, bitch!”
~ Queenie
Queenie then reminds everybody what her power was on Coven — she was a human voodoo doll and she proceeds to stab and beat the shit out of herself with every cut and punch hitting Ramona with full force. But out of nowhere a knife comes hurdling through the air, stabbing Queenie in the chest and as she starts to bleed out on the bed, the witch can’t help but wonder why she’s dying rather than the blunt force of that weapon didn’t go back to the person holding onto it.
The problem is the person wielding the weapon was James Patrick March — and voodoo dolls don’t effect those who are already dead.
“You may be a witch, but I’m a ghost.”
~ James Patrick March
Ramona feasts on Queenie to prepare herself for what comes next — she’s going to go after the Countess with March’s full blessing because he wants his beloved dead and spending eternity beside him. She’ll never do that if she knows he was behind it all so he’s found the perfect patsy to do the deed and Ramona has more than enough incentive to kill the Countess.
A Blessing and a Curse
After healing up thanks to her children’s blood, the Countess has her midnight drink interrupted by a visitor — Ramona Royale is back, she’s a full strength and she wants revenge. But rather than engage in a bloody fight in the middle of the penthouse, the two former lovers end up talking each other to death instead.
The Countess has pretty much lost everything at this point — Valentino and Donovan are both dead and she’s stuck living in a hotel with constant reminders of the life she never really wanted with James Patrick March. The Countess is beginning to realize that she’s been mired in heartbreak for all these years because that’s all she’s ever known.
And maybe it’s all her fault.
“I think everyone in the world thinks they’re either blessed or cursed. I’ve come to realize that I’m neither. I am a curse. Nobody that gets within 10 feet of me survives and God help you if you get right up close, skin to skin, then you’re really screwed.”
~ The Countess
Rather than allowing Ramona to kill her or the two of them fighting until both of them are dead, the Countess gives her former lover a counter offer. Let her live and she will give Ramona the hotel, lock, stock and barrel. The Countess just wants out.
“I don’t want to be here anymore.”
~ The Countess
If Ramona is going to kill her, the Countess asks for one final favor — she wants to have her former lover in bed one last time before she either leaves the Cortez for good or she shuffles off this mortal coil. Ramona concedes and takes the Countess to bed again and it appears she’s going to be the new owner at the hotel but who will be left behind with her?
Thou Shalt Not Commit Murder
John Lowe’s life is finally coming back together as he picked the puzzle pieces of his broken marriage and home life and started to find where each fit again. He’s at home with his daughter Scarlet, while foraging for bodies to feed his wife and son. John is at peace but it doesn’t take long for the image of a happy home life to take a dramatic turn for the worse.
John comes home to find his family missing and a key to a room at the Hotel Cortez waiting for him.
He rushes to the hotel and finds Sally there waiting for him and she’s got orders — John needs to finish his series of murders for Mr. March or something very bad is going to happen to his family. So long as John finishes his job, the family will be returned to him without harm.
It shouldn’t be a difficult task since there’s only one commandment left — thou shalt not commit murder — and with a hotel full of them, this isn’t a difficult task.
And that’s where everything from this week finally intercedes as the Countess packs her back and gets ready to leave, the elevator doors open and there’s John Lowe with his gun drawn and unlike the two novices who came in shooting earlier, he doesn’t miss.
The Countess is shot dead, beheaded and her beautiful visage is now forever captured inside one of John’s decorative cylinders in his secret kill room. March is over the moon with excitement because not only did he finally raise a serial killer worth his time, but he also got the Countess killed and now she’s stuck living with him in the hotel for eternity.
Before John can get his family back, Sally makes one last attempt to make him stay with her forever as well but March stops her before she can land the killing blow. March still has plans for John Lowe and he’s not about to let some two-bit junkie kill him for the sake of her own pathetic loneliness.
Together Forever
In the end, the Countess arrives for dinner with her husband James Patrick March and he’s bursting with joy. But before the celebration can begin that she’s now going to spend every moment of every day with him from now until forever, March finds out some disturbing news.
He’s believed for nearly a hundred years that it was the Countess who turned him into the police but she denies ever doing that and it becomes clear that the real culprit was none other than Ms Evers. The obsessed chamber maid who gets out spots — she’s been obsessed with March for years and she thought that if he was close to getting caught, they’d die together and he’d realize just how much she’s meant to him all these years.
Instead, March orders her out of his room and out of his life forever. Ms. Evers slinks away and March is finally left alone with his one true love — a shell of who she once was but the Countess is finally his and his alone.
“How thrilled I am to have you across from me. Not once a month but from now on. Until the sun falls from the sky and the heavens burn in conflagration.”
~ James Patrick March
Together forever, indeed.
SOUNDTRACK:
“Seconds” by The Human League
“I Wanna Be Adored” by The Stone Roses
Next week is the American Horror Story: Hotel season finale so don’t miss out on it!
