The final(e) girl: How will AHS: 1984 end?
By Tina Wargo
In its penultimate episode, AHS: 1984 continues to barrel down a disjointed highway, but two final girls emerge who could save (or be saved from) it all.
Season 9, episode 8: Mark it down as the moment I have officially abandoned hope that this year’s installment of American Horror Story could have a greater meaning. After last night’s episode — which illuminated close to nothing we didn’t already know and, actually, only served to further confuse the audience by adding unnecessary backstory where we didn’t need it — I have concluded, barring any absolutely brilliant, Sixth Sense-level twist in next week’s finale, that AHS: 1984 is as vapid as its spandex-laden, sex-starved, debauchery-seeking characters.
Maybe it’s my fault, for having higher expectations, or for projecting, or for counting on the formula of the brilliant first few seasons to continue on, or for reading too much into tiny breadcrumbs when really each moment just was what it was. Maybe it’s the show’s fault, for setting up storylines and character insights that never came back, for making every new reveal or slight curve in the road more convoluted than it needed to be, for introducing brand new characters with questionable intentions in the last few episodes, or changing the intentions of the characters we’ve known since episode 1 at the last minute. Either way, I’m calling it.
This season, as I hesitantly posited last week, is just 10 hot people running around, repeatedly killing each other to no end (they barely even know their own motives, because they still don’t know the rules of their universe!) until something undoubtedly huge and likely unbelievable and almost certainly incongruous brings the whole thing to a crashing halt next week.
If I weren’t committed to covering this season in its entirety, I may have tapped out a couple episodes ago. And despite all of its shortcomings — there are no stakes because everyone’s already dead, the frequent and melodramatic emotional character development reveals have no pay off, the Night Stalker and his new sidekick serial murderer are no longer scary, because they’re kind of just idiots now — after last night, I will say that if I had jumped ship, I’d have missed what is arguably the most interesting, resonant, and straight-up entertaining part of the season: the relationship between Brooke and Donna.
It started as a lie, like everything at Camp Redwood. But over the past eight episodes, the two women have gone through a lot, together, separately, and somehow, everywhere in between. Donna (previously known as Nurse Rita and DeeDee) has tried to destroy Brooke on no less than three separate occasions. But suddenly, in a small, end-of-season mini-twist, she steps in and saves Brooke from execution, her punishment after having been wrongfully accused of perpetrating the third known mass murder on Redwood’s grounds. And since this act of heroism, which was really an act of justice, Donna and Brooke have become a dynamic duo who run from the law, fight off murderous hitchhikers, and expertly dip away from inquiring journalists who know a little too much about their pasts, shared and singular.
Last night, in two particularly poignant scenes amid a sea of nonsense, Donna tells Brooke that she’s counting on her to be the final girl. Since Brooke missed most of the ‘80s (prison, remember?), Donna has to explain the concept: In every horror movie, there’s one girl who survives it all. Brooke wonders why Donna can’t be the final girl, and Donna basically laughs in her face: There can’t be a black final girl. It was at this moment I realized the whole season, the whole story, all the camp and stylization, needed to lead us to that exact moment. We need a black final girl!
Terror continues, as it does, and leads Donna and Brooke back to Redwood. Brooke, who is less dedicated to justice and more to revenge, is presented with the opportunity to get rid of the journalist who has infiltrated their duo once and for all. But just as she raises her knife, Donna swoops in to the rescue. She sends the journalist on her way, and makes Brooke promise that they won’t hurt anyone else on their way to making things right. She is the voice of reason. She is the emotionally steadfast, always clear-intentioned, and never-wavering badass hero the series needed to have focused on the entire time.
It’s not clear whether next week’s finale will do the right thing (and by “the right thing,” I mean the thing that make sense). But by my calculations, the only way to end this season is by delivering on what we all thought the entire premise of this year’s installment would: a subversion of the genre. In order to redeem itself, and honestly, to ensure payoff after all the wackiness we’ve been through, AHS: 1984 has to amp up the camp, play on old tropes, and ultimately give us what ‘80s slasher films almost never do: Give us a badass, intentional, smart, brave, black final girl.
Next. AHS: 1984 is almost over — so what’s the catch?. dark