AHS: 13s Season Finale Gives the Devil Its Due & Is Horrifying For All the Wrong Reasons [Review]

What started with such promise has bottomed out as one of American Horror Story’s absolute worst seasons. While narrative messes that go off the rails are par for the course with this show, AHS: 13 is a particularly egregious disaster that also taints the series’ Holy Trinity of seasons – Murder House, Asylum, and Coven – for cheap, illogical twists. AHS: 13 is such an irresponsible season that it retroactively makes AHS: Apocalypse look brilliant. It’s a magic trick that’s so impressive that it’s worthy of the Supreme.

Unfortunately, as American Horror Story: 13 reaches its conclusion, one can’t help but echo the words of Elsa Mars: “Is that all there is?”

Remember how the season’s penultimate episode ended in the middle of an epic assault against Satan that ended with Queenie and Cordelia’s deaths as all hope was seemingly lost? Well, don’t worry. Apparently none of that matters. Things are chill, and Satan is suddenly ready to generously just throw in the towel.

There’s been plenty of justified criticism over this season’s disjointed storytelling and the reckless nature of a 13-episode season of shorter installments, but “Devil of a Good Time” doesn’t even feel like an episode of television. It’s just a collection of random scenes that kind of gel together. The AHS: Delicate finale was an abrupt disaster, but this send-off is even more of a bewildering disappointment.

This has simultaneously felt like American Horror Story’s longest and shortest season. The extra episodes, while appreciated in theory, have led to such tremendous pacing problems that they have absolutely destroyed any sense of momentum. This finale alone lets John Waters’ Dr. Phibes run his mouth for minutes as he laments over the modern state of kink while Troye Sivan blasts on the soundtrack.

“Devil of a Good Time” doesn’t have the time to depict any of Mallory’s trip to 1600s Salem, but there’s the bandwidth for Cordelia to sob as she’s nearly forced to kill an innocent dog for no real reason other than to make the audience squirm. A whole pregnancy-to-birth sequence plays out in under three minutes, and it’s so poorly conceived on every level that I was shocked when it turned out to be a dream sequence or some kind of fantasy.

The finale’s biggest developments involve Young Nas’ abrupt decision to kill “himself” at 99.9 years of age. He disqualifies himself right as he’s about to win because he’s overcome by some sort of “Satanic midlife crisis.” It’s a surprising twist, if nothing else, but it seems at odds with the rest of the season and retroactively makes so much of it pointless.

To this point, it’s hard for Ben’s ultimate sacrifice to mean much when the love story that he’s built with Madison is only a few days old. And if you’re wondering how this special Antichrist offspring fits into the grander scheme of things, so is American Horror Story. “Devil of a Good Time” fails to do anything with this magic baby. It would have been more interesting if Ben had to murder his newborn daughter, rather than himself. But hey, at least the Devil could be defeated by being Velvet Buzzsaw-ed into The Last Supper.

In this season’s defense, the final episodes do actually scratch the surface of something intriguing regarding the karmic balance of good and evil. It’s posited that apocalypses are cyclical and that there will always be something that threatens to rip the world apart at its seams. Neverending and infinite evil is the world’s fate, which is kind of the perfect metaphor for American Horror Story. No matter what happens and is accomplished, this story will continue indefinitely and introduce another boogeyman. It’s its own form of purgatory and a fitting way to contextualize everything as this season burns to the ground.

As intriguing and fitting of a fate that this would be, “Devil of a Good Time” discards this premise in favor of a sappy and saccharine turn of fate that’s so fundamentally at odds with the season’s tone. Cordelia truly believes that humans will evolve into their best selves once Satan is destroyed. She really thinks that the world will be rid of evil and enter some form of enlightenment. The idea that the deck is infinitely stacked against these characters and the Devil will always be lurking in the shadows, tempting the weak and polluting the world, feels like the more realistic conclusion. The audience is anxiously waiting for the rug to get pulled out from under them, and then it all just kind of ends.

In a series that’s come to be defined by its wasted potential, AHS: 13 is bad even by American Horror Story standards. While it seemed unlikely that this finale would turn things around and salvage the story, it’s truly impressive to see so many questionable choices get made that burn time and wear the audience’s patience thin. The prospect of spending more time with the Robichaux Academy coven or Murder House residents has lost the appeal that it once had now that these compelling characters have devolved into disappointing caricatures. There’s more American Horror Story on the way, but it’s time to let these characters rest in peace.

Tags:AHS: 13 American Horror Story American Horror Story: 13 Evan Peters jessica lange sarah paulson

Categorized:Reviews TV