Wednesday night (Jan 8) marks the return of “American Horror Story: Coven” and with it comes more witch-on-witch crimes, resurrections, and freak deaths.
The third season of the hit FX series has been less stomach-churning the the first two years. Instead this season has been more on the outrageous side. That’s not to say there haven’t been some seriously disturbing moments, the “Chamber of Horrors” intro being one of them.
Overall though, the Emmy-winning thriller has been all about shock and pizzazz, and here’s everything you need to refresh on before episode 10 debuts this week.
“American Horror Story: Coven” Refresher Part 1 – Season of the Witch
Part Two of our wrap-up covers episodess fives through nine. You’ll find Part 1 of our mid-season wrap up here.
Episode 6: “The Axeman Cometh”
Let’s go back to 1919, when the witches at Miss Robichaux’s academy dared to defy the Axeman (Danny Huston). He loses, finding himself at the mercy of the knife-throwing coven.
As Delia mentioned in episode 1, witches have come under threat and their numbers are dwindling. Zoe has realized this and tells Queenie and Nan that they all need to stick together.
Nan keeps attempting to see her shirt-shy neighbor Luke, but his Bible-quoting mother keeps refusing to let her.
Zoe discovers a Quija board and holds a séance with the girls in an attempt to contact Madison, but instead they reach the Axeman.
After the board spells out the word “attic,” Zoe heads there, where lo and behold she finds Madison’s rotting, armless corpse. Spalding appears and she successfully fights him off.
With the help of Queenie’s voodoo powers, the girls interrogate Spalding about the killing of Madison and he takes full responsibility for her death before passing out. Zoe rightly suspects that there’s more to the story.
Meanwhile, the cancer-stricken Fiona receives chemo treatment and discovers she can read the minds of the other patients in treatment. This becomes too much for her to bear. Fi proclaims that she wants one more great love affair in her life before she dies.
A now blind Delia returns home with Hank and once again learns more about what he’s been up to on his so-called work trips.
Her newfound skills of peering into people’s souls prompts her to ask her husband who the red head is. The very red head he had head board-crashing sex with and then murdered. With Fiona on her side, Delia is able to get Hank to leave.
Delia’s “gift” also lets her in on Myrtle’s death, but one thing she doesn’t know is that Hank has been working for Marie Laveau and was only married to Delia to gain access to the coven.
The red head he offed in the motel room once came to visit the Academy and is one of the nine witches he’s killed within the last three years. Marie instructs him to kill “every witch bitch” in that house and she’ll let him live.
Kyle finds Misty and she takes him back to her place to give him a bath, but unfortunately this reminds him of the way his rapist mother used to tend to him and he freaks out.
Zoe gets there just in time to chain him up. Then she whips out Madison’s corpse and asks Misty to bring her back from the dead, a request she grants, albeit very reluctantly.
Madison gradually comes back to life but doesn’t remember Fiona killing her. Zoe tells the girls the keep Madison’s awakening a secret.
The Axeman pays Delia a visit and attacks her in the room where he met his end back in the day. Hearing her cries, Zoe locates a spell book, and she and the girls are able to use it to release the murderer.
As Fiona sits at the bar, losing a clump of hair, she is joined by the madman. These two are kind of perfect for one another.
Notable Quote:
Marie: “I look like the Taliban to you?”
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Episode 7: “The Dead”
In a flashback, we see Kyle as the sensitive and ambitious frat boy we met in episode one (before he got Frankensteined).
An aspiring engineer, he made it a point to avoid tattoos, as they would make him look less professional. Cut to the present day, and Kyle now has the arms and legs of his dead bros, which comes with their ink. This heavily upsets the already tortured coed, as does Zoe’s decision to almost shoot him.
Zoe later attempts to teach her chained up boy toy how to communicate and “function like a person.” She doesn’t get very far before Madison agrees to watch him.
The former starlet is having difficulty making sense of post-death life and is unable to fill the void within her. Naturally, she uses this to seduce Kyle, who she claims to understand.
Zoe returns to find the two having armoire-banging sex and is obviously not happy about it. Luckily for her though, Madison is okay with sharing and invites Zoe to join them for a threesome. Everybody wins!
Queenie and her slave Marie Delphine LaLaurie head to a fast food joint and bond over the tastiness of french fries before the “eternal racist” tells her that she will never be accepted by her witch sisters, not because she’s “fat,” as Queenie initially suggests, but because she is black.
Queenie later visits Marie Laveau and the two make a deal. Queenie will deliver MDL and Marie will give her a place in her witch family.
What prompts Queenie to officially agree to this is hearing MDL’s admission that she murdered the newborn baby of a slave and used the infant’s blood as anti-aging cream. Queenie brings the former slave torturer to Marie’s salon, where she soon finds herself encaged.
Delia accidentally bumps into the now resurrected Madison and is able to see that Fiona slit her throat. She comes to conclusion that she needs to kill her own mother and tells Zoe as much.
Fiona and the Axeman seem to be getting along swimmingly as they bond over music and genuine creepiness. Weakened and dying, Fiona’s poor state doesn’t deter the Axeman.
He then confesses that he’s been watching her since she was eight (the fact that this is not the creepiest thing we’ve heard on this show is saying a lot). At first, he saw himself as more of a father figure but now he sees himself as her lover.
Zoe finds Spalding’s tongue “still wet” (what?!) and uses a spell to reattach it to him, then when she discovers he’s still loyal to Fiona, she stabs him to death.
Notable Quote:
Queenie: “I dragged my ass all the way here from Detroit to be with my quote ‘sister-witches’. Instead, I’m sitting in the fast food parkin’ lot at three in the mornin’ with an immortal racist. How’d that happen?”
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Episode 8: “The Sacred Talking”
Queenie uses her voodoo powers to kill a shady homeless man (who, according to her, was a child rapist) and procure his heart for Marie. Not only is Marie her new BFF, but she’s promised to give Queenie more powers.
Delia isn’t happy that they’ve lost Queenie or their staff (Spalding, MDL) but she presses on, coming up with a “flawless” plan to kill Fiona that involves Madison hiding her resurrection until the time is right.
The now resurged Myrtle, who Misty brought back to life after she was burned to death, returns. She pays Misty a visit and warns her that a man with a gun is preying upon her.
The two then fee to the academy, where Myrtle explains that Misty is likely the new supreme. Meaning, she has to guard her throat from Fiona. Misty isn’t okay with this because, as Delia puts it, being a supreme is a burden.
The witches then perform the Sacred Taking, which assures a new supreme is set to take over.
The ailing Fiona continues to spend time with her beloved Axeman and since she isn’t welcome to spend time with the enraged Delia, she considers his request that she spend her remaining time with him. She says that she doesn’t want him to watch her die.
The coven begins their plan to kill Fiona by having Madison appear in her room and greet her with a fabulous, “surprise, bitch!”
Madison tells her that she resurrected herself from the dead because (duh!) she’s the new supreme. She also informs her that everyone now knows she murdered her and that she can either be burned to death and “be hash-browns” or commit suicide by pill overdose.
That sends Fiona packing before Myrtle appears, making for a very awkward reunion. After some more convincing, Fiona takes the pills and waits to die. Myrtle then uses this as an opportunity to jack Fiona for her jewelry (LOLz).
But before FiFi meets her end, Spalding emerges from the spirit world and lets her in on the plan that Delia and the girls used to get her to kill herself. With his help, she throws up the pills.
Nan pays her neighbor Luke a visit and attempts to save him from his nutcase mother Joan. That’s when the witch-hunting Hank starts shooting at them, killing Joan and wounding Luke.
Nan calls out for the supreme, which summons Misty and Fiona, and they both appear, with Misty resurrecting Joan at the behest of Fiona. Misty faints from the exhaustion.
Elsewhere, Marie starts to sever portions of the caged MDL’s immortal flesh. And back at the academy, Zoe continues to teach Kyle how to communicate via computer programs. Later he tells Zoe that he loves her and a distraught Madison overhears.
Delia and Fiona somehow patch up their troubled relationship after Fi reveals she’s impressed with the way the coven carried out their plan to kill her.
Fi then receives a box containing MDL’s head in a box. (That’s so “Seven!”)
Notable Quote:
Fiona: “I’m starting to look less Samantha and more Endora every day.”
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Episode 9: “Head”
The show’s mid-season finale was pretty wicked indeed!
Queenie is now in possession of MDL’s severed head after Fiona sent it back to Marie, and forces her to watch things that people watched during the Civil Rights movement, like the TV mini series “Roots” — fully equipped with that “vile jungle music,” as MDL puts it.
We also learn more about Delia’s witch-hunting husband Hank, who for a killer is pretty sympathetic towards his wife. The episode begins with Hank as a young boy hunting with his father, who trained him to kill witches.
When Hank learns that the witch-hunter organization (known as the Delphi Trust) he belongs to authorizes the blinding of Delia, he seems pretty upset about it. But it’s not like he can refuse to kill her and her witch sisters because Marie voodoo’s the hell out of him to go kill them. Or so we think.
Later he shows up at Marie’s and kills EVERY SINGLE PERSON THERE, and is ready to execute Marie, but Queenie puts a gun in her mouth and thus stops him, but of course killing herself in the process.
Afterwards, Marie reluctantly pays a visit to Miss Robichaux’s, and Fiona gives her this look as if she already knew she was on her way before welcoming her into the “coven.”
Elsewhere, Myrtle poisons her fellow witch committee members in a pretty horrific manner and not surprisingly enjoys terrorizing them.
She then scoops out their eyes and gives them to Delia, who regains her sight but also loses her truth vision powers in the process. Delia now has mismatched eyes, which is pretty badass, indeed.
Nan remains at the injured Luke’s bedside and is able to use her powers to determine what we already know, that his mother Joan is atrocious.
When Luke starts to blather something about his mother killing his father, Joan gets all antsy about it, and kicks everyone out of the room. When she’s alone with him, she smothers him with a pillow, killing him.
Fiona, with her new guard dog in tow, discovers Zoe and Madison’s Frankensteined boy toy Kyle and after he accidentally kills her canine, she decides to use Kyle as his replacement. The girls return home to find him and Fiona playing cards.
Notable Quote:
Myrtle: “At any rate, I’m not going to kill you, well maybe after dessert. I put a lot of effort into the Key Lime Pie. I do love a Key Lime Pie.”
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What Lies (or Rises) Ahead?
Since pretty much every character that has died has returned in some fashion, we can probably expect that Queenie, Hank, and Luke won’t be gone for long. But will Spalding reappear? After all, the house is now understaffed.
Also, now that Kyle is acting as Fiona’s watch dog, will Zoe and Madison still be using him like a toy?
And what will become of the headless (or “body-less,” depending on your viewpoint) Marie Delphine LaLaurie? Did Queenie help turn her into less of a racist?
“American Horror Story: Coven” airs Wednesdays at 10pm EST on FX. Be sure to check GOT afterward for our recap of the night’s episode!
