American Horror Story: Apocalypse - Return To Murder House

The tenth (and final) episode of this season, titled Apocalypse Then, brought our time in the apocalypse to a close. This has been one amazing season and I am excited to see whatever Ryan Murphy does next!

With the usual reminder of spoilers lets break down what happened. 

We start this episode with Myrtle showing up at Mutt and Jeff's business. She sasses with Ms Venable (which is everything). They clearly have little use for each other. Ms Venable snarks that since Myrtle doesn't have an appointment or a package to deliver that she has no business there. She wants Myrtle to leave. Myrtle wants to be taken to Mutt and Jeff however and stands firm. Ms Venable wants to know how she got past security. Myrtle snaps her fingers and utters an incantation that puts Ms Venable into a trance like state. Myrtle steals the key off her and gets in one last dig with this great line as she saunters off:

Meanwhile Mutt and Jeff are arguing about their outpost placements. Mutt wants to put all the smart people together (which includes them) and Jeff wants to go where the hot people are. They also discuss that Michael wants Robot Miriam in outpost three and that he wants the memories of him being the Antichrist removed for her system. Jeff muses that it is Michael's show so whatever he says goes. Myrtle walks in at this point and immediately goes to their map. Mutt and Jeff immediately get up to try to kill her. She puts a spell on them that seems to make them compliant to her wishes. She asks where outpost three is. She explains to them that Coco's parents will be buying four tickets and that they better let them and put them in outpost three. They tell her that the outpost is full. She basically tells them that they better make it work and expresses that she is upset that she has to leave without killing them. She snaps her fingers as she leaves ensuring the spell lifts. 

We next see Cordelia breaking the news of the impending apocalypse to the witches. Mallory bemoans that they do not have the fire power to combat the amount of destruction Michael is going to cause. Coco is feeling sorry for herself and the fact that she just found her place in the world and now it was ending. She really doesn't want to die.

Cordelia lets them in on her plan. They need time for Mallory to be ready so they are going to use Coco's family money and connections to secure four spots in the outpost and one of those spots will be for Mallory. Madison, smartly, points out that Michael will know what they are and just kill them. Cordelia reveals that they'll be tampering with their memories and making them forget they are witches. The spell will give them new identities and new personalities. Coco's job will be to demean Mallory and make her doubt herself (in order to suppress her natural abilities) so they modeled her new personality after Madison. This explains why Coco was so awful to Mallory. Coco takes great offence to this and Madison tells her to consider it an upgrade. Coco wants her family to come and that plan is immediately shot down. Both Mallory and Coco are worried and unsure about being able to do this. Mallory wants to know if she'll remember Cordelia. The spell will remove all of their memories so Mallory clues in that this is a goodbye of sorts. Her and Coco have a great moment where Coco is teary and apologetic about having to be awful to her 'best friend'. They're total friendship goals. They hug it out with Mallory promising to not let anything bad happen to Coco. Cordelia performs the spell which includes an incantation, blowing some white dust from her hand onto them. It works and they are entirely different people.

We flashback and we see Coco's first meeting with Mr Gallant. Their Uber driver was Madison who sees a bus with Dinah's face on it advertising her new talk show. Mr Gallant is dismissive of Mallory pretty much immediately. We also see that she met Brock at this hair salon as well who tells her that she doesn't even need a haircut because she's already perfect. It's cute. 

We cut to Madison arriving back at Misty's place super upset and making demands.

She wants to burn Dinah for her betrayal and fills the rest of the coven in on what she saw (the bus with the show advertisement). Myrtle is totally in but Cordelia urges caution. Rash action could tip Michael off. She wants to wait until it is the right time to make her pay. Smart move in my opinion. Michael's going to realize something is going on if Dinah all of a sudden ends up getting burnt at the stake. 

We next flash to the present day. We see Mallory and Michael's interactions in the outpost again. Mallory's flash of power that causes Michael to be intrigued also wakes up the other witches! They survived the blast by burying themselves under the ground. They dig themselves out and head to the outpost which brings us to where we left off before this season became a bunch of flashbacks. 

Michael waxes on about how the world has been remade in his father's image. Michael believes he has already won. Myrtle tells him that his father obviously didn't tell him the most important part to bringing about an apocalypse - making sure all the witches are actually dead. Michael isn't too bothered. He thinks he could kill them all quite easily. He offers them mercy if they will kneel before him and pledge allegiance. The witches, obviously, decline his offer.

Dinah tells Cordelia that while she may have brought Dinah back to have access to the power of the Voodoo Queen she has picked the winning side and that is Michael's. As she goes to step towards him a very alive Marie Laveau enters the room. It turns out that Cordelia made a deal with Pappa Legba. He wasn't satisfied with Marie's torturing (she apparently doesn't have the heart for it) so Cordelia offered up another soul that would be more to his liking - Dinah's! Papa Legba took the deal so Marie got to come back and Dinah has to go to hell in her place. Marie kills Dinah while calling her trash. It's amazing and Angela Bassett looks stunning.

Robot Miriam goes to shoot everyone but Cordelia performs a spell that literally makes her blow up. The blast sends Michael flying. Miriam's head lands beside him and she is singing a childhood song. Michael is obviously upset by all of this. Madison picks up the gun and shoots Michael a bunch of times. Myrtle rushes over and grabs some of Michael's hair (which she mentions is as smooth as silk). Michael obviously isn't dead. I knew it wouldn't be that easy to get rid of the Antichrist. Cordelia says that they have to find a spot to perform the spell to send Mallory  back to a time and place where they can kill Michael before he wakes up. Madison says she'll stand guard and for them to go. They rush off with Mallory out in front. She runs into a very pissed off Brock who stabs her as revenge for taking his spot on the plane. Myrtle sees this happen and is enraged. She sets Brock on fire as payback (because she likes revenge hot).

We cut back to Michael who is waking up and healing super quickly. We literally see the blood flow back into his body. Madison quickly realizes she is screwed and is going back to hell.

Michael wastes no time in killing Madison by making her head literally explode with his powers. Bye, Madison. Have fun working in retail hell forever. She was never my favourite.

Cordelia panics as it looks like Mallory is dying. Marie tells her to take Mallory and go. She'll try to hold off Michael. She does this spell that creates a barrier that he cannot pass through and it works...at least at first. Michael stabs her but what Marie really wanted was to distract Michael so Coco could stab him (with a 'Die, Fuckface' for good measure). Michael scoffs at their pathetic attempts to kill him. He tells them that normally it would have worked but he is nothing like normal. He rips out Marie's heart and takes a bite while snapping Coco's neck with his powers. 

He pulls out the knife and rolls his eyes like this is all a big inconvenience to him. It's almost funny.  It's also incredibly awkward that Michael is still so hot while all of this is going on.

We cut back to Cordelia who is freaking out because Mallory is not getting any better. Myrtle offers the best summary of their situation.

Cordelia tells her that she loves her and rushes out of the room. Cordelia is totally going to do the self sacrifice thing and make it so that Mallory gets her full powers as the Supreme. It's such a Cordelia thing to do and the exact opposite of what her mother would have done. 

Cordelia runs into Michael in the hallway and he asks her how she expected this to go. She had to know that he was always going to win. She points out that he couldn't do it alone. He had to be led by his father, the warlocks, and others. All she sees is a  'sad, scared little boy' who couldn't even kill her with nuclear bombs. Michael tells her that he expected her to survive like a cockroach and he wanted her to so that he could kill her with her knowing that she failed. Cordelia tells him that there is so much more than just winning or losing. You only lose when you have no  hope. She tells him that he'll get to watch her die but he won't get any enjoyment from it. She uses her powers to take the knife from him and says this iconic line before stabbing herself:

She trusts her sisters to get the job done when she's gone. She is giving them everything she can to succeed and she knows they will. I love Cordelia! I love the very feminist slant this season had as well. 

Cordelia's face as she stabs herself is a mix between happiness that Michael was going to fail, pride that she was able to play a part in it, and pain. It's a great piece of acting from Sarah Paulson. 

Her stabbing herself displeases Michael who, I think, realizes something is going on.

Mallory sense her powers surging and immediately rejuvenates. She says the incantation and slips back through time as we cut to a shot of Cordelia looking like an angel surrounded by a pool of blood.

We are back to when Michael killed the priest that Constance brought him. She looses it on him and Michael apologizes and asks for help. He reminds her that he is a child. Constance screams that he is not her grandson and not a child. She gets fed up and kicks Michael out. She no longer wants him in her house. Michael begs and promises to change. She tells him that she doesn't want him and tells him not to come back. Michael finally snaps and starts to strangle her and she begs him to put her out of her misery. He stops before killing her and she calls him a coward. Michael storms out and right into the street where he is promptly hit by a car. We see that Mallory is driving it and she runs over him a few times for good measure. 

Constance comes out and as Michael lays dying her tells her that he is scared. He uses his last breaths to ask her to take him to the house so he can die on the property so he can be with her forever. Everyone who saw Murder House knows why he is asking this. If you die on the property you become a ghost. He literally just wants to be loved. Michael is actually really sympathetic even though he did destroy the entire world. Constance, however, isn't having any of it. She is not going to take him back to the property. Her response is to tell Michael:

Ouch. Michael basically takes his last breaths knowing that his own grandmother didn't want him around anymore. 

We flash to when Mallory first arrives at the school. She remembers everything but nobody else remembers that the world ended and was rest by the witches. Cordelia is in great health and alive. She asks Mallory if they met (indicating she has some repressed memories) to which Mallory jokes that she has that kind of face. We see that Zoe is alive and teaching again. The only witch who is not back among them is Myrtle. There was no threat from Michael so Cordelia never broke her promise to not bring her back. 

Queenie comes in and excitedly tells them that she is going to California to attend the Price Is Right and she is super excited about this cute hotel she found and starts to describe the Hotel Cortez. Mallory immediately jumps in and tells her not to stay at that hotel because it is too far from the beach. Queenie thanks her for the advice and decides to look for another place to stay closer to the beach.

Mallory's voice over reveals that she knows Madison is in hell and that they'll eventually have to go get her but for now she can sweat it out. She also reveals that since she killed the spawn of Satan she has some pull in the Underworld. This means she was able to bring Misty back! Misty and Cordelia have a great reunion and Misty is introduced to Mallory.  Mallory leaves them alone to catch up (and hug a whole lot). 

We next flash to 2020 (five years after Mallory arrives at the school) and we see Timothy and Emily meet cute. She's protesting a coffee place that he is exiting from and she bumps into him spilling his coffee. They share some cute banter and they go off together so that Emily can buy him a new coffee from a place that she deems more appropriate. 

We flash to Emily having their first child (so I guess the date went well) and then them discussing how horrible their three year old son, Devan, has been in the car after a date night. Their kid seems to have a bit of a temper. They leave the car and the signs of the Antichrist are everywhere. Oh, no! They go into the house and find their adorable tyke with a dead babysitter on the floor (just like Michael at the end of season one). They even have it set up exactly the same with him in the rocking chair. This tyke has dark hair though instead of Michael's blonde. Mallory said that the devil wasn't going to just give up and she's totally right.

There is a knock at the door and Anton LaVey and his followers are there. They reveal that they are there to help. Looks like the witches work is never done (and that sometimes you can't fight fate).

Seems that Emily and Timothy were Satan's back up plan. Does that mean he knew Michael wasn't going to make it? Perhaps. There could be an entire other season answering the questions I have. Was it the devil in the Rubber Man suit? Did he have a direct hand in creating Devan? Does the fact that Timothy and Emily have 'special DNA' have anything to do with them having the next Antichrist? So many questions.

We've survived the apocalypse (if only to be left on the possible brink of a new one) and now all we can do is eagerly await the next season of this insane and wild show.