In the ‘American Horror Story: Roanoke’ recap, Shelby and Dominic try to survive in the house while Lee, Audrey and Monet try to survive the Polk family…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
It’s been a very bloody season of ‘American Horror Story’ thus far.
That probably seems like an oxymoron because EVERY season of ‘American Horror Story’ gets rather bloody, but the body count just seems higher during ‘Roanoke’. Perhaps it’s because we’re seeing some characters and actors die twice of the course of a single season?
Whatever the case, more bodies dropped in the latest episode as Dominic and Shelby tried to find a way to escape the house while being stalked by all the former residents along with a Butcher and her minions waiting outside.
Meanwhile a couple miles away, Lee, Audrey and Monet ran afoul of the real Polk family — the backwoods, inbred redneck family — and they were going through an even more heinous torture scenario complete with flaying and cannibalism.
Eventually the ones who were left alive — not everybody made it obviously — reconvened with a surprise ending and the reappearance of Wes Bentley as an actor from the reimagining of “My Roanoke Nightmare” that wasn’t on the casting list for the reality show sequel until now.
With that said, let’s recap the latest episode of ‘American Horror Story: Roanoke’ titled ‘Chapter 8’…
They’re Inside the House
After watching Agnes get her head lopped in half by the real Butcher, Dominic and Shelby knew that the rest of her merry clan of Colonial killers would be coming for them inside the house. What Dominic failed to realize — or at least didn’t remember from filming the show — is that many of the creatures who haunt this house don’t need permission to walk through the front door.
So when the Piggy Man and the Jane sisters start showing up, Dominic knows that the only way he’s going to get his own solo reality show after this outing is to survive the night. Sadly, Shelby isn’t much help because she’s nearly gone catatonic after killing her own husband and then realizing that there wasn’t much hope to escape this situation.
Finally, Shelby snaps out of it and suggests leaving through the secret passage in the basement but she’s haunted on the way down after running into Matt’s smashed head. They finally get into the secret passageway, but then they hear noises and from out of nowhere the Chen family appears, crawling down the tunnel like spiders.
Dominic and Shelby rush back into the house while trying to secure the door behind them, but to no avail. They keep running into all manner of horrific creature — including the Piggy Man who Shelby stabs — and they finally get upstairs to the bedroom and into the master bathroom where they will be forced to make their final stand.
Dominic is panicked while trying to figure away out of them, but Shelby has reverted back to her own psychosis, babbling incoherently and wondering how she’ll go on without the only man she’s ever loved. Shelby decides there is no moving forward without Matt so she takes the knife to her own throat and slashes across.
Dominic is horrified and shrieks in terror as Shelby bleeds out in front of him and now he’s left all alone in this house of horrors with only one hope to survive — make it until morning.
Human Jerky
Back at the Polk farm, Lee is still tied up to a chair while Mama Polk talks about her family’s tradition of cannibalism that dates back more than 100 years. This time around the right of passage goes to her son Jether, who is in charge of slicing a piece of Lee’s leg off so they can turn it into jerky and then feed it to Audrey and Monet in another room.
Once Mama Polk has her chunk of skin, Jether is left behind to keep an eye on Lee and he’s lamenting over the fact that the TV show version of their lives didn’t bother to portray him. Lee tries to convince him to let her go and she’ll make sure he’s in the sequel, but he’s not going for it. Jether does manage to tell the origin story of the Piggy Man, who is actually Kincaid Polk — another member of their family — who slaughtered pigs and one day put a severed hog’s head on and started slaughtering people instead.
Jether then offers Lee some cocaine to numb the pain because Mama Polk is coming back for a slice off her shoulder this time. Lee initially turns it down because she’s fought so hard to get back to sobriety, but then she realizes that Jether is going to kill her anyways so why not go out on a high.
With limited time left until her death, Lee asks Jether to film one last message to her daughter Flora since she would never see her again. Lee speaks into the camera and gives a passionate goodbye, but then also makes a confession — she is the one who killed Mason! Lee admits to the crime after she realized that Mason was going to take Flora away from her forever and there was no way she could allow that to happen.
After filming the confession and goodbye to her daughter, Lee prepares for Jether to go through with his first kill, but she decides to try one more trick. Lee seduces Jether so he unties her hand so she can touch him, but instead she grabs onto his man parts, which sends him crashing to the ground in agony. Lee takes the knife that was filleting her and stabs the dullard Polk to death before leaving the room to make her escape.
Bite Down
In the other room of the Polk house, Audrey and Monet are being tormented by two more brothers as they poke and prod at the actresses after feeding them pieces of Lee’s body.
The Polks are angry at these ladies for getting their boys taken from them — remember the cow suckling boys that were found in the barn several episodes ago and taken into social services — except there’s one major problem. Audrey reminds them that they didn’t have anything to do with it because they are just actors.
The Polks don’t seem to care much and then decide the next logical course of action is to pull the actresses teeth out of their heads because Mama Polk says that wearing necklaces made of them will protect the family from the Butcher and her gang.
Sadly the attempts to pull out Monet’s teeth utterly fails after their pliers break and she ends up crashing through her chair onto the ground. With the Polk boys gone for a moment, Monet takes advantage of the opening and gets loose from her ropes and runs away from the compound while leaving poor Audrey behind.
Mama Polk sends her boys to go after Monet while she stays behind and starts plucking teeth out of the British actress’s mouth. She only gets one tooth before Lee shows up and knocks Mama Polk out. She frees Audrey but rather than just running away, she needs to exact revenge. Audrey grabs the hammer and smashes through Mama Polk’s head, putting another family member down. Audrey and Lee escape, but Monet doesn’t get so lucky after the two remaining Polk boys catch up to her in the woods.
The Next Morning
Audrey and Lee rush back to the house through the secret tunnel and they arrive in the basement, right next to Matt’s lifeless corpse. Lee is crushed to see her brother laying there dead, but as much as Audrey wants to sympathize, she knows they need to get to safety.
They finally run upstairs and find Shelby dead as well, her throat slashed from ear to ear when Dominic appears. He tries to explain how Shelby killed Matt and then took her own life, but Lee isn’t buying it. Lee accuses Dominic of doing the deed because Shelby loved Matt and would never hurt him or herself.
She ends up kicking Dominic out of the room and locks the door behind him.
That’s when the Piggy Man shows up again and hacks Dominic to death while he begs and pleads for them to open the door. The next morning, Lee informs Audrey that she’s leaving to go back to the Polk compound. Her excuse is going back to retrieve the camera that was filming when Audrey killed Mama Polk and she killed Jether, but there’s a much more sinister reason at work. On one of those videotapes, Lee confessed to killing Mason.
Still, Audrey is convinced and she decides to go with Lee back to the Polk farm. On the way out of the house, they discover Dominic’s dead body before finally getting to the bottom of the stairs and the front door.
When they open it, the Piggy Man is standing there and Audrey smacks him with a crowbar. Instead of squealing, the Piggy Man says ouch and removes the mask — and Audrey recognizes him. She calls him ‘Gillian’ and it’s the same actor who played Ambrose, the Butcher’s son in the retelling of “My Roanoke Nightmare”.
Has this story been a hoax the whole time or what exactly is going on? Next week is the penultimate episode of ‘American Horror Story: Roanoke’ so it won’t take much longer to find out!
