American Horror Story Recap: 'Apocalypse Then'

Ryan Murphy did it! With only one episode, he managed to tie up all the loose ends and entirely wrap up one of American Horror Story's greatest seasons of all time.

The episode starts with the beginning of the end. Myrtle Snow (Frances Conroy) rocks up to the Silicon Valley start-up currently orchestrating the apocalypse. Firstly she confronts Ms. Venable (Sarah Paulson), who refuses to let Myrtle into the office without an appointment. The "middle management" is no match for Myrtle's magic and she strolls on past to meet Mutt (Billy Eichner) and Jeff (Evan Peters).

She demands the pair makes some room in Outpost 3 for the St. Pierre Vanderbilt family. At first, they're hesitant to listen to Myrtle, but they soon change their tune when she works a spell over them which would allow Mallory (Billie Lourd) to remain safe while fully coming into her powers. So begins the Coven's plan for the impending apocalypse.

Back at Misty's shack, Cordelia (Sarah Paulson) explains that Mallory and Coco (Leslie Grossman) must be placed under an identity spell to suppress their magical abilities to ultimately save the world. We finally find out how Coco and Mallory knew each other at the beginning of the season.

After the spell is cast, we immediately see Coco and Mallory in the back of a recklessly driven Uber, by none other than Madison Montgomery (Emma Roberts). While they don't recognise her, they have assimilated into their new personalities perfectly where Coco's role is inspired after Madison and Mallory is the insecure assistant with no idea that their true identities have been suppressed.

As Madison drops them off at Gallant's salon further setting up for the future, she sees an advertisement for Dina Stevens' (Adina Porter) new talk show, realising the voodoo villainess must have made a deal with the devil because how else could she have scored her own Talk Show?

Enraged, Madison shares the knowledge with Cordelia and Myrtle by strolling into Misty's shack saying "I’d like permission to burn a witch.” But Cordelia plays the voice of reason and tells her no because they can't do anything that might alert Michael (Cody Fern) to their plan. Apparently, the Supreme has a plan to get the traitor back down the line.

We then jump to the future where the apocalypse finally came, and Mallory's powers were awakened during her confrontation with Michael in the bunker. This wakes up Cordelia, Myrtle, and Madison who had buried themselves to wait out the bombings. In a matter of minutes, we're back to the future where the surviving Coven members were ready for their showdown with Michael.

Langdon offers the witches opportunity to pledge their allegiance to him. Of course, Dinah being the dirty snake she is and abandons the coven to join the "winning team." Bad mistake because she suddenly has her throat sliced by Marie Laveau who appears out of nowhere.

All hail Bassett!

Turns out, Papa Legba allowed Marie's escape from the underworld in exchange for Dina's much darker soul. Damn, the girls really knew how to play the game this season! With Dinah dead, Miriam takes this as the moment to whip out her machine gun arm to wipe out the witches. Cordelia instantly blows her to bits, followed with Madison using the severed machine gun arm to shoot down Michael like something out of a gangster movie.

While Langdon is out for the count, Cordelia and Myrtle whisk Mallory away to safe place to perform the Tempus Infinitum spell. All seems like it's going according to plan until Brock (Billy Eichner) appears and stabs Mallory. Like seriously, the worst time to be taking vengeance when the entire state of humanity is at risk. Myrtle burns him alive because who wouldn't?

While this happens, Michael comes back to life and explodes Madison's head sending her back to retail hell. He then proceeds to tear out Laveau's beating heart and takes a bite because you know that's what antichrists do. Coco stabs him in the back only to get her neck snapped with a flick of his wrist.

With the coven's defences all but destroyed, Cordelia has one card left to deal. She definitely tells Michael, “Satan has one son but my sisters are legion, motherfucker.” And like the kick-ass witch she is, she stabs herself and falls to her death to allow Mallory to ascend to her new role as Supreme and use her newly strengthened powers to go back in time.

Mallory casts the spell, and suddenly we returned to Murder House back in 2015. If that wasn't exciting enough we have yet another appearance by Jessica Lange as Constance Langdon. After discovering Micael just killed a priest, she delivers one hell of a monologue that in short has Constance realising her grandson is beyond being saved and banishes him from her house.

I guess Michael never learned the importance of looking both ways when you cross a street because Mallory runs him down in a Range Rover. Multiple times! And that's how the Antichrist dies, not with a bang but a simple hit and run.

Constance holds him as he's dying. He begs her to take him into the house to die so they can live forever. But she's had enough and says "Go to hell" leaving him to die on the street. Sometimes you've gotta be cruel to be kind.

With the antichrist dead, Mallory heads to Robichaux Academy to live with the coven, staying in 2015. Don't get started thinking about time paradoxes and just go with it. With an internal monologue Mallory keeps the truth about saving the world a secret because that's what humble and good witches do.

Instead, she uses the knowledge of the future to help her sisters. She persuades Queenie (Gabourey Sidibe) to avoid staying in Hotel Cortez. In doing so, I'm pretty sure that completely alters the end of what we saw in Hotel. Since the son of Satan is dead, demons are super keen to please Mallory with favours, which prompts her to get Misty Day (Lily Rabe) brought back from an eternity dissecting frogs. She also plans to bring Madison back from retail hell as well. Happy times. Just when you think it's the perfect happy ending we have another flash forward to the future.

We see Timothy (Kyle Allen) and Emily (Ash Santos) making sexy eyes at each other. Remember the first episode of the season, how their bloodline was supposed to be preserved? Well, now we know why. After meeting at a coffee-shop protest, a year later they have a child. Three years after that, the child is exhibiting devilish traits. Sound familiar?

One evening the couple return home with a murder of crows flying overhead in a red sky. The young parents discover their toddler had murdered his babysitter and then right at the moment who comes knocking at the door? Of course everyone's favourite Satanists including Miriam Meade ready to embrace their new dark lord.