This week American Horror Story: Apocalypse continued to work its way back to the very nuclear holocaust that kicked off this season. The penultimate episode, "Fire and Reign," finally revealed why there was so few of the Coven left in the present day and where The Cooperative comes from.
This week's episode kicked off with billionaire coke heads Mutt and Jeff (Billy Eichner and Evan Peters). The pair are over the world and the fact that their supposed Antichrist is missing in action. They're done with it all. They want to burn everything to the ground and start over. As it turns out, they were in luck as they had a meeting scheduled with the Cooperative coming up. Ms. Venable (Sarah Paulson) asks to play a more important role within the company and also meet with the Cooperative too. The pair rudely refused her request, so she told them she quit.
Meanwhile, at Miss Robichaux's Academy, Mallory (Billie Lourd) is struggling with her powers and freaking out about Michael's (Cody Fern) vow to kill them all. Cordelia (Paulson) assures her that all witches would be safe under her aura shield, but she spoke too soon. Dinah (Adina Porter) has made a deal with the devil for her own talk show. Breaking the spell for Michael and Miriam (Kathy Bates) to enter, the pair walks on in and it's a slaughterhouse for the coven.
Cordelia, Mallory, and Myrtle (Frances Conroy), were upstairs and avoided the massacre and were able to escape just in time. However, the same can't be said for Zoe (Taissa Farmiga) and Queenie (Gabourey Sidibe). Michael throws a little tanty at the fact that he never got all the witches and Miriam attempts to calm him down and urges him to remember his true calling. The end of the world.
In a surprising little twist, it turns out Mutt and Jeff are using Miriam to spy on Michael and can also control Miriam's speech suggesting he burn the world down and use the boys to help him. Control Miriam you control the Antichrist. The coke head tech geniuses talk Micheal out of acting out Omen 3 and enlighten him with Cooperative. Turns out they are actually the Illuminati and convince him to start an all-out nuclear war. The idea of destroying the world to usher in his reign as the Antichrist sounds great to Michael, so he gives them the thumbs up!
While this is happening, the surviving members of the Coven which now includes Madison (Emma Roberts) and Coco (Leslie Grossman), who weren't at the Academy when Michael attacked are hanging out in Misty's cabin working out what to do next. Just so you're aware, Misty is off galivanting around with Stevie Nicks, and we're all kinds of jealous.
They decide to have Mallory execute a spell to go back in time and do a Days of Futures Past and set things right. However, no witch has ever survived the spell, but Mallory is determined to do it anyway. Practice makes perfect, so they decide to test Mallory's power by sending her back in time to 1918 to prevent the assassination of the Romanov family. Because in the world of American Horror Story, Anastasia was actually a witch but wasn't powerful enough to save her family on her own.
Mallory wasn't strong enough, and the family was killed with Mallory barely making it back to the future alive. Cordelia questions, if she were dead only then, would Mallory reach her full power. Myrtle isn't ready to say goodbye yet and offers up an alternative idea. Ask the warlocks for help. Unfortunately, Michael had already made waste of them.
Mutt and Jeff talk Venable out of quitting by sharing the fact that they're about to start World War III and wipe out most of the world's population. They offer her a position as an outpost administrator and straight up she gets pretty power hungry at the thought of it. In the closing minutes of the episode Michael meets up with the Cooperative who look like the backup dancers from a Lady Gaga music video. He shares his plans for world destruction while reminding them they sold their souls to Daddy Satan. So they technically have to do what Satan Jr. says. He assures them that their immediate families will survive the pending apocalypse with his proposed plans outlined for building the outposts. And just like that, the episode ends rather abruptly.
With just one episode left, there is a lot of ground to cover in the season finale. How they do it, is anyone guess. But Ryan Murphy better deliver the goods, or he's going to face his own apocalypse!
