American Horror Story – Return to Murder House

By: Kelly Kearney

This week we went back to where it all began to find out what Cordelia and the witches are facing when it comes to Michael, their new Supreme. The ghosts of Langdon’s victims play a key role in figuring out who he is and the Hell he is destined to unleash on the world. The walls of the Murder House are marinated in his evil and the ghosts who walk those halls are just itching to be heard…especially Michael’s grandmother, Constance.

Let’s Go Back to the Start

Last week Cordelia (Sarah Paulson) sensed an evil in Michael (Cody Fern) and wanted to find out just who he was and where he came from. She sent Madison (Emma Roberts) and Behold Chablis (Billy Porter) to Los Angeles, hoping they could dig up everything they could find on Langdon. Cut to the Murder House and the two are poising as a happy couple in search of a new home. Like the worst possible version of Heidi Klum and Seal, the witch and the warlock manage to buy the haunted mansion, even with the knowledge that thirty-six people were murdered there,

Considering the history of the house and the fact it’s been unoccupied for years, it’s in decent condition. The outside is crumbling but the inside is thriving like it’s lived in. Behold, who feels a presence all around the house, thinks a séance could settle the restless spirits and maybe they would even cooperate. His psychic energy is ringing like the bells of a church and along with Madison as they prepare to call on the dead. Once their seance circle is complete with candles, a blood sacrifice and a few chanting spells, the lights go out giving them both a clue it’s working. Almost instantly, the magic wielders hear the sounds of laughing children and ghosts running the halls. More proof Chablis was right, the house has occupants, just not living ones.

In all the ghostly chaos, Madison and Behold spot Tate Langdon (Evan Peters) and we are catapulted into his therapy sessions with fellow ghost Ben Harmon (Dylan McDermott).  After years of therapy, Tate hasn’t made much progress. He’s still going on about Violet (Taissa Farmiga), who is also dead, trapped in the house and giving him the silent treatment. Their teen love affair took a horrible turn when Violet learned that not only did Tate rape and impregnate her mother, but he also went on a mass murdering spree at his high school.  Now that they’re stuck for eternity together, she has chosen to ignore him and remain out of sight. Madison and Behold walk in on the session, which shocks the ghosts since they can only be seen when they want to be. Madison explains who they are and that they bought the house in hopes of finding out who or what is Michael Langdon. At first, Tate and Ben have no interest in speaking to the witch and warlock, but Madison reminds them that the coven bought the house, so nobody would bother the spirits living there. The least they could do is give them what they want. Having overheard their session, Madison is touched by Tate and Violet’s romantic tragedy and wonders if helping them would make Tate want to cooperate with their investigation. As she ponders what to do, a red ball bounces down the anteroom’s staircase and lands at her feet. When she bends to pick it up, Tate’s deformed sister tackles her, obviously wanting to play. Before Behold can magic the ghost away, Billie Dean Howard (Sarah Paulson) appears and stops him before things can get out of hand. Billie is not dead but remains a friend of the house and because she is a psychic to the stars she already knows who they are and why they’re there. The witches don’t get a chance to explain before footsteps are heard on the staircase. Madison and Behold look up and see Constance Langdon (Jessica Lange) in all her glory. Madison, having no idea that Constance is Michael’s grandmother, says, “We’re the new owners. Who are you?” She replies in true Constance fashion, “I’m Constance Langdon and this is my f**king house.”

Constance is Home

As usual, Constance is shade personified. She is still a racist who drinks Crown Royal and thinks the world was made to serve her needs.  Moira (Frances Conroy) is still there too and interrupts this bizarre meet and greet only for Constance to complain about Moira’s work ethic. Moira hits Constance square in her ego by calling her weak reminding her that she is quite happy to stay in the house if she can service Constance’s husband in the basement. Nothing changes with these two, even death could not end their feud.

Tired of the ghostly banter, Madison reminds them all why she and Behold are there. Billie tries to deflect the Michael questions by reminding Constance that her grandson is a no-go topic of which they do not speak. The Langdon matriarch ignores Howard and agrees to talk about Michael if Madison and Behold can use their magic to oust Moira from the house.  They find Moira’s bones buried with a slew of other Murder House victims and give them to her. After decades of being trapped in that Hell house, Moira she gets her happy ending. Her final wish is granted by the witches and she is buried next to her beloved mother, who forgives Moira for pulling the woman’s ventilator plug.

Death Springs Life Eternal

With Moira gone, Constance spills the tea on Michael. A mother of four dead children, Constance assumed the mother role when Michael killed Vivienne (Connie Britton) during childbirth. After failing to turn Tate into the model son, Constance hoped Michael would be her second chance. After all, he was believed to be Tate’s son. She explains that as a child Michael was different. He was cheerful and loved his grandmother, but had a malicious side that began with tearing the wings off flies and quickly escalated to slaughtering neighborhood animals. Constance assumed she was raising a serial killer and no matter how she tried to curb his penchant for killing, she was unsuccessful. Every living thing Michael killed he gave to his grandmother like a present and she buried them in the rose garden until the smell of roses made her physically ill. It wasn’t long before Michael transitioned from small animals to killing his babysitter and Constance continued to cover for him with her blooming rose garden. “I was put on this earth to raise the monsters,” Constance says, but after the bodies started piling up faster than she could plant her roses, so something had to be done with her grandson. Then, one morning Michael woke up a full decade older and the fear of what he was shook Constance to her core. Not long after his growth spurt, Michael tuned on Constance and tried strangling her in her sleep.  After that, Constance called a priest to exercise her grandson’s demons only the holy man didn’t get very far. Constance found Michael standing over the Priest’s body with a slit throat.  Feeling like a failure and knowing nothing could stop the evil that was brewing in her grandson, Constance poisoned herself with pills and booze before Michael could kill her first. On the plus side, she killed herself inside the Murder House which meant she became the grand madam of the haunted mansion, a role she wanted since the very beginning. In her warped mind, Constance saw her death as the ultimate act of maternal love. “I was born to be a mother. Why not die to be one, too?” After her suicide, the woman had no desire to ever see her grandson again and that loss hit Michael hard. Storytime with Constance ends abruptly when the ghost of her eyeless daughter (Raina Matheson) interrupts them for bed time.

Like Father like Son…

Next up on the list of ghostly interviews is Ben, who spends his days masturbating by the front window while bawling his eyes out. It’s a curse that reminds us that if Ben had just kept it in his pants none of this, including the apocalypse, would have happened. Ben’s “me time” gets interrupted by the witch and warlock and they offer him an out, just like they did Moira. They can take his chronic masturbation away if he talks about what it was like living in the house with Michael. Ben agrees and tells the story about how he took over the father role after Michael was traumatized from his grandmother’s death. Ben even tried counseling Michael just like he did with Tate, which ticked off the moppy haired mass murderer who, shockingly, denies he’s Michael’s father. The rejection of both Constance and Tate is too much for Michael and he quickly slips into the ultimate darkness. Ben finds him carving up the Black Dahlia (Mena Suvari) in the living room and he even kills the nice lesbian couple who bought the house. Ben realizes there is no stopping Michael’s evil. He failed, just like Constance had. Ben’s story gets interrupted by Vivienne who has been ignoring Ben just like Violet has with Tate.  After hearing Ben’s story, Vivienne wants to make peace with her husband and the two forgive each other for their past transgressions that led them to an eternity in the Murder House.

No one knows Michael better than the woman who bore him and so it’s no surprise when Vivienne tells Madison and Behold that her son isn’t just a bad boy, he is evil incarnate! She explains how everything was off with him from the start. After she died in labor, Vivienne tried understanding Michael, but evil had formed a dark cloud above him that brought with it a murder of crows and a hellish heat inside the mansion even on the coldest of days. It wasn’t long before a group of devil worshippers from the Church of Satan followed a dark star right to Michael and the house. The three priests, one of which was Miriam Mead (Kathy Bates), told Michael that his birth was foretold and they’ve come to help him realize his true potential. Vivienne thought this was all some trick and the black priests were just lunatics who were running a con job. That is until Miriam kidnapped an innocent girl to perform a black mass. Michael’s minions cut the young girl’s heart out and Michael ate it like a juicy apple. Afterwards, Michael’s shadow grew wings and horns, turning him from an evil boy into evil itself. The father and the son became one, the devil in its purest form.

That night Vivienne decided to kill her evil child while he slept, but as she approached him with a knife she spotted a scar, a 666, in the skin behind his ear. In that moment, Michael awakened and tried to set Vivienne’s soul on fire, but Tate dove in to save her from a blazing fate. Chillingly, Vivienne says that Michael is not the son of Ben or Tate. Instead, he was created from the evil that lurks in the house and he has come to destroy them all. Behold and Madison are in shock, but definitely got what they came for. Will it be enough for Cordelia to stop him before he turns the earth to ashes?

Happy Endings

Now that they have a better idea of what kind of darkness they’re dealing with, Behold and Madison have one last task to accomplish before they leave.  Madison spots Violet crying in hallway still suffering over her lost love. Violet can’t get over the things Tate did, but she is still cursed with loving him. Madison offers Violet some words of wisdom. Like Tate, the B-actress has done plenty of awful things but all of them were her choice. Tate, on the other hand, was used by the house to create something much worse than either of them could ever imagine. In her third act of kindness, Madison blows magical dust in Violet’s face and when the sullen teen awakens she sees Tate and runs to embrace him. The dust contained the history of the house, but most importantly how Tate saved Vivienne from Michael’s wrath. As Madison and Behold get in a cab to head back to the airport, they look up to see Violet and Tate kissing in the window. Behold jokes about the surly witch’s soft side, but she trivializes her kindness as her helping ghosts get laid. Happy endings for everyone in the Murder House were granted by one of the most selfish witches in the coven. Things are changing and as we know from Cordelia’s visions, not all of them are good.