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'American Horror Story' Recap: Satanists Are Really Into Ryan Reynolds

By Dustin Rowles | TV | November 2, 2018 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | November 2, 2018 |


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But for the fact that The All-Star season of American Horror Story has featured the same actors playing several different characters, Apocalypse has mostly stayed on the rails this year. Not every episode has been great — and this week’s episode, “Sojourn,” fell into the middling category — but it’s been remarkably easy to follow. It spent half the season in the Apocalypse bunker, and it’s spent the last several episodes flashing back to the events that led to the Apocalypse bunker. Next week, we will find out how Michael Langdon brought about the Apocalypse, and the season finale will feature the final showdown between the Coven and the Antichrist.

But before we get there, we must first understand how Michael Langdon connected with The Collective, the entity that built the Apocalypse bunker. “Sojourn” picks up where last week’s episode left off, with Langdon grieving over the ashes of Miriam, determined to bring her back. Cordelia tells Langdon that it’s impossible, because she’s hidden her soul in a place only she can find, but she extends Langdon an olive branch. He breaks it in half before stomping his feet and storming out into the woods, where he decides to pout for four days inside a pentagram he draws on the ground. There, he asks for guidance from his father, Satan, but Satan has only hallucinations for him, including that of a goat. Langdon slaughters it and pulls off its horns, and snakes slither out. How’s that for a message from Dad?

Hungry and tired of pouting, Langdon stumbles into the city and into a Church of Satan, where its leader (Sandra Bernhard) is chastising her weak-ass congregation for not being evil enough (“I robbed a nursing home and I gave all the money to the NRA,” what have you done to usher in the Antichrist?) There, Langdon meets Madeline, a sweet lady (aside from being a Satan worshipper), who brings Langdon home with her and feeds him a nice hot meal. She also explains that she sold her soul to the devil in exchange for everything she ever wanted: A La-Z-Boy, a premium cable package, and “every Wednesday night Brad Pitt comes over and fucks me until the sun comes up. On Friday nights, I get Ryan Reynolds.”

Langdon reveals to Madeline that he’s the Antichrist, and she is thrilled. She takes him back to Black Mass and shows him off to the congregation. There, Langdon steals a human sacrifice opportunity away from a former Gawker employee (God, how I wish Gawker were around for the Trump administration — only Satan can fight Satan). While the congregation fawns over him, Langdon carb loads but remains sullen because he doesn’t know how to bring about the end times. “Nobody gave me a fucking instruction manual!”

What Langdon needs is his Miriam, which is where Madeline proves to be helpful once again. She connects him to the Collective, and in exchange, all that Madeline asks is that she get to spend all eternity in the lowest circle of Hell, burning in blistering fire. Hail Satan!

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There, he meets Mutt and Jeff (Evan Peters and Billy Eichner, presumably named after the comic-strip). They sold their souls to the devil in exchange for careers making sex robots in Silicon Valley, island meetings with Rihanna, sex with Victoria’s Secret models on Wednesdays, and sex with Ryan Reynolds on Thursday.

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Anyway, Mutt and Jeff use their robotics skill to recreate Miriam, “identical right down to the final pube,” plus she has the skills of Mossad. The only catch is, Langdon can’t tell her she’s a robot otherwise she’ll have an existential crisis and go on a killing spree. “It’s not worth the headache.” When Miriam boots up, she instantly recognizes Michael.

What’s interesting here is that Sarah Paulson’s Mrs. Venable seems to be in charge of the robotics company, and somehow she connects with Robot Miriam, half the Coven, and Timothy and Emily in the apocalypse bunker — there’s even a nod toward Venable’s fondness for the color purple (in the bunker, survivors are divided into the Purple group and the Grey group, which are the servants). However, Mutt and Jeff are not the same characters that Evan Peters and Billy Eichner play in the bunker, Mr. Gallant and Brock, so something happens to them in the next episode (maybe Ryan Reynolds sexes them to death).

Also, do you remember Timothy and Emily? What was the point of them?

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Either we’ll find out the answer to that next week or Timothy and Emily were pointless characters in an aborted arc.