(SPOILERS AHEAD, so witch your step, Coven fans!)
Season Three, Episode Nine: “Head”
Written by: Tim Minear; Directed by Howard Deutch
It’s Fall Finale week, and Coven has its own explosive final moments. But it’s a bit of a drudge to get there. With the episode focused on Hank, we finally get some lingering answers — but it feels almost anticlimactic with so much bigger drama going on around it all.
Quick Breakdown
Way down yonder in the Chattahoochee National Forest (circa 1991), a young Hank is being taught by his father how to hunt. A natural rite of passage for a young man, except that Hank’s father is teaching him how to hunt witches. One appears with wild hair (done in the style of Amy Adams in Into the Woods) and shoots flames at frightened Hank. His father dispatches of the witch, urging his son to show no mercy.
All grown up, Hank finds himself in the waiting room at Delphi Trust. His father runs this company, a corporation focused on hunting witches. Hank’s father lectures him on his inadequacies as a hunter (eliminating that “fire starter” had been a shoddy job with a nasty cleanup) and his failure to remain as a mole within the Robichaux coven. He also scoffs at Hank’s allegiance with those voodoo witches. Hank leaves wanting to make his father proud. (I doubt that attempted murder on his father would really impress his dad as much as it impressed Fiona.) We also learn that Hank authorized the attack on Cordelia.
Fiona swings by Laveau’s salon with LaLaurie’s head. She wants to strike up an allegiance with the voodoo queen, fearing an attack by the witch hunters, but Laveau laughs in her face (secure in the knowledge that the hunter is acting on her behalf). Queenie gives LaLaurie a little tolerance brainwashing, so she sets her in front of the TV and plays Roots for her. When that fails, though, she puts on some Civil Rights music, which seems to actually touch LaLaurie’s heart (even though it’s in a cage in the other room).
At the hospital, wounded Luke is in a coma, and his pious, resurrected mother is guarding him from those wicked witches (She doesn’t seem very gracious for being revived from the dead). Nan wins her over as she channels Luke’s thoughts, but Luke also reveals he knows Joan’s secret. After catching her husband getting a surprise blow job, Joan got her revenge. She trapped him in his car, which she had stuffed with bees, allowing him to suffer from a massive anaphylactic shock.
Since Cordelia arrived at Robichaux’s as a tender teenager, Myrtle has felt quite motherly towards her. This fuels her own little revenge plan. She invites Pembroke and Quentin over for a nice dinner. Once they’re hopelessly paralyzed from something she slipped in their drinks, she grabs her melon baller and removes an eye from each of them (before chopping them up and dropping them in an acid bath). She plants the eyes in Cordelia’s face, and suddenly she can see again, except she’s lost her second sight.
In the greenhouse, Cordelia teaches Myrtle some magic gardening tricks — they’re reviving a special plant that Cordelia says every witch in the house will need to eat as protection. Hank saunters in, so happy to see she has eyeballs again. Cordelia informs him she’s filed for divorce and tells him to grab his stuff and leave. As he carries his sad box of belongings out, he runs into Fiona and her new attack dog. Hank urges her to believe that he was looking out for Cordelia, but Fiona doesn’t buy it. He claims he’s doing his best to protect them. It’s hard to believe him based on what we’ve seen so far; he’ll have to try hard to prove himself.
The dog smells another man in the house — this one is Kyle. The dog licks harmless Franken-Kyle’s face, until Kyle seemingly snaps the animal’s neck. Fiona is pleased to find the boy though, for with a little “sprucing up” he gains some intelligence. When the girls arrive home, she’s playing cards with him, telling them he’ll be their new guard dog.
At the salon, Hank is proving himself. He barges in locked and loaded, gunning down the voodoo priestess’ lackeys. He lands a bullet in Queenie’s gut on his way to Laveau, but as he attempts to gun Laveau down, Queenie grabs a stray gun and blows Hank’s head off (via her head).
Cordelia is awakened by a knock on the manor’s door that night. Laveau has come, tail between her legs, seeking an alliance with the coven. Fiona gives us a smug smile as she closes the door.
Rating
B-
American Horror Story gives us another lackluster Fall Finale for the week. After some really phenomenal episodes, this one is composed of odds and ends, never quite feeling wholly cohesive (except for the surprising Hank through-line). It wraps up a couple different threads, but mostly it’s a set up for the final stretch that will air in January. Too bad they didn’t just postpone this episode as well.
Now for some random thoughts and my favorite moments of the night…
“Witch hunters is white women’s worry.” – Laveau
“Do you know why I got a female attack dog?” – Fiona asks Hank. He responds, “Because bitches stick together?”
Queenie was shot, but did she die? Since Laveau didn’t bring her to Robichaux’s we could assume so, but it’s hard to be presumptuous with such a twisted show.
Did you see these cool minimalist posters over on BuzzFeed?
