American Horror Story: Coven sees the severely fractured group of witches trying to regain the solidarity and the strength that they once had. The first order of business is to bring Queenie (Gabourey Sidibe) back to their side.
Madison (Emma Roberts) and Zoe (Taissa Farmiga) take to the streets of New Orleans dressed head-to-toe in black in search of their human voodoo doll sister. They find Queenie in a back alley standing menacingly over a mortally wounded man. She asserts her loyalty to her new leader – Marie Laveau (Angela Basset) – and dismisses Madison and Zoe’s claims that they’re going to help usher in a new era at Miss Robichaux’s. She then proceeds to slice open the dead man’s chest, who she says is a pedophile, and rip out his heart. Laveau needs it for a spell – a spell to give Queenie heightened powers for the war that’s coming.
With Fiona’s (Jessica Lange) health rapidly deteriorating, it doesn’t look like she’ll be around to participate in the showdown against her cross-town witching rival. In anycase, she’s more concerned with her in-house rival – the rising Supreme. Her meningeal carcinomatosis’ accelerated progress is caused by the young witch coming into power, so Fiona tells her paranormal lover that she’ll take out whomever that may be to buy herself more time.
Little does Fiona know that the witches in her coven are uniting under the common goal of eliminating her – with her daughter Delia (Sarah Paulson) spearheading the plot. Adding to their force is Misty (Lily Rabe), who seeks sanctuary at the door of Miss Robichaux’s after a man with a gun entered her cabin. She also brought along the newly resurrected Myrtle (Francis Conroy), whom Delia couldn’t be more pleased to see. Myrtle, the coven council veteran shocks everyone by declaring that it’s Misty – not Zoe – who is meant to be the next Supreme.
Upstairs, Zoe’s playing elementary school teacher to Kyle (Evan Peters), setting him up with a game online before she has to go back downstairs for a group spell. Madison enters the room, plops down on Kyle’s other side and makes out with him, reassuring Zoe that they’re sharing him and laughing at her attempts to help him reenter society. In the end, though, it's Zoe to whom Kyle professes his love.
Across the street, Luke, who like Kyle is plagued with an emotionally abusive mother, is getting an earful about having befriended the wicked neighbors across the way. When he tries to explain that they saved him from some reanimated corpses, his mother (Patti Lupone) tells him only God can save him. Apparently, she believes that an enema can save him as well, because she proceeds to give him one after forcing him to strip and sit in a bathtub. Later that night, Nan (Jamie Brewer) heads over there after her dreams of being the next Supreme are shut down. While she’s there, the same masked man (read: Delia’s witch-hunting husband) shoots through the window, killing the mother and severely wounding Luke.
Back at Robichaux’s, Myrtle is leading the witches of posterity in a ritual known as the Sacred Taking so that the new Supreme can rise to power in the event of the current Supremes’ death. How is the current Supreme Fiona’s death to come about? They’re going to make her kill herself. Step one in turning Fiona suicidal is sending Madison into her room while she’s puking from her cancer treatment. When Fiona leaves the bathroom floor, she’s greeted with the rising witch she killed twirling about her bedroom in a red dress, claiming her power and her bed.
After some magic that causes Fiona to imagine the Axeman (Danny Huston) leaving her as she gets more sickly, complaining of her stench, Fiona is ready to call it quits on life. She has Myrtle help her make up her face and then swallows the pills Madison had provided. Then, the ghost of Spalding (Denis O'Hare) appears to tell her that the coven is trying to kill her off and helps her puke up her death sentence. Once she’s feeling better, she greets the witches who’d been wishing for her death with her signature heir of regality.
It’s not long before attention is turned from Fiona to the shooting next door. After touching a bullet, Delia sees what happened – that her husband is out witch hunting. The revelation makes her thankful that they were unsuccessful is killing Fiona, as there are clearly bigger enemies afoot. That becomes even more clear when Madame LaLaurie’s (Kathy Bates) animated head, courtesy of Laveau and Queenie, shows up in a cardboard box on the footstep of Miss Robichaux’s.
American Horror Story: Coven airs Wednesdays on FX at 10/9c.
– Chelsea Regan
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