Line #52 Headscratchers/AmericanHorrorStoryApocalypse


1	* Just how old is Michael? Cody Fern, the actor confirmed to be playing him, is 30 as of the season’s premiere date, however the season is confirmed to take place in October of 2019. If we assume Murder House takes place in 2011, the year that it aired, and thus the year of his birth, then Michael should only be 8. Is it possible that, as the AntiChrist, he has some type of advanced aging? Or maybe the version of Michael portrayed by Fern is some kind of future version, showing the type of person he will be, and there will be a much younger, present version of Michael?
2	** The episode "Return to Murder House" explains it, and confirms that he did in fact have the advanced aging, growing almost a decade overnight.
3	* Was it really the house that caused Tate to do all the awful things he did? This seems to contradict his arc in the first season, where he had to learn to take responsibility for his actions. So is it truly the house, or is Madison wrong?
4	** It could be a combination of the two. Madison's theory is just a theory.
5	* How famous is Madison? I had the impression she was an A-List celebrity before ''Coven'', but no one seems to have registered her death or even recognize her. This is harder to believe when she's dealing with realtors in Los Angeles.
6	** How many years has it been since ''Coven'', when she was already dropping from the celeb radar due to having to be a witch over an actress? Madison may have been famous once, but she's old news five-plus years on with no media presence.
7	*** Right, but to go from hot celebrity to unrecognizable anonymous figure in the span of five years is hard to believe. Lindsay Lohan, Amanda Bynes, etc. etc. didn't do much for a while and they didn't vanish from the cultural zeitgeist.
8	* So it's great that Moira's free and all, and it's nice to know that it didn't take much effort. I'm also aware that Behold and Madison are under a time crunch but... seriously, did neither of them think of offering freedom to any of the other ghosts trapped in the Murder House? I'm pretty sure there's an exterminator, a couple gay guys, and those twins that'd like to leave, even if Behold and Madison have to deal with TheAntichrist first.
9	** Weren't they freeing Moira as part of a deal with Constance? If they freed her, she'd talk about Michael?
10	* Why the age-up? Wouldn't it simply be easier to say the apocalypse happens ten years later? They could even joke that 2000s fashion is in again, and not have to worry about the plot hole from the ''Hotel'' season ending without getting nuked. Given how much this season is in flashback, they'd only need a couple scenes with the ''Coven'' cast in age makeup.
11	** Not wanting to age up the ''Coven'' cast that much. Wanting to show Michael's unnaturalness. Foreshadowing through the ''Hotel'' epilogue that the apocalypse will be reversed by Mallory's time-reverting powers. Take your pick.
12	** Though lazy writing might ultimately be the best reason.
13	** That probably applies to a lot of these problems, unfortunately.
14	* Similarly, why bother with Mead being a cyborg? Given how talented she is at manipulation, wouldn't it have been easier to just have her infiltrate Outpost 3?
15	** Mead was [[spoiler: burnt at the stake and dead by the time the end rolls around. Michael wanted to bring her back but couldn't bring her physically back since Cordelia hexed her soul]]
16	*** And aside from making the fight personal with Michael, was any of it necessary in the story?
17	* Why does Mallory (seemingly) using magic to ''create life'' solicite a response of just “wow,” while her using magic to slice open and then heal a neck is met with “oh my gosh I’ve never seen anything like that before!”?
18	** So far there hasn't been shown any magic that can insta-heal aside from Vitalum Vitalis. Marie was able to bring back Voodoo Zombies and they brought back kyle from the dead so bringing things to life isn't unheard of. Healing magic however seems to be much rarer (reason why Resurgence is considered such a rare gift). That or they recognized it not as healing but as turning time back as Mallory had previously done with the deer.
19	* How many bombs fell?
20	* So, uh, we're all just going to ignore that Moira's trapped in the Murder House again due to the cosmic retcon?
21	** That's true, and Tate and Violet are still broken up now that Madison and Behold never had to go back. Poor Moira, though. At least no one got incinerated.
22	* How is Timothy and Emily's son at the end the new Antichrist? Isn't the anti-Christ only conceived through a human and a ghost? And for that matter, is their son Michael reborn?
23	** I've been thinking about this, and it's possible that their house was built over a portal to Hell similar to the Murder House, and that perhaps the devil got into Timothy or Emily without them knowing it.
24	** I'm thinking that this may have been what was 'special' about them. One or both of them has something spiritually imbued in them that made them able to conceive the anti-christ.
25	* The Rubber Man in episode 2. Is it Michael or not? It's obviously not Tate, per the "Return to Murder House" episode.
26	** I believe it was hinted to be Michael creating illusions to draw up underlying anger between Mr. Gallant and his grandmother.
27	*** Except the Rubber Man was in the room and watching when Timothy and Emily found Michael's laptop and did the apocalyptic groin tango.
28	* Cordelia claims that the only way Mallory and Coco will be safe during the nuclear apocalypse is in a bunker, with Michael. This is obviously not true, considering the plan also relies on Cordelia, Madison and Myrtle's survival, and they just bury themselves underground. Wouldn't it have been safer to include Mallory on that plan?
29	** It's implied by the bayou mud reference that they didn't survive the blast or that they were horribly maimed by it hence they had to bury themselves in the mud in order to be made whole. It's also possible that they needed to wait until Mallory fully came into her supreme powers (even if repressed) in order for her to be able to pull the spell.
30	* Who was flying that plane? Was it on autopilot?
31	** Autopilot.
32	*** Alternately, the Collective's running it on remote. If they can create a cyborg, they can create a remote guidance plane.
33	* Why was Michael messing with everyone if he was just going to kill them anyways?
34	** Maybe he was bored? He may not need a justification to torment them since he's the embodiment of pure evil.
35	** It's not clear that he intended to kill everyone, merely set up a scenario where killing everyone was very likely. Remember, for all Michael's power, he's pretty clueless about what it is he's supposed to do. His offer to Venable may have been genuine, and he might have had allowed for the possibility of recruiting anyone else so impressive.
36	* Where is the Sanctuary and what is it?
37	** It more than likely wasn't real, just something to drum up controversy between the occupants.
38	** Alternately, it was the Murder House, which fits Michael's attachment issues and would, in a certain line of thinking, protect everyone there.
39	* How did Cordelia know who Miriam Mead was and where to find her?
40	** Behold and John Henry probably informed her. If not, she probably used magic to figure out.
41	* How did Michael know who Madison was and where to rescue her from?
42	** I'm willing to bet that his father told him about it in order to mess with Cordelia.
43	* How did Mallory know exactly when to travel back in time? Where to travel back to? Where did she get the car from?
44	** Car rental's easy enough to explain. The timeframe might have been something Madison could have coughed up.
45	* Was there a point to resurrecting Marie Laveau beyond providing another cameo? She did so little she may as well have not even been there.
46	** In-universe reason: Cordelia was down multiple witches and needed as much help as she could get; knowing that Dinah wouldn't help, the only other person she could probably think of was Marie (who was a powerful witch in her own regard, but years out of practice and no prep-time probably didn't help in a battle against the AntiChrist). But in reality, it was pure fanservice since Marie Laveau is easily one of the most popular Coven characters.
47	*** Presumably they had a plan in place where Marie (and the other witches) would have been helpful with the ceremony. Things only went to crap because Mallory was injured and the plan went from properly setting up defenses (something Marie seemed to be able to do even for a moment) to just keeping her alive.
48	* Where the hell was Kyle? He wasn't so much as even mentioned.
49	** Kyle was a minor character even in the Coven season. His absence might simply be down to the writers not remembering him, or cutting him due to the season being overstuffed as it was.
50	* Why the big deal about Michael having a computer in Outpost 3? Unless he has magical wifi, he's not online without Venable noticing. Maybe Mead's a living router?
51	* So now we've got two supremes running around, though somehow the one doesn't recognize the other. Meanwhile, we also have Mallory the Supreme present, and Mallory the New Girl throwing round powerful magic and presumably pretty soon to arrive at the Coven...
52	* Similarly, why is it that Mallory can whip out new magic well before the Coven knows about Michael, and nobody even considers that she might be a new Supreme? It's one thing to assume that Cordelia's still new to the role and likely to hang on a bit, but Mallory's explicitly unique and powerful in ways nobody else has even heard of. Not one person suggested her Supreme status until after the Coven figured out Michael's real identity.
53	** Cordelia considered it since she knew that she was ill and that meant a new Supreme would soon come. To everyone else she may have just been an extremely gifted witch with a rare power much like how Misty had the power of resurgence yet was not the Supreme. Furthermore everyone likely thought that Cordelia was in perfect health and that it would take a good while before a new one would emerge.
54	* [=CoCo's=] turned into an awful, degrading person specifically to keep Mallory from knowing her true power, and the rest of the surviving Coven hides out until Mallory comes into her true power. How does this even make sense?
55	** It's been shown that being repressed can hinder a supreme from flourishing and coming into the role, so it's likely that was so that Mallory would be hidden as the supreme until her powers were fully ready to emerge. It does take the old supreme time to decline and the new one to ascend after all and it looked like Cordelia had just begun to decline.
56	* When Madison meets Violet, Tate, Billie Dean and Constance, why doesn't she register any surprise that they look exactly like Zoe, Kyle, Cordelia and Fiona respectively?
57	** WordOfGod has stated that characters played by the same actor(s) look differently than how we as the audience see them, as in they don’t all look like the same actor. Which makes things confusing when a character is physically described (by themselves or another character) to resemble their actor...
58	*** Physical descriptions can only go so far. For example, Billie Dean Howard and Cordelia Goode could both be described as early-40ish women about 5'6" with straight-blonde hair, but the same would describe millions of women who aren't necessarily doppelgangers of one another. You just have to suspend disbelief and ignore the fact that the two have the same face, not just the same hair, build, and height.
59	* Why is Cordelia declining so soon after ascending? She doesn't appear much older than she did in Coven. The official timeline states that the present day of Apocalypse is in 2021, 8 years after Coven. Cordelia starts to decline 3 years before this... when she would be at most in her early 40's. By contrast Fiona Goode and Anna Leigh Leighton were both in their 60's (judging by Anna Leigh's appearance) when they started to decline. Why did Cordelia get the short end of the Supreme stick?
60	** The supreme is born every generation, so they normally have a run cycle of 30-40 years. Cordelia starts to decline in early 40s but there is no word on how long it takes a Supreme to decline considering how Anna didn't look like she was close to dying. Furthermore Fiona is a special case due to A) Killing the previous supreme early and ascending in late adolescence and unintentionally suppressing Cordelia. Mallory looks around early 20s so it'd fit like this.\
61	New Supreme rises around early 20s, gets selected and trained in how to use her powers, becomes supreme around late 20s/early 30s and lives around 30/40 years with it and spends the last decade declining. Cordelia was suppressed so she didn't ascend until she started to gain more confidence in her powers in which case Fiona degraded almost instantly into a withered wreck. By all counts Cordelia is around the time of decline but nothing is saying she's instantly going to die.
62	* Mallory travels back in time at the end of the season, kills Michael and then apparently goes back to living her life as she did originally at the time and joins the witch academy. But what about the version of Mallory that was already there? Are there two Mallorys now? Did future-Mallory somehow replace present-Mallory? Nothing we saw or were told about the workings of the time travel spell indicated that was a possibility.
63	* Now that Queenie no longer visits the Hotel Cortez in the new timeline thanks to Mallory preventing her from going there in 2015, how does her absence affect the storyline of "Hotel"? In that season, vampire Ramona Royale was trapped in a closed soundproof hallway by The Countess, and when she was released, she needed to feed on someone in order to get her strength back and take vengeance on The Countess. As we know, Queenie visited the hotel in the original timeline and Ramona drank her blood. Ramona was delighted she ate a witch and said she felt like she had "bears in her veins" afterward, but prior to eating Queenie she had already eaten an entire classroom of children and that still wasn't enough to give her strength until she drank Queenie's Voodoo blood. So, now that Queenie no longer visits the hotel, was Ramona not strong enough to confront The Countess? By association, does that mean that The Countess and Ramona no longer slept together like in the original timeline, resulting in The Countess leaving the hotel like she said she was going to do, before she could be killed by John Lowe? Does that mean that in the new timeline, The Countess is alive again and living a new life outside of the hotel?

Context Headscratchers / AmericanHorrorStoryApocalypse