In the latest ‘American Horror Story: Roanoke’ recap, everybody searches for Flora but a medium might hold the key to getting her back….
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
When we last left ‘American Horror Story: Roanoke’ — it seems that the show has now given that official title to the season — Lee was horrified to find that her daughter Flora was missing and all that was left behind was a bloody tree and her hoodie hanging at least a hundred feet high in the branches.
Sadly, Flora shouldn’t have been in the house in the first place but Lee felt like she was going to lose her daughter after a disagreement with her ex-husband Mason and rather than sort things out in court or just through mediation, she instead decided it was a good idea to kidnap Flora and bring her back to the haunted house she was sharing with her brother and sister-in-law.
So it all backfired in the worst way possible with Flora going missing and the latest episode delved deep into her whereabouts, who had her and some interesting revelations about the spirits haunting the woods around the home now belonging to Shelby and Matt Miller.
With that said, let’s recap the latest episode of ‘American Horror Story: Roanoke’ titled ‘Chapter 3’….
The House of Horrors
In the immediate aftermath of Flora’s disappearance, Lee is convinced that the cops in this town aren’t doing everything possible to find her and because she was one a police officer she knows how crucial these first few hours become. If she doesn’t find her daughter within 72-hours, Lee knows the chances of finding her alive are slim to none and at that point she’s only looking for the body.
So the family organizes a search party with many of the locals pitching in to find the missing girl, but no one seems to be having any luck locating her in the surrounding woods.
Lee is finally the person to stumble on a clue when she finds a piglet torn apart along with pieces of Flora’s doll all laid out together like some sort of horrific jigsaw puzzle. The clue leads Lee, Matt and Shelby to a farmhouse — a skeleton of a farmhouse really — and they find another mismatched collection of pig and doll parts left on the property as well.
When they enter the house, Matt and Shelby don’t find any people much less any clues to where Flora might be and the only things left inside are rotting carcasses and the flies feasting on the dead flesh. With nothing or nobody inside, they head out to the barn where they find two boys — very disturbed young boys — suckling from the utter of a dead cow while mumbling to each other at the same time.
The police bring the boys into the station for questioning but despite the best efforts of a psychologist to draw something out, the only thing they can repeat like it’s a broken record is the word “Croatoan”. The farm belonged to the Polk family — the same rednecks who tried to buy the house when Matt and Shelby out bid them — and the police believe they fled the area with Flora when they realized the cops were getting too close.
The arrival of Flora’s father Mason doesn’t make things much better after he erupts at the sight of the two boys taken from the farm not to mention how incensed he is at his ex-wife for taking her in the first place. He’s ready to tell the cops the whole story about how Lee kidnapped Flora before he had a chance to raise a custody dispute and get her taken away for good.
Matt convinces Mason to not tell the cops anything for now so they can concentrate on finding Flora and while he agrees, it’s clear he’s not happy and it’s only a matter of time before he makes Lee pay for what she’s done to their daughter.
Later that night just when everybody nodded off to sleep after a horrendous few days searching for Flora, Matt gets a call that sends everybody into a frenzy. The police have discovered a body, burnt to a crisp and tied to a wheel in the middle of the woods. When they make it out to the murder scene it’s clear this body doesn’t belong to a little girl but instead a man — it’s Mason’s body and he’s been burned alive.
Cricket Marlowe
Through all the commotion that came along with finding his ex-brother-in-law burned to death, Matt missed a notification on his phone that one of the security alarms in the house had been tripped the previous night. He looks at the video along with Shelby and he sees his sister Lee leave the house about 15 minutes after Mason and she doesn’t return until four hours later.
Plenty of time for Lee to butcher and then burn her ex-husband, who was threatening to take their daughter away from her for good.
Shelby seems convinced that they have to take this evidence to the police when Lee walks in and erupts on her sister-in-law. The argument continues until a squirrelly man with blonde hair walks into the room — his name is Cricket Marlowe and he’s a medium who specializes in finding missing children. He was “called” here after hearing about this case on CNN while watching television at his home in New Orleans (the sight of ‘American Horror Story: Coven’ and the last appearance of Cricket’s portrayer Leslie Jordan).
The family is very skeptical but after doing a Google search, the find that Cricket has actually helped the FBI on several cases and has a great success rate for locating missing children. Whether that’s a good or a bad thing remains to be seen, but they decide to allow Cricket to look around the house for clues and that’s when he convinces at least Lee and Shelby that he’s onto something.
Without any prior knowledge about the house or its inhabitants, Cricket finds the small closet where Flora was once hiding and he declares that she’s with Priscilla — a girl who died in the late 1500’s — the same ghost who said she was going to kill everyone in the house and leave Flora for last. This is all the evidence Lee needs to have Cricket hold a séance in the house in hopes of contacting Priscilla and hopefully find out where she’s taken Flora.
When Cricket reaches out to the spirit world, he doesn’t find Priscilla, but instead runs into a nasty ghost calling herself “The Butcher” — it’s Kathy Bates’ character who has been haunting the woods through the first two episodes. She explains that Priscilla isn’t part of her group and instead is “bastard seed” and a runaway. The Butcher isn’t into too much small talk because she declares that the land they are standing on belongs to her people and they must vacate it or deal with the consequences.
Cricket won’t budge so The Butcher slices a candle in two and then breaks all of the windows in the house to show just how much power she yields. Finally, Cricket shouts “Croatoan” and the spirit disappears from the house.
All of this evidence leads Cricket to believe he can help find Flora but there’s a price to pay — literally — because he charges $25,000 for his services. Matt erupts and calls him a con artist but as he leaves, Cricket whispers to Lee that “Emily says hello and wonders why she never looked for her”.
It turns out Lee had another daughter named Emily who she left in a car when she was just four years old. Lee needed something from the store and she just ran in for a few minutes but when she returned, Emily was gone and she never saw her daughter again. Modern day Lee knows how this sounds — two daughters, both gone missing and presumed dead and a mother that now seems like the prime suspect.
Those few whispers lead Lee to meet with Cricket the next day and she offers up the $25,000 fee to find Flora. That’s when he unveils the real story behind “The Butcher” of the Roanoke Colony
The Butcher
Back in the 1500’s, the settlers of the Roanoke colony were left behind while John White went to look for supplies and his wife Thomasin is in charge during his absence. Unfortunately, some of the settlers are ready to revolt and move the colony inland during the harsh winter that will be hitting soon, not to mention the lack of food they have to eat right now. Thomasin refuses and that’s when the settlers turn against her.
They chain her and cover her head with a spiked mask and even her son Ambrose is forced to turn against her before they banish the woman to the middle of the woods where they assume she will die. But Thomasin doesn’t perish and instead runs into a nymph in the middle of the woods (played by Lady Gaga) who offers her a trade. Thomasin can be freed of those chains if she eats a pig’s heart and hands over her soul.
Thomasin makes the trade and then reappears at the colony where she cuts down some of the conspirators against her with a cleaver. Her son apologizes and Thomasin accepts him back by her side and in the end she makes the declaration that the colony will move inland just as everybody originally wanted.
The colony moved inland — to the exact spot where Matt and Shelby’s house now stands and that explains why this land is so precious to the ghosts who have been haunting it for over 400 years.
The Exchange
With Cricket back on board, he decides to offer a trade to Thomasin and her people in exchange for their help finding Priscilla and Flora.
Cricket finds the colonists and tells them that if they will help find the girl, Matt and Shelby will vacate the house and burn it to the ground. Of course, Shelby had no part in agreeing to this but Matt told his sister that’s exactly what they would do. Shelby would argue with her husband but he’s mysteriously gone missing all of a sudden.
Shelby runs away to find her husband but when she finally tracks Matt down she’s horrified at what she sees. There are two of the hillbillies sitting down masturbating furiously while Matt has sex with Lady Gaga’s character like they are putting on a show for the captive audience.
Shelby turns away in disgust and runs back to the house.
When Matt gets back home, the police have arrived and he has no memory of having sex with anybody but Shelby certainly remembers seeing it all quite vividly. The police end up arresting Lee and that’s when Matt realizes what his wife has just done. She showed the video evidence to the cops and they’ve now taken his sister into custody and no one is any closer to finding Flora.
‘American Horror Story: Roanoke’ returns next Wednesday night at 10pm ET on FX.
