American Horror Story Recap: Hell Is Other People’s Chicken

A lot of people die in this episode of American Horror Story: Coven. Stop the presses, right? By now, death is a pretty cheap commodity in Covenland, but at least now we find out that all these evil souls earn a special place in hell — and that damnation means standing in an endless line for fried chicken. At least it's not the DMV.

We open with a turn-of-the-century silent orientation film on the Seven Wonders ritual. "Guided by ancient tradition, witches survive only if united under a strong, singular authority," we're told, which is apparently trying to make a case for supernatural dictatorship. It goes on to misread a lot of supernatural concepts, such as divination and transmutation, as well as pyrokinesis, which was coined not by medieval occultists but by Stephen King for his 1980 novel Firestarter.

Then we're back in the present, as Fiona relates all of this to Queenie. Queenie's no dummy, though; she knows that Fiona just wants to sniff out the next Supreme in order to kill her, and she doesn't hold her tongue about it. Fiona's a little crabby — chalk it up to Post-Multiple Murder Syndrome — and throws Queenie into a Darth Vader chokehold for her sass.

Upstairs, the eyeball-less Cordelia stumbles her way into Madison's room, who puts it lightly when she says, "You look like sh*t." Madison understandably doesn't want Cordelia touching all her stuff and discovering that she bricked up Misty in a tomb somewhere. She flits around the room with her powers of "transmutation" until finally consenting to a little psychic feel-up. Alas, Cordelia sees nothing.

Elsewhere, Queenie's on the hunt for Marie, who went missing after Spalding knocked her down in the last episode. She astrally projects herself into her own personal hell, which turns out to be serving chicken to jerks. There, she meets Papa Legba, who summons her back to the real world, where he takes a quick snort of that yayo amid a cloud of smoke. She sits down with him over a cup of hot cocoa and he explains that Delphine chopped Marie up into immortal bits that have been scattered all around New Orleans. Bye, Marie.

Meanwhile, Delphine got herself a Janet Napolitano haircut and a job at her own historical manse, leading tours with some slightly embellished facts of her life. Turns out that she had gone on the tour herself, but was less than thrilled about the previous guide's take on her story, so Delphine buried an iron pick in her skull and imprisoned her in the attic.

Queenie tracks her down and asks her to repent by working in an outreach center, but B.A.P.S. apparently had only a short-lived effect on Delphine's racial sensitivity. After she watched the scandals of Paula Deen, Anthony Weiner, and Eliot Spitzer unfold, she equated her long series of murders with these political dust-ups, deciding that repentance only leads to public disgrace. Queenie has no choice but to stab her to death. Bye, Delphine.

At Miss Robichaux's, Fiona's having her portrait painted by some kind of French cartoon. "He's done everyone," says Myrtle. "Margaret Thatcher. Sting." Midway through, however, Fiona's cancer starts acting up and gives her a nosebleed. Later, Cordelia walks in on her tearfully pawing through some heirlooms, and Fiona gives her her grandmother's necklace, her little way of saying, "I'm sorry I've been such a cantankerous serial killer of a mother."

Except, not really. Just then, Cordelia gets her second sight back and sees Fiona's plan: to kill everyone in the house, of course — including Cordelia, too. She plays it cool, though, and decides to pay a visit to the Axeman. Apparently he didn't know that Fiona was planning to skip town in a couple days without him, and he seems, well, pissed. Having successfully planted the seed of her revenge, she blindly stumbles off.

Later, Cordelia discovers Misty's secret burial site and enlists Queenie to help her rip out the wall of her tomb. Misty's dead, but that doesn't mean much on this show. Queenie leans over and breathes a couple words of Latin at her, and she wakes up with a cough.

Back at the house, Zoe and Kyle return from their Epcot vacation, as Myrtle tells Madison that the coven knows all about her connivances. Myrtle, of course, has a fashion reference for the couple: "You're just like Halston, when he sold his brand to JCPenney. You've forsaken your destiny." They had gone to Florida, Zoe tells her, but Kyle murdered a homeless man. Zoe brought him back to life with her powers, and she's now convinced that she's the next Supreme.

Suddenly Misty, reanimated and full of vinegar, strolls in and clocks Madison with a straight jab across her nose. "Stop these vulgar fisticuffs," says Myrtle, but Misty continues to chase Madison around the parlor. Kyle breaks them up, but just then, the Axeman appears with his signature weapon, about to drive it in some witch skulls. Bad plan. They fling him across the room like a rag doll.

He's covered in Fiona's blood. Cue the dramatic music, and flashback to the Axeman's apartment, where Fiona slinks in as she always does. He discovers a ticket in her purse, proof of her plans to leave him. In classic Fiona style, she berates his suit as she's dumping him, but he cuts her off at the pass by driving his axe into her back, before feeding her to some swamp gators.

While he may have done the coven a favor, the young witches think the Axeman needs to be put down. "He's a psycho mass-murderer," says Madison. "Is there anyone here of whom that cannot be said?" asks Myrtle. Truer words, folks. Despite that, or perhaps because of it, the girls have a stabby free-for-all on the Axeman, who is now very definitely dead — again. The ladies then gather around Fiona's portrait and decide to hold the Seven Wonders competition that weekend. Yee-haw.

Then we go to hell. Well, it's actually hell disguised as Delphine's attic, where Marie has locked her presumptive soul in a cage. Marie begins to torture Delphine's daughters, who are also locked up, before she realizes that she, too, is in hell. Enter Papa Legba, who informs the ladies of their destiny. Even Marie, who claims to have helped so many people, sacrificed hundreds of years' worth of stolen infants in Papa Legba's name. "No one gets away with sin," he says.

Except for coke-sniffing, baby-eating demons, that is. They get a free pass.