Welcome back! The new season of American Horror Story has arrived and Ryan Murphy has promised us a crossover with Murder House and Coven. When this hour is over, you may be wondering where the hell the crossover is, but if you watch and listen closely, we have a glimpse. Here's where we are after Apocalypse Episode 1: "The End."
Let's Keep On Looking For The Light
The season begins with aspiring Instagram influencer Coco St. Pierre Vanderbilt (Leslie Grossman) getting her hair did. Evan Peters plays Mr. Gallant and the duo are in the midst of making Coco fabulous when Coco's rich daddy Facetimes her. Nuclear warfare is afoot and the world is about to be wiped out. The people in the hair salon assume these reports are a hoax like the nonsense that happened in Hawaii last year, but this is the real deal. Coco's dad says it's too late for him and her mom in their current location but informs Coco that their family has paid for 4 spots in a guaranteed safe place. Just before the call cuts off, he tells Coco to get her ass to the Santa Monica airport.
Coco calls her partner, Brock (Billy Eichner...these two are just as compatible as their Cult Meadow and Harrison characters) to tell him they have a ticket to safety, but Brock is way the hell on the other side of town so Coco ditches him and takes her personal assistant Mallory (yay Billie Lourd!), Gallant, and his grandmother Evie to fill the 4 spots in whatever safe salvation lies ahead. Evie, by the way, is played by Joan Collins, who could easily just be playing herself in this show. Anyway, somewhere in the mass hysteria growing around them, the foursome boards a private jet that they discover mid-flight is piloted by no one, and they off they go to the unknown safe zone.
In another part of the city, not long before the missile alert, high school senior Timothy learns that he has just been accepted to UCLA. Woohoo! Dreams come true! He would soon be embarking on a great academic adventure if wasn't for the whole world coming to an end thing. Bummer. As his family hears the missile alert on TV and realizes shit is about to get real, the Men In Black employees of "The Cooperative" show up in an armored vehicle and take Timothy away from his family. Seems he has some sort of special genetic something that makes him valuable in the apocalypse. He is removed from his house by force as his family and the rest of the world are soon completely wiped out in a blaze comparable to most disaster movie blazes.
If We Can Hold On Through The Night
Timothy is locked up with a girl named Emily, who also has a special genetic something. They are ushered past a man and woman on their knees, apologizing profusely before being shot to death (neat), and they go through some sort of decontamination chamber with the hazmat guys from E.T. before entering their new home. Sarah Paulson emerges from the shadows as Wilhemina Venable...not Cordelia Goode or Billie Dean Howard...and Wilhemina is in charge of this underground safe zone called Outpost 3. It looks like some sort of mansion but Wilhemina says it's a former boys school. Interesting. She references "The Cooperative" as the powers that be, and I'm thinking this has to be the Coven, but I get no confirmation on that tonight. She explains that Timothy and Emily will be in the purple group, the elite color level you want to be in apparently, and others will be in the gray group. They are the servants. I'm sensing some sort of Divergent thing here, but Wilhemina's rules continue on. Everyone dresses up for dinner, no one leaves the building, and no sex allowed without authorization. Apparently the two people who were shot outside had boned and had to be put down. Oh lordy.
Timothy and Emily dress for dinner and meet the other purple inhabitants of Outpost 3 - The Coco foursome we were introduced to earlier (though Mallory is wearing gray), a TV personality named Dinah Stevens (Adina Porter), and two dudes named Stu and Andre, who I assume are dating. Each night the group listens to The Carpenters' "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft" on repeat in the music room until they are called to the dinner table, and they complain about this as if beggars can be choosers when ballistic missiles have depleted the earth. Just sayin.' Finally this fabulous looking crew of ingrates begin to eat, and they complain about the lack of food and variety. Groan. We are then introduced to Miriam Mead and my first observation is: Kathy Bates...The Matrix has you. Miriam is carrying some sort of contraption that's telling her one of the purple people is contaminated. She grabs Gallant and Stu and puts them through a contamination chamber test, so Stu's boyfriend must be pisssssssed, and she discovers Stu is the contaminated party. Instead of cleansing him, she shoots him in the head. Holy shit! He must have had a paid spot ($100M a pop apparently) in the bunker and not the special genetic something.
Dinner the following evening is surprisingly more robust and plentiful. The elite is eating stew and they are thrilled momentarily. Where did the chefs find the meat you ask? Yep. They served Team Purple a Stu stew. What's an apocalypse without a little cannibalism anyway, right? Though Wilhemina denies they are eating human flesh for dinner, Evie could care less. She thinks her meal is divine and full of fiber. I kind of love her.
As the purple party reassembles in the music room to discuss whether or not their leaders have served them Stu stew, the Carpenters song has now become "The Morning After" by Maureen McGovern. Sure, it's a hopeful tune...but it was made famous in The Poseidon Adventure, which is a movie about a cruise ship that flips upside down and less than a dozen people survive. Gallant believes this is a message that help is coming and they won't be in this situation forever, but then we cut to 18 months later where the same song is playing, the food rations are minimal, and these folks are beyond miserable. Well, everyone but Timothy and Emily who have a secret, mostly chaste romance.
Behind closed doors we find out that Matrix Miriam (that's what I'm calling her) and Wilhemina are totally fucking with the inhabitants of Outpost 3. There was no contamination - these bitches killed Stu and fed him to the purples for the hell of it. They also play dress up in purple clothes and play cards when no one is watching. The Collective has no idea of these incidents and made up rules, but whoever they are, I'm sensing swift punishment for these sinister ladies if they find out.
Almost on cue, "The End" closes with a stranger approaching the gates. He himself is cloaked and he arrives through the fog in a carriage drawn by dark horses. He is from The Cooperative, his name is Michael Langdon, and he is creepy. He tells the workers outside of the gates to tend to his animals, and he makes his way inside to meet with Wilhemina. Michael Langdon, you'll recall, is the name of the evil
The episode ends there...you read that right. If you're like me, you stared at the closing credits with a WTF?!? look on your face. You were looking for the ghosts of Murder House or the witches of Coven in this hour (at least Stevie Nicks for god's sake!), but instead got brand new characters and an appropriately eerie Michael Langdon instead. Sooo we're left wondering how this crossover will happen. If the ghosts of Murder House are tied to the house, is this outpost under what was the house? Will we only see them on Halloween? Could the outpost be under Ms. Robichaux's Academy from Coven? One can imagine the Supreme would have an end of the world survival plan in place, right? The way Michael Langdon rolled in, it made me think he was one of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse. Perhaps Pestilence or Death? Could Wilhemina be Famine? Is it possible The Collective is behind the nuclear missiles? Maybe I am way, way off. Time will tell...but the actors playing multiple characters thing is sure going to get interesting as the story rolls on. They all really do look pretty in purple though.
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