Spoilers fromAmerican Horror Story: Roanokefollow.
All of the teasers forAmerican Horror Story: Roanokemake sense now: much like the first five episodes of season 6, the promos were mostly distractions from the true story being weaved. Series creatorRyan Murphyhas been teasinga major twistcoming in Episode 6, one that no one has apparently been able to guess. With the installment premiering Wednesday night, we finally have an answer:My Roanoke Nightmarehas turned intoReturn to Roanoke.
It all begins withCheyenne Jacksonplaying the role of Sydney, the producer behind the camera. (We’ve heard his voice in previous episodes, but never saw his face.) The first five episodes of Season 6 featured two sets of dueling casts: one consisted ofLily Rabeas Shelby,Andrea Hollandas Matt, andAdina Porteras Matt’s sister Lee, while the other set consisted of actors portraying them in a reenactment-style reality show. Episode 6 brought both sets of actors together.
As it turns out, the first five episodes ofAmerican Horror StorySeason 6 actually make up the first season of a fictional reality show calledMy Roanoke Nightmare. For Season 2 of this show-within-a-show, the producers had a novel idea: why don’t they bring together the people who lived through this horror story and the actors who portrayed them, and force them to live inside the Roanoke house together?
Sydney remarks later to his business partner, Diana, that he hopes to use the ensuing horror “to find justice.” As network executives point out, many viewers of Season 1 were disappointed that the murderer of Lee’s husband wasn’t sussed out, but Sydney hopes Season 2 will provoke Lee into a confession. Based on an E! News interview with Lee, it seems everyone thinks she’s the one who killed him.
One network executive points out that this concept is essentially bringingBig Brotherto the horror genre, which is exactly what it is. The only problem is, it’s not as great of an idea as Murphy thinks.
In previous episodes, the real Shelby — which, just to clarify, is Rabe — kept asking why she and Matt didn’t just sell the house and be done with it. She eventually did, and Shelby mentions that he now owns it. So the sleazy producer now has the green light to develop 13 episodes of reality television inside the cursed home.
The people living inside the house are Shelby (Rabe); Matt (Holland); Lee (Porter); the actress who played Shelby, Audrey (Sarah Paulson); the actor who played Matt, Dominic (Cuba Gooding Jr.); the actress who played Lee, Monae (Angela Bassett); and the actor who played the art-obsessed ghost from Episode 5, Rory (Evan Peters). They’re all supposed to live under the same haunted roof and use their own smartphones to document the entire experience. As Sydney notes, the devices are just for documenting so their phone capabilities have been turned off.
To add more drama to this scenario are the facts that Shelby and Matt are divorced because of an affair Shelby had with Dominic, Monae’s alcoholism, and the marriage of Audrey and Rory.
Plus, Anges Mary Winstead, the actress who played the Butcher inMy Roanoke Nightmare(Kathy Bates), hasn’t been invited back forReturn to Roanokebecause she had a documented nervous break in which she donned her costume and walked through Hollywood Boulevard swinging a carving knife. Sydney sends her into another fit when he bans her from coming within 500 feet of production, but it seems like he only did that to make her angry enough to terrorize the house guests.
Sydney’s production team has all kinds of tricks to scare them during their stay, including trip sinks, drawers, fireplaces, and windows. But before the shoot can even commence, there’s already a death on set: while one of the workers is using a chainsaw to cut through a piece of wood, the tool mysteriously shoots up and decapitates the man. When Diana, Sydney’s partner, quits on the spot, she’s later killed by the ghost of the pig-headed man, who causes her car to crash.
Audrey and Rory are the first ones to move into the house. Rory almost immediately gets a call saying he needs to fly out and read for a potential role in aBrad Pittmovie, but his leave is interrupted when he sees a mysterious figure walking outside the house. They shake it off when the rest of the cast arrive, but as more supernatural occurrences happen in the house, a title card appears on the screen to announce that all the footage we’re seeing is found footage because everyone in the house died except for one.
We presumably won’t know who that one is until the end of the season, but the first one to die of the cast is Rory. After Shelby is scared in the shower by the pig-headed ghost, he runs up to check and is bombarded by the killer nurses, who stab Rory to death. Matt soon sees the word “Murder” painted on the wall and remembers that each letter in the word references the first name of one of the nurses’ victims.
“R is for Rory,” he tells his cast mates — and that’s where the episode ends.
It’s as if Murphy is trying to pull off his version ofScream 3or a found-footage horror movie, but what he ends up with already seems like a Funny or Die spoof of a really badBlair Witchremake for a Millennial generation. The promo for Episode 7 that aired afterwards really drives it home: the cast are seen running through the woods in a franticBlair Witchscenario, screaming and bawling into their own phones. #SelfieScares.
In previous interviews, Murphy seemed delightfully shocked that nobody guessed this scenario for the true theme of season 6. Perhaps nobody did because we were all hoping to God it wouldn’t come to this.
