Michael Is *Such* A Millennial Antichrist And 7 Other Thoughts We Had During Episode 8 Of ‘AHS: Apocalypse’

Happy Halloween, Witches. This week’s highly anticipated actually-falls-on-Halloween Halloween episode delivered more antichrist backstory with a campy, kind of kooky hour of television.

The episode kicks off with Michael Langdon having a real Monday kind of day.

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He finds Mead’s charred body and howls with rage and grief, then whirls to see Cordelia behind him.

“It’s over, we know who you are. Your allies are all dead. You’ve failed.”

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Cordelia also lets slip that she’s hexed Mead’s soul so that Michael can’t find it and bring her back. For some strange reason, none of this endears her or her coven to Michael—so when she suggests he give up the whole Antichrist thing and join her on the side of the light, he tells her to piss right off. In a very Wicked Witch of the West-esque style he promises to kill her, and all her little friends too.

Michael is peak millennial antichrist.

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Michael decides to pout inside a pentagram circle in the woods for days, refusing to eat or move until his Dad delivers some guidance. But he doesn’t, or maybe he does? Honestly, I’m not sure. Michael experiences hallucinatory visits from a little boy with a grape Fanta, an angel wearing a diaper, and a creepy goat, before eventually giving up on his teenage temper tantrum.

Oh, what, you’re a white, cis man and you can’t navigate the world made for you? Walk into the river, you’re useless.

“I’ve seen bad facelifts that are more evil than you!”

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Having decided that the forest thing isn’t working out, Michael finds himself at the nearest satanic church, where preacher Sandra Bernhard is extremely unimpressed by her congregation of underachieving sinners.

Brb, making a t-shirt that says: I sold my soul to the devil and all I got was a La-Z-Boy, cable tv, and my back blown out by Ryan Reynolds on Fridays.

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No judgment to this girl. I would kill for this life.

Michael when they made fun of his name

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We love a kween who’s not afraid to show his emotions despite masculinity’s prison.

American Horror Story: Silicon Valley Tech Bros

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Michael arrives for a meeting with some maladapted Patrick Bateman types and promptly proves his bona fides by setting the office prostitute (yes, they have one) on fire with his mind. These guys have already sold their souls to the devil, and are happy to help his spawn—building Robo Mead—finally giving us the backstory we’ve been waiting for forever since we discovered she wasn’t human.

The spookiest part of the episode was Evan Peter’s new character’s hair

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Ms. Venable is the feminist icon we need rn.

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She’s basically a modern version of Charlotte Pickles from Rugrats.

Thoughts & Predictions

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Okay, I’ll be honest, this wasn’t my favorite episode. I might be a broken record at this point, but the witches make this show infinitely more exciting to watch. They were what we were all complaining about on Twitter about at the start of the season—anticipating the coven’s long-awaited return to AHS—making their absence this week all the more jarring.

You guys, there are only two episodes left this season! Are we ever going to jump back-forward to the post-apocalypse timeline? Were the whole first 3 episodes just a vision that Cordelia had that never comes to fruition, because they manage to stop it in time? Can the last two hours of this season just be dedicated to Coco and Queenie hanging out at the academy, practicing the mystical arts of bitchcraft and wigatry??? So many unanswered questions!

More and more I am hoping that the rumors online about this season being a jumping off point to more ongoing storytelling, and less anthology style are true. So many great characters have already been set up these past eight seasons, I would much rather see Sarah Paulson and co. get the chance to settle into these various roles, and really live in them for a while.

Okay, if the apocalypse happens, and it’s not just a vision of what could be, I have an idea about how it’s fixed: it’s been established already that our good sister Mallory has abilities far more advanced than simple “Vitalum Vitalis,” or “Resurgence”. Myrtle described what she could do as turning back what time has done, when she reverses the death of a deer, restoring their health and vitality to when they were much younger. She does this again in front of Queenie and Zoe, when she telekinetically (???) slices open Coco’s throat to retrieve some food she choked on, and then reverses her death and the incision, bringing her back to life (sidenote: Zoe is a professor now, how does she still not have the agency to calmly perform a magical Heimlich maneuver—or just the real one—instead of having a panic attack? I digress). Maybe, Mallory uses this power to reverse the damage that the nuclear attacks have caused, thus restoring the world, and humanity, to what it was like before. I would also go as far as to predict that pushing herself to do that much magic may lead to the young woman’s death, as a common theme to AHS is the bittersweet endings. PS: I’m not on board with the theory that Mallory is actually an angel—don’t @ me.

Guys, this season has really been setting up a hero’s journey for Madison, giving her a chance to make amends for her season three antics, and show the humanity we only caught glimpses of previously. She’s far and away a fan favorite, and I would not be surprised if she was the new Supreme. We saw in her visit to Murder House that she was able to use “divination”—the one power she failed at during her Seven Wonders test. If they can give her the screen-time necessary to redeem her in these last two episodes, I think it could be the perfect note to end on.