In its penultimate episode, American Horror Story: Cult exposes past motivations, disposes of present threats and imposes terror.
Though this week’s episode of American Horror Story: Cult was a lot of wrapping up of loose ends, there was a surprising amount of newly shocking information to take in for a season about to come to a close. Maybe Kai’s internal mania finally cracked through to the surface, perhaps the relevance to our national reality finally hit a little too close to home, or maybe it’s that we’re somehow really growing to enjoy these characters, but any way you slice it (no pun intended), this week was harrowing in a way the rest of the season hadn’t been.
Sure, we’ve been disturbed and repulsed almost every episode thus far, but the vulnerability — and dare I say, humanity — of these characters has suddenly become too much to bear. Among other shocking moments from this week’s penultimate episode, one of the scariest reveals of the series came in the slow but now inevitable understanding that these uncontrollable, inhumane monsters are, after all, just humans, too. Read on to find out how these realizations came to be, and for some big time season 7 shockers.
Bebe’s influence
We all remember Bebe Babbitt, Valerie Solanas’ lifelong partner and after-death advocate, who shockingly was revealed to have been in cahoots with Kai to turn the women against each other. But what we definitely did not fully grasp nor could possibly have seen coming is the fact that Bebe is not, in fact, a liar. She’s actually the brains behind the whole operation. Or at least, the intended operation.
In a quick flashback, we see Winter and her friends as they casually yet confidently talk up their pant-suited candidate of choice. Kai, who of course is lurking in the background, inserts himself in the dialogue in what can best be described as the world’s most aggressive “Actually…” After the conversation gets too heated, Kai slaps one of Winter’s friends in the face. As a part of his probation, he’s forced to go to anger management, where his therapist is none other than the marvelous, black-bobbed feminist that is Bebe.
In their first session, Bebe tells Kai to consider going into politics. She goes on a wonderful rant where she reveals that even as an old-school feminist, Trump is a hero of sorts simply for the fact that he was able to rile up all the women and move them to action. She tells Kai that it’s important for women today to allow their rage to take over so that they can successfully topple the patriarchy and rule the world (essentially).
So, dear reader (and watcher), as we maybe should’ve known from the beginning, Bebe is not a woman who’d turned to the dark side and plotted against the sisterhood. She’s the opposite: a woman who’d intended to manipulate a power-hungry man into doing the dirty work that would allow women to reign supreme. How could we have taken for granted that there was a lady who kickstarted the whole thing? There always is.
Despite her noble efforts, however (this is AHS –there is always a hard however), Bebe returns in the present day to try to put Kai back in line. He reveals that he’d never intended to do anything to help the female population, although he does want women to get angry so that they’d tear the country to apart, leaving him to lead. It is at this point that she does what every woman is metaphorically doing to their television screens with their thoughts and points a gun at him. Just as she makes to pull the trigger, Ally shoots Bebe from behind. Bye bye, Bebe. We hardly knew ye, and yet you were the most heroic character of the season. RIP.
Modern Manson murders
For the past few weeks, we’ve seen Kai slowly but surely spiral into his own delusions as his power grew and his sense of actual self continued to shrink. Part of that delusion was his frequent storytime sessions with his army of dudebros, wherein they’d sit around the basement on sleeping bags and Kai would recount to them the gruesome tales of cult leaders past. This week was no exception, and since we (and Kai) are sorta running out of time here, it was time to bring out the big guns — unfortunately, wordplay intended.
During a rally, a protester charges the stage and pepper-sprays Kai in the face. Later in his basement, as he watches a debrief of the incident, Kai sees his would-be competition, Senator Herbert Jackson, telling the camera that Kai should be more worried about the Department of Justice taking him down. So after this small series of unfortunate events, what’s a cult leader to do but regroup and get his cronies all riled up? As Kai (or “Divine Leader,” as they’re now calling him) regales them with the story of the Manson murders, Kai decides it’s time for them to shift the culture and do something shocking — more shocking than 1,000 Manson murders — in order to really make change.
Cue their newest initiative, chillingly referred to as “The Night of a Thousand Tates.” When Gary breaks into a Planned Parenthood, he’s soon greeted with a bunch of the clowns in costume surrounding him. At Kai’s instruction, he willingly lets the cult charge at and stab him; they leave his body chained outside the Planned Parenthood with a river of blood leading up to the door. “Stop the Slaughter” is scrawled on the building.
Soon after the discovery, Beverly interviews Kai at the scene of the crime, where Kai posits that the Senator is to blame for this murder and “wonders” who’s next. I’m no psychic, but I foresee a bloodbath in the season finale, and not only physically. The showdown between good and evil, snowflake and alt-right, the rest of the world and Kai is likely going to get even uglier than we thought it would.
Winter Is Leaving
After Winter’s mini-triumphs in the past several episodes, she was fast becoming a character to root for. It seemed as though she was finally ready to break ties with Kai, to help out her fellow woman, and to return to the With-Her-ness that got her into this mess in the first place. And it turns out, she was ready. But that doesn’t mean she was permitted.
In an act of apology and seemingly genuine compassion, Winter tries to help Beverly, who’s noticeably become a shell of herself, escape the cult by offering her an Amtrak ticket. Beverly, knowing Winter’s previous game and refusing to forget her betray, thinks it’s a test, and even when Winter swears it’s genuine, Beverly professes her undying loyalty to “Devine Leader” and pledged to stay.
Back at base(ment)camp, Kai is super paranoid. In an effort to scrub the truth away, he makes Winter and Ally clean and strip down everything, including that ice cream truck. While working, Winter asks Ally about Ivy’s death, but Ally asks her why she’d think it was Kai.
Later, Ally confronts Kai in his basement as he’s panicking while trying to identify an alleged buzzing noise that he’s certain is a device planted by the Feds. Ally tries to talk him down, claiming she wants to help, but he flees to escape the buzzing and ends up in the upstairs room full of dead bodies. There, he laments to his zombie brother that this room is the only place he can be safe.
And just when we think Kai is on the verge of a breakthrough back to reality and humanity, a hallucinated vision of Charles Manson (who is also played by Evan Peters!) appears and stabs Zombie Vincent through the chest. Manson tells Kai to identify the double agent in the house and to stop trusting his cult. Just then, Ally enters with a tiny device.
In a quiet moment, Winter shaves Kai’s blue hair off and shaves his face lovingly, telling him he’s very important to her, and she promises that when this is all over and everyone leaves him, she’ll still be there for him. Unfortunately, though he seems to support her, she’s busted, because he gives her Beverly’s train ticket.
Winter promises that she isn’t the mole, and in fact, doesn’t believe there is one — she thinks he’s inventing things to fit his delusions. He brings out the bug, which turns out to actually be the battery to Winter’s FitBit, and Ally reveals a tape recorder which they allegedly found in the ice cream truck. Winter warns Ally to stop stoking Kai’s paranoia for her benefit, as it’ll only blow up in her face. And in a fit of rage, heartbreak, and panic, Kai starts to choke Winter, who begs for her life. He cries over her body and kisses her gently as the cult watches on and she slowly stops wriggling.
After the deed is done, one of the cult bros, Speed Wagon, rushes out to his car, quickly pulls off a wire and a recording devices, and smashes them against his dashboard. Ally gets into his car and greets him with a really good smirk, because she knows what is up!
But with only one episode to go, it’s still impossible to say if we know what is up. What we do know is that the cult, with its leader deteriorating and facing attacks from the inside and the outside, is in serious danger.
Ally is and always had been a double agent, but how will she manage to free herself from the cult without becoming a victim of it? And will Beverly Hope, once the absolute fiercest queen bee of the whole situation, rise again to destroy all these fools?! We can only … hope.
Next: Game of Thrones season 8 spoilers: Northern surprises
Tune in next week for the last episode, and join us back here on Culturess for a debrief of what is sure to be an explosive finale.