"American Horror Story: Freak Show" Finale Leaves Many Questions Unanswered

The final recap of an overall disappointing season.  


Everybody dies, so it's only how they die that matters.   

Before Dandy dies, he does a whole bunch of killing. He's the new Elsa, so he gets to do whatever he wants, which includes singing Cole Porter. Paul tries to get everyone to go along with it at first, but then Dandy starts insulting them when he finds out no one has bought any tickets. Paul immediately reaches the end of his rope, Eve punches Dandy in the face, and they all hover over him and quit. I think the next time I quit something I'm going to scream, "No one cares about Cole Porter!" and storm away. Dandy takes it as well as expected, meaning he puts on a face full of makeup, grabs his golden gun, and starts killing at will. He shoots EVERYBODY — Paul, Penny, the French guy, Legless Suzy. He even shoots Eve twice when she fights him, which saves Desiree (she was hiding in a closet). Dandy escapes with the twins, who he kidnaps, and when Jimmy comes back to show off his new wooden flippers and sees the carnage, he freaks out completely. Well, you saved absolutely no one this season, Jimmy, so good luck with that savior stuff!

Dandy decides to marry the twins in his toy room, the same room where he murdered his mother and did a blood pact with Twisty and decided he was a golden god. Every wedding needs a weird, giant toy horse, a flautist, and the ghost of their murdered inbred mother floating around the eaves. There's a weird exchange at the alter — he really only married Bette, but keeps insisting that Dot take part in their "love." At dinner, he decides he wants to have "freak babies" with them, but too late! He's been poisoned by the slowest acting poison in the world. Desiree and Jimmy, pretending to be kitchen staff, have enough time to give a Shakespearian soliloquy before he even gets woozy, and Bette makes sure he knows she hates him before he finally passes out. When he comes to, they've locked him in Houdini's escape tank so he can have a "showman's death." As the tank fills up with water, Jimmy pointedly tells him the freaks will inherit the earth, which so far means a proliferation of podcasts and the fact that Marilyn Manson was able to have a career, then Dandy drowns onstage while everyone eats popcorn and laughs. He really didn't deserve a better death, but I did expect a bloodier one.

Elsa is having a hell of a time in Hollywood, considering no one wants to work with her, but a week of stalking the network president and one sucker punch to a secretary's face puts her in the way of Michael Beck, the junior VP of casting. Cut to eight years later — she's won three Emmys for her variety show and is a recording superstar with hot hits like "Merry Christmas Noodlemaus." She married Michael even though she hates him and is the same old diva she always was, but now she's rich, bored, and alone. Their fight over her refusal to do a Halloween special coincides with a newspaper discovering her old snuff film. I know it was the 1960s, but I'm surprised that information took so long to come to light if anyone ever figured it out at all. You would think that would be part of some background check, right? Can she sing? Can she dance? Did she have her legs mercilessly chopped off and filmed in a den of inequity? It's sort of messed up that the network president wants to fire her for it as if it weren't the most traumatic event in her life, but that's why misandry is alive and well today.   

The president of the network tells her that all her freak show friends died right before he kills her career. It's weird that she didn't know about the massacre, right? That in eight years she didn't even send a letter or make a call? Danny Huston stops by to tell her he has lung cancer and one month to live; now that she has no reason to carry on, she decides to do the Halloween show, thinking that Mordrake will rip her from this mortal coil.   

And he does! Kind of. Mordrake appears on a cloud of green fog with the weird little whisperer smacking his gums on the back of his head. As Elsa more speaks than sings a version of David Bowie's "Heroes," we get to catch up with the freaks that got away, since they can all see her performing on their TVs. Desiree married Malcolm Jamal Warner and had two kids, and Jimmy married the twins (who are pregnant) because why not? I'm sure that's not a marriage of convenience or anything. How are they making money? Mordrake doesn't want Elsa to join his menagerie, but he stabs her in the heart anyway like a real gentleman, and she gets to go to heaven. Can you guess what her version of heaven is? It's the freak show! Everyone is there — well, everyone who was murdered under her reign — and she gets to perform David Bowie songs in a smart powder blue suit forever and ever.

This was not my favorite season. There were so many abandoned or unexplained plot points (what happened to the Meep version of Stanley? What was up with his wang? Why did we see the twins dead in the museum if they didn't really die, but Jimmy's hands showed up there after the museum owner was killed?), and the most terrifying thing that happened was that Twisty's mouth was made of spaghetti. I'm still glad we got through it together.

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