So The Coven Finale Was Terrible, Right?

By Madeleine Davies | January 30, 2014 | 11:20pm

Latest

I had a lot of theories going into last night’s finale of American Horror Story: Coven. I thought maybe Myrtle was the real villain and that she’d end up killing everybody; I thought they might pull some weird gender shit and let Kyle be the Supreme and have him end up killing everybody; I thought that Fiona might still be alive and that she’d come back to kill everybody. As it turns out, I was wrong about almost everything, which is too bad because, as it turns out, the crackpot theories of an online writer/simpleton ended up being far more interesting than what actually ended up happening.

The episode started off with an amazing montage of the potential supremes studying their magicks as Stevie Nicks wandered around the mansion in all of her beautiful witchy glory, bleating Fleetwood Mac’s “Seven Wonders” (was the whole purpose of this season to make a Seven Wonders/”Seven Wonders” joke? I’m okay with that, I just want to know) before wishing the girls luck and drifting away into the sun. It was magical, campy and idiotic, sure, but it also embodied much of the silliness that makes me love AHS in the first place. After that, it was all downhill.

Most Popular

Since all of the villains are dead (or — in the case of Spalding — just not an issue anymore?), the young witches must turn on each other and attempt to perform the dangerous Seven Wonders in order to prove that they’re the next leader of the coven. Bad news for fans of Fleetwitch Mac — our beautiful swamp thing is the first to fail and immediately turns into a pile of dust. RIP FLEETWITCH. WE’LL ALWAYS REMEMBER YOUR TWIRL!

Soon it becomes a competition primarily between Madison and Zoe. Both venture into their personal hells — Madison’s is starring as Liesl in The Sound of Music, Live! (fair enough) and Zoe’s is having Kyle break up with her on an endless loop, which booooosnore who cares. Zoe will have to face her personal hell eventually — probably during the first Thanksgiving break after she returns from Witch University and Kyle comes back from Butler School. The reunion will be ruined when he tells her he wants to break up so that he can start getting some of that college strange, Zoe’s heart will break, but OH, WELL that’s life, not hell, and we’ve all been there.

Things turn from playful to painful during the transmutation round, which has Zoe, Madison and Queenie zipping around in a fun game of tag until Zoe ends up impaled on the spike of a wrought iron fence (and that’s why you don’t get to apparate without passing the test first). Uh, maybe that should have been her personal hell? Or not! Either way, it looks gross and leaves Zoe deader than a doornail.

When asked to bring Zoe back to prove that she’s still in the running to be the next Supreme, Madison takes a hard pass and brings a fly back from the dead instead. It’s a stone cold move and after Queenie tries and fails to revive her friend, it seems like we might be saying goodbye to Zoe forever and saying hello to Supreme Witch Madison.

But wait! Myrtle Snow, having never once brought up the thought before, says that she thinks Cordelia might be the next Supreme. And then Cordelia says “Yeah, why not” and performs the Seven Wonders and brings back Zoe almost instantly and without any real trouble. What a boring/out of nowhere twist! The good news, I guess, is that Cordelia gets her eyes back and — if her hair is any indication — will now be provided with a lifetime of free blowouts.

Madison, angry that she’s not the Supreme, attempts to take off in a huff, but Kyle the Frankenboyfriend gets in the way by strangling her to death as punishment for letting Zoe die. Um, what the fuck? This girl can literally summon fire and move things with her mind, but somehow she can’t overpower this dopey zombie man. NOT BUYING IT, RYAN MURPHY. But die she does and enter Spalding to help Kyle dispose of the body. Good thing nobody will ever question the whereabouts of a young and popular movie actress. They’re in the clear!

Smash cut to months later when Cordelia has gone public with the coven and is bringing in potential witches from all over the country. The academy is the most successful it’s been in years, but something is plaguing the mind of Cordelia’s mentor Myrtle Snow. Myrtle murdered two members of the witch council, the punishment for murdering another witch is death by fire and for Cordelia to be a truly successful supreme, she must carry out that justice. Myrtle asks to burn and Cordelia tearfully agrees so up in smoke she goes, dressed appropriately to the nines.

I was right about one theory — Fiona is not dead. She’s a little worse for the wear, sure, but she’s still alive. Turns out, she used her magic to implant a memory into the Axeman’s head to make him think that he’s murdered her when really she just escaped to Paris. Oh, yeah, and this spell is performed by her SPITTING in Danny Huston’s mouth. This is literally the grossest thing that’s ever happened on this show.

Anyway, Fiona — losing her hair and tapped of all her strength — returns to Miss Robichaux’s Academy not to kill everyone like I had hoped, but to beg Cordelia to end her life for her.

No, Cordelia tells her. It’s going to be scary and hard, but you are going to have to wait for death just like the rest of us.

Fiona dies approximately 10 seconds after hearing that, so yes, a loooooong and spoooooky wait indeed. (Fiona’s personal hell, by the way, is being stuck in a domestic life with a sexually and physically violent Axeman for eternity. Very pleasant for the feminist viewer indeed!)

And that’s a wrap on American Horror Story: Coven. Things that never got resolved: Who blinded Cordelia, where Marie Laveau’s body parts got off to and what happened to Spalding’s newly adopted child. Oh, well! I guess we’ll never know.

But who is the Baddest Witch of the whole season? It’s not even a contest: