This season is titled Apocalypse for a good reason.
As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
Promos
- If you weren't afraid of the apocalypse before, the first two teasers may help.
- The first teaser starts off with a baby in the womb. Then the umbilical cord turns black, the camera pans to a heart and then an atomic explosion happens. We go inside the explosion and see a female body resting near a skeleton, wearing a gas mask. The gas mask melts away to reveal her black skull which is then dragged into an oily ground by a pair of black hands. Then two scorpions come out of a fig and fight to the death. Then a pentagram explodes and is taken into a furnace. Finally, the last shot is of an hourglass with skulls and an atomic explosion inside of it. The demonic hand returns and turns the hourglass upside down, restarting the hourglass. What's worse about this is the caption that goes with the teaser. It's time.
- The second teaser shows the demonic hand reaching for a baby's hand. The camera flashes as brief glimpses of the shot show that the baby's hand has gone red as an atomic explosion happens behind the hands.
Intro
- In addition to featuring strange creatures seen in earlier season intros, there is a shot of two children silhouetted on a dark staircase with glowing white eyes.
- Just the intro in general, which is a mix between Nightmare Fuel and Awesome due to it being a direct shout-out to the Murder House and Coven openings.
The End
- The nuclear strikes all across the world. The air raid siren does not help at all. A random bystander commits suicide and the body falls onto Coco's car.
- Timothy being taken from his family by Cooperative officials right before the strike.
- The explosions from the nukes rocking the bunker Timothy and Emily are being held captive in.
- Upon entering Outpost 3, Timothy and Emily see two occupants on their knees outside the building without radiation suits. They plead for their lives as they're shot in the head by Mrs. Meade and a guard in radiation gear.
- Mr. Gallant and Stu are humiliated with scrubbings after Mrs. Meade cranks up the Geiger Counter to detect exorbitant amounts of really superficial radiation. It gets worse after she does a final check on them after the scrubbing and by a flick of a switch, lets Gallant go while killing Stu. It is later presumed that the Outpost's guards chopped up and cooked Stu to feed to the other occupants in the Outpost after they find bones and teeth in their stew.
- The situation in the Outpost in general, without anything else. Communication with the outside world is non-existent. Their only food is a nutritional loaf, and even then they have to cut back to half-rations.
- Again Mrs. Meade shows no mercy with her gun and kills Michael Langdon's horses after he arrives at Outpost 3, who then decay as they fall to the ground. It is additionally horrifying that somebody would be willing to harness two horses to a carriage and send them into a nuclear wasteland. Not to mention the unseen something that drags one of the horse carcasses out of sight under the bushes...
The Morning After
- Snakes appear from nowhere in Emily's room. After killing them, Meade chops them up and cooks them for stew... and by the time the bowls are uncovered for the residents to dine on, they've regenerated.
- Rubber Man makes his return, and is just as creepy as ever.
- Gallant being flogged by Venable and Meade.
- The way Michael forcefully tells Venable to show him the reason why she's lying to him. What follows is creepy enough, but the way the camera shows off how Venable's back and spine is misaligned, either by sickness or something else, is haunting enough.
- Gallant sees Rubber Man a second time and follows him to a bedroom. Thinking it's Michael, who earlier mocked and humiliated him, Gallant stabs him to death with scissors. Then he sees Michael in the doorway. And then he sees that he hasn't killed Rubber Man, he's killed his grandmother.
Forbidden Fruit
- The glimpse we get of Michael's real form during Mallory's power surge.
- After two episodes of descriptions, we finally get to see the nightmare that the post-apocalyptic world has become. Scavengers, horribly disfigured by radiation-induced sicknesses, either dropping dead like flies or killing each other for food. With the losers of these fights often becoming food.
- The death of the Purples (Coco, Gallant, Dinah, Andre, Timothy, and Emily) by poisoned apples. The venom destroys their nervous systems and eats away at their stomach (as stated by Mead), and the process is slow and painful, complete with copious amounts of coughing and vomiting. They can't breathe long before they die.
Could It Be...Satan?
- Michael telekinetically breaking the interrogation officers arms and legs while pinning him to the wall, then making his head explode. The screaming doesn't help.
- Similar to the above, when Michael uses his power to murder an officer that Ariel had helplessly pinned against the wall, and was only planning on keeping asleep. It's implied that Ariel didn't even know this had happened, either.
- It's subtle, but the fact that when Michael turns up at the Cortez, March, the Big Bad of Hotel, is instantly complainant and goes along with what Michael says, shows how scary powerful Michael actually is.
Boy Wonder
- Michael rescues Misty from her personal hell by cutting the science teacher open in the same way she was repeatedly forced to dissect the frog.
- In the same scene as the above, Misty mentions that the children who were in that classroom rolled their eyes over and began talking in tongues as Langdon listened to them. As disturbing as this scene is, it also gives the implication that the children were demons from hell who oversaw and partook in Misty's torment.
- Cordelia being brutally torn apart by cannibalistic apocalypse survivors during her dream at the very beginning of the episode, while a laughing demon (likely Michael in his true form) watches.
- The depiction of Hell in this show is radically different from the usual depiction and a prime example of Nothing Is Scarier. It's a black hallway that goes on for eternity with rooms lining its walls, leading to people's personal hell, with the only lighting being a sickly yellow.
Return to Murder House
- The flashbacks to Michael's childhood, which show that over the years he killed a number of animals before getting to the babysitter seen in the finale of Murder House. Then, after his Overnight Age-Up, he tries to strangle Constance in her sleep just because he's mad at her. This leads to her summoning a priest for help, whom Michael also kills (he's shown sitting on his bed casually playing video games next to the priest's body). This is all ultimately too much for even Constance, who kills herself to escape Michael.
- Michael has the ability to render ghosts Deader than Dead, which he first demonstrates by killing a lesbian couple who just bought the Murder House (wearing the Rubber Man suit, natch), then incinerating their spirits. On top of that, Michael senses Vivien behind him and tries to incinerate her (though she was trying to kill him herself). Luckily Tate saves her before it takes full effect.
- The Black Mass that the Satanists perform to help Michael come fully into his position as Antichrist. They abduct a woman, cut her heart out, and have Michael eat it raw. Then his shadow warps into the figure of Satan, signifying his ascension.
Traitor
- The episode opens with Dinah stabbing a doll with a pin to injure a woman and then ripping out her heart.
- Papa Legba's back and creepy as ever.
- Nan is back, too, and it appears that her time in Hell has warped her a bit. Hearing her beg Cordelia to sacrifice the other Robichaux girls so that she can play with them again is quite unsettling.
- Ariel and Baldwin's Imagine Spot, where they visualize themselves poisoning the coven, all of them dying horribly as blood pours from their eyes — according to Baldwin, the poison works by breaking down their bodies' cell walls, causing them to bleed out from every pore. Fortunately, this doesn't get a chance to actually happen.
- For an idea of how warped Baldwin is, consider the fact that he blows some of the poison into Ariel's face as a gag. Sure, he didn't intend to harm Ariel, but consider how badly things might have turned out if he hadn't made absolutely sure that the poison only affected women.
- Cordelia's burning of Ariel, Baldwin, and Mead at first seems like a Moment of Awesome... until you realize that Michael is going to find out and if the preview for the next episode is anything to go by, he's not happy. It's also eerily reminiscent of when Fiona coldly burned Myrtle. Human!Mead's Slasher Smile as she burns at the stake deserves a special mention. Once again Kathy Bates shows her ability to turn something like a mere facial expression held for about 2 seconds of screentime into the stuff of nightmares. Zoe is visibly troubled by the whole thing, no doubt having flashbacks to the burnings in Coven. She also notices Coco is as well and comforts her.
Sojourn
- The charred skeletons of Ariel, Baldwin, and Mead, which have already crumbled apart and are almost ash after only a few hours. But what really puts this into nightmare territory is Mead's skeleton. When Michael touches her skull, it looks like it's still smiling. Good luck sleeping after that.
- Michael's agonized scream. Doubles as Tear Jerker.
- After Cordelia offers to help Michael, he takes her hand... and then yanks her until she's inches away from his face, swearing he's going to bring Mead back and he'll kill every last one of the witches. Cody Fern's Tranquil Fury delivery of the dialogue makes it more disturbing. After he walks off, Cordelia is left stunned and glances at Mead's skeleton, realizing that she's fucked up big time.
- Michael stabbing a goat multiple times before ripping its horn off with his bare hands, which leads to snakes slithering out of its gaping, bloody wound. A mix of both Squick and Surreal Horror.
- While the Satanic cult is mostly Played for Laughs (albeit Black Comedy laughs), the scene where they sacrifice two innocent people is not. They're offered to Michael for him to sacrifice, which he does via Slashed Throat. All this while the end title music/Michael's theme plays over it.
- Michael burning the prostitute Mutt and Jeff were using out of existence.
Fire and Reign
- Michael and Mead walking into Miss Robichaux's and calmly murdering every single one of the witches in the room, including Zoe and Queenie, with a gun in Mead's arm. Michael then destroys their souls, making it impossible for them to be revived. Doubles as a Tear Jerker.
Apocalypse Then
- The last four minutes of the episode. Here We Go Again! in its scariest form.
