Death, Dying, and Live Streaming
This episode opens with the most disappointing twist of the season:
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When fans saw Taissa Farmiga in he promo for this week it fueled theories that it would be the Coven tie in we’ve been waiting for (and no an obscure Ryan Murhy statement that the Witch of the Woods is the original Supreme doesn’t count) but she is not portraying Zoe at all. To add insult to injury she is playing an obnoxious blogger named Sophie.
The episode opens with 3 My Roanoke Nightmare superfan bloggers exploring the woods of the haunted property. We get the premise that they’re equally bad decision makers of the regular cast when they reveal they are exploring the property during the blood moon.
Some fans speculated this group would be the ones to find the footage of Return to Roanoke, but when the group sees a ghost resembling Diana Cross (Sidney’s car wreck assistant). They then chase after the ghost and find her overturned car complete with dead body inside–this implies none of the deaths have been discovered or cleared and they are in the same Blood Moon weekend as the second filming.
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Professional Ghost Hunters, right?
No carnage ensues (the biggest twist of the episode), but the police chastise them for being an annoying waste of time and shockingly do very little to help or investigate.
Back in the house we get Dylan’s story about how he was hired to come and shake things up on the casts final day of filming, but Sidney had gone off the grid, but Dylan doesn’t under perform because of someone else’s mistakes (Maybe because of his time in the military that is brought up 27 4 times in 10 minutes)
Once Audrey and Lee get him up to speed and take him on a tour of the house and the dead bodies on display he takes action and they decide the best course of action is to return to the Polk farm and hijack a car. He of course wants to go alone and play the hero in typical horror cliche fashion, but Lee continues to be the voice of reason
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The plan falls apart the second they arrive at the Polk encampment tho with them instantly splitting up. Dylan works on hotwiring the Polk’s truck, while Audrey and Lee split up to look for Monet*
*TGON Reveals: Lee is looking for the tapes to delete her confession and is not very concerned with Monet
Audrey wins a lot of points for being a true survival horror character and rummaging through drawers and stealing one of the Polk’s guns. 10 points to Gryffidor the UK
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And Audrey continues being this episodes MVP by rescuing Monet!
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We also see Lee’s descent from smartest character/most likely to survive rear its ugly head when she gets distracted with deleting her confession video instead of grabbing the camera and running.
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And then Audrey earns the Triple Crown by not only blowing away Ishmael Polk, but getting his threat on tape so she will be safe from repercussions.
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TGON Comments: If you want to see the gore shot we encourage you to rewatch the episode!
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Lee gets back to the truck first to find Lot has stabbed Dylan, and as she stands off against him we see the mob f angry spirits approach and he comments that without Mama they aren’t safe and he turns tail and takes the truck–abandoning his victims.
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TGON Comments: The final Polk is never shown again, and lets not forget the two children that the police picked up earlier this season. So the Polks are not an extinct species.
The cut to commercial transitions us back to Mont and Audrey running back to the house, abandoning Lee in the woods, and Monet uses her first line in 3 episodes to ask the million dollar question
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Apparently Monet just can’t keep the good ideas in after so long off camera and her creative juices lead her to watch Lee’s tape to see why she wanted it and it is revealed tat Lee killed her husband and opinions start quickly changing within the group.
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The show did a very artistic split scene bouncing from Audrey and Monet’s viewing of the tape to black and white nigh vision shots of Lee’s struggle in the woods. We then get the most unexpected scene of the season
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TGON Comments: While completely unexpected, the only reason we could think that the witch would be interested in Lee is her one similarity to The Butcher: murder. It may also be worth noting her blood relation to Matt, and the Witch’s draw to him could be a family thing.
After such dramatic scenes we move to a much simpler scene. Literally, those simple minded bloggers decided to go back into those woods, at night, during the peak Blood Moon.
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After some non-witty banter, they find a newly possessed enchanted Lee. Unfortunately for them she no longer feels the pain from missing half of her leg and the witch gave her a cleaver. So Todd dies and since no one can keep their camera still this season we cannot provide you with an image of him being butchered.
We can however provide an image of the creepy stick dolls the two remaining bloggers see after running from Lee.
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Luck favors the simple once again and the bloggers find the production trailer (and the bodies littered around it). Before entering they are approached by the severely wounded Dylan, but being simple don’t realize his ambling is a sign of a wounded survivor and not a ghost and knock down before locking him out of the trailer.
They then see the videos still live streaming from the house on the monitors in the production trailer and see a lot of dead cast members (Sophie mourns Shelby the most. She was a really big fan).
They then see Audrey and Monet are still alive, and that Lee is on her way to the house and they are in danger. Sophie demands they continue to the house to warn/save the actresses.*
*This is a terrible decision
Back in the house we get the episodes humour higjlight as Audrey and Monet discuss Lee’s fate of probably being a last snack for the Polks.
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After such a kind and understanding display it almost seems justify that the newly enchanted Lee bangs into the house and after being belittled by an enraged and liquored up Monet she snaps and shoves her over through the banister.
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Monet is obviously not the survivor, but she gets an honorable mention for being top 3 in the pursuit of becoming Roanoke’s Next Top Survivor.
Audrey shines once again, standing up to Lee and even recovering from a comedic, albeit predictable, fall during her escape.
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The next scene deducts points from both of them however. Audrey makes the ridiculous decision to try and climb down into the shelter once out of the house (dumb), Lee is enchanted so she of course is still standing and catches her and cleaves her, but Lee is no butcher and goes for a shoulder stake which just hurts and hasn’t worked to kill anyone this season (remember Agnes did this to Shelby, who continued to annoy us until she killed herself). Lee also doesn’t finish her kill and leaves Audrey for dead which has also lead to 0 kills this season (Remember when we thought the professor was dead from ghost arrow wounds but was only knocked out and sacrificed later that night or Dylan 10 minutes ago?)
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Speaking of Dylan, our favorite bloggers make it to the house and hide in some bushes near some lumber with 0 coverage, and watch the spirit mob drag a still breathing Dyaln in front of the house
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They then get a front row seat to a Cricket callback and watch Dylan get disemboweled in a tug of war that pulled on our heart strings and his small intestine.
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Of course the bloggers get discovered, and a very efficient Evil Lee brings them to be extra sacrifices. To their credit they get the most interesting deaths of the episode. They get Shish-Kabobed, and are still alive as they are doused in an accelerant and then set on fire while still alive and with completely new orifices. Did we mention they capture eachothers deaths on their livestreaming body cameras? The only bigger surprise in this scene was the lock of product placement for Go-Pro’s.
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TGON Comments: You never know when extra eldritch gods will show up for dinner and it is polite to prepare extra souls in anticipation of guests bringing plus 1′s.
The police show up the next day, they knew what was happening last night (they go through it every year and that is why they avoided it), and the livestream garnered over a million viewers.
They take stock of the carnage and then find a sleeping Lee, who absolutely loses it when they wake her (wake me and you get the same response tbh). Lee seems to have returned to normal as she feels all of the pain in her leg and seems very emotional. We all agree this makes sense as the Blood Moon is no longer applying the witch’s magic or amplifying it, but we’d like to see what happens to Lee next year..
Audrey deserves more credit than we gave her previously, because she climbs out of her hole when she hears the police , Playing possum and staying in the cellar actually worked to survive the night.
Aubrey then loses all points she previously earned this episode. She is still in survival mode and when she sees Lee who just murdered her friend and cleaved her in the shoulder the night before she steals a policeman’s gun and is taken down before she can get her shot off. She survived the night to die of her own stupidity and vigilante justice.
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So the victor that survived their Return to Roanoke is none other than our spunky Lee Miller
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Now that is the face of the champion.
What has everyone buzzing tho is the reveal that the final episode will be Lees’ trial and the aftermath, including an interview with Lana Winters, meaning Sarah Paulson gets to play a third character this season.
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Be sure to join us next week when we see the FINAL episode of American Horror Story: Roanoke
