The Axeman has been watching Fiona since she was a little girl.
Credit: FX
This episode of “American Horror Story” opens with a scene from when Kyle was still alive. He and his frat brothers are at a tattoo parlor, but Kyle’s the only one not getting inked. When they egg him on, he tells them he wants to be the hero engineer who can stop the next Hurricane Katrina from devastating New Orleans, and he wants to be taken seriously — sans tattoo. Flash forward to the present, where Kyle is locked up and struggling against his chains at Delia’s greenhouse at Miss Robichaux’s, where Zoey is waiting with a gun. Zoey tells him he has to go, not least of all because he killed his mother, but when it’s time to pull the trigger, she breaks down and hugs him instead.
Madison is not enjoying her return to life and delivers a soliloquy on — what else? Being a millennial: “We are known for our entitlement and narcissism,” she reflects, as she talks about suppressing the pain all her life from her cruel parents and a gang rape. But she wishes she could feel the pain again because now she feels nothing, even after raiding Fiona’s lab. She sits while holding a lighter up against the palm of her hand. As it burns through, she wonders, “How could anything be worse than this eternal silence inside of me?”
Queenie is searching for a 3 a.m. snack but everything’s gone thanks to a ravenous Madison. Delphine walks into the kitchen and she’s a little peckish as well, so the two ladies drive out to Frostop Burgers to order two extra large meals. Queenie sighs that she came to New Orleans to hang out with her witch sisters, and instead, she’s in the parking lot of a fast food joint with an “immortal racist.”
Hank calls Delia and tells her he misses her but promises he’ll see her soon. The camera pans down and we see that he has an arsenal of weapons ready. Delia steps into the hallway and when she almost falls down the stairs, Madison comes to the rescue. Fiona touches her and gets a vision of Madison’s death: She sees Fiona slash Madison’s throat.
Fiona has gone home with the Axeman, where he offers her some bourbon and plays jazz, naturally. Fiona surveys the spartan space and sees photos of a man on the walls — she asks the Axeman who he is, and he responds that the man is a great jazz pianist. Fiona excuses herself to go to the bathroom and discovers that her hair is falling out but steps out before seeing the dead pianist in the bathtub.
The problems of millennials plague even dead girls like Madison.
Credit: FX
Fiona notices more hair falling out and decides to jet, but the Axeman tries to stop her, saying this isn’t just a one night stand and that it may be their destiny. “Do you think my destiny is here at this roach-infested s—hole?” she asks. But he persists in the name of love, and the two knock knees to pulsing red lights and a sax solo.
Zoey teaches Kyle to say “food” (“fooooood”) and “bed,” but he freaks out when he hears the latter word. Madison walks in and when Zoey steps out, she tries to bond with Kyle over their mutual undead status; the two share a tearful embrace.
Queenie is visiting Marie and discovers that Madame Laveau is making a big ol’ pot of gumbo. Marie urges Queenie to ask Delphine about all the things she’s done and invites her to join the Ninth Ward’s House of Voodoo — under the condition that she brings Delphine with her. Queenie asks Marie what she would do to Delphine if she brought her, and Marie tells her not to worry.
Delia tells Zoey she’s one “hot s—” witch and warns her that her power won’t be unnoticed. She warns Zoey that Fiona will slit her throat just like she slit Madison’s if she thinks she’s the next supreme. Delia and Zoey start hatcing a plan to kill Fiona, but when Zoey walks back to her room, she finds Kyle and Madison in a very compromising position — Kyle has Zoey up against the wall and it looks like being undead isn’t so bad after all.
Fiona is about to leave the Axeman’s apartment and tells him the dead body in the bathroom is a bit of a turn-off. She also says that she has called the police, but he calls her bluff. He tells her they’re one and the same, and reveals that he’s been watching her since she was eight years old. The walls have eyes!
There’s a flashback to Miss Robichaux’s, when an older girl tries to knock a glass of milk onto Fiona’s lap, but Fiona uses her telekineses to throw the milk onto the bully, after which a bookcase falls on the girl. But the Axeman reveals that he was the one responsible for the bookshelf collapse — he’s watched her grow up, and fallen in love with her. “In love like a father, like a man,” he tells her. They kiss but she slaps him because she hates being reminded that she has grown old and snaps, “What was that? A mercy lay?” right before she storms out.
Spalding wakes up tied down to his bed and he speaks for the first time in decades. He wonders how his tongue came back and Zoey informs him that she found it in a little box, still alive, because Myrtle Snow had enchanted it. Myrtle wasn’t a strong enough witch to restore the tongue, but Zoey is, and now Spalding can finally tell the truth. He admits he didn’t kill Madison and that he knows who killed her. Zoey forces him to confess that Fiona killed Madison. “Fiona Goode,” he wails. After Zoey gets her information, she stabs him dead.
Queenie finds Delphine carving a ham and asks her what the worst thing she ever did was, but Delphine doesn’t want to talk about it. Queenie asks her again, and coaxes her by saying friends need to trust each other, and Delphine gives in.
She has a flashback to dinner at the grand LaLaurie home, when Delphine asks her slave Sally, who has just given birth, to come to her boudoir later to help her with her beauty regimen — she doesn’t want the new mother to toil in the kitchen. The problem is, Delphine’s husband fathered the baby, and Delphine tells Sally her youth serum is extra special tonight, because the blood in it is from Sally’s baby. Sally throws herself off the balcony and cracks her head on the pavement “like an egg.” She asks Queenie to try to understand that it was a different world back then, and that she’s trying to learn to be good. In a warm and fuzzy moment, she tells Queenie she’s glad to have a true friend like her to guide her.
Fiona finds another clump of hair in her hand and starts shaving her head. Meanwhile, Madison informs Zoey she has no plans to give Kyle up but proposes that the two of them share him. Madison and Kyle sit together on the bed and stretch their arms out to Zoey, initiating the Great Zombie Threesome.
Queenie takes Delphine, now decked out in an knockoff Ed Hardy sweatshirt, to Marie’s salon and hands her over to Marie and her cronies. They lock her up to give her a taste of her own medicine, and let Queenie make the first cut with a hook. Then we see Marie at her vanity painting herself with blood. She looks at her own reflection and says, “Beau-ti-ful.” So that’s how Angela Bassett does it.
Follow Andrea Park on Twitter: @andreapark
