Alice Rush reviews the ninth episode of American Horror Story: Coven….
There’s no doubt that this season of American Horror Story has been a slow burner. We’ve had a plethora of characters come and go, die and be brought back to life as well an underlying tension that always seemed to be building rather than being confronted. Well it’s safe to say after this latest episode, ‘Head’, that tension has been brought to the forefront with a resounding bang. Throughout the season there has always been the hint of an all-out war between the voodoo tribe and the witch coven and it was this tension that managed to carry the season along during sagging episodes. This week, however, sees an alliance between the warring tribes against the overarching threat of the witch hunters.
Hank’s character is given some backstory at the beginning of the episode as we see him being trained by his father to become a witch hunter, and later on we learn that the witch hunters are part of a huge corporation with Hank’s father at the head. It seems a little strange to introduce the witch hunters as the main bad guys this late on in the season, though it does now set the scene for an uneasy alliance. One of the main themes of the season has been the power of the female, so it does make sense for the witchy women to group together to take on the murderous men. With pressure from his father to finish the job and an unpleasant torture sequence from Marie Laveau who demands he kill the witches that very night, Hank returns to New Orleans with murder on his mind.
Switching to another storyline, after last week’s attack from Hank, Luke is in the hospital in a coma with Nan desperate to see him. After showing his mother her clairvoyant powers she gets a little more than she bargained for as it is revealed, rather loosely, that God showed Luke the truth about the fact his mother murdered his father. This side story seemed rather inconsequential compared to what happened in the rest of the episode, however with Luke being smothered by his mother towards the end of the episode the question is then begged of how Nan will react to the news. Will she become so enraged she finds new powers and is revealed to be the next Supreme? We’ll have to wait and see.
Inside the Academy the girls are closing ranks and arming themselves against the new threat. Newly revived Myrtle takes matters into her own hands as she sees Delia struggle with her loss of sight, and calls a meeting of the council. She does not, however, intend to forgive and forget the fact they allowed her to be burned at the stake. In a deliciously gory scene Myrtle paralyses the council and removes an eye from each of them with her trusty melon baller, before letting out her inner Walter White and dissolving their severed corpses. It’s a joy to see characters that started out as rather bland coming into their own and becoming more ruthless as up until now the only characters who truly felt badass were Marie and Fiona.
Back at Marie Laveau’s salon we see Queenie attempting to educate LaLaurie about racial issues by forcing her animated severed head to watch documentaries and television programme. It provides a nice bit of comic relief whilst also tapping into another huge theme of the season, race. However, this comedic moment doesn’t last long, as just as Queenie leaves LaLaurie to listen to “Oh, Freedom” Hank bursts in and begins a murderous rampage through the salon. The sequence is beautifully shot and as the haunting song plays over the gory action it becomes a poignant and shocking scene as the workers are all gunned down, including Queenie, who then uses her power to kill Hank before he can kill Marie Laveau. It’s a lot of action to fit into a mere few minutes, but this is what ‘Coven’ needed; something to shake up the rather stagnant narrative and jolt the audience.
With her tribe all but destroyed (the question of whether they’ll stay dead for long is still yet to be answered) Marie comes to Fiona at the end of the episode and it seems an alliance will be formed against the hunters. ‘Head’ proved to be the best episode of ‘Coven’ yet, with a real sense of danger running through it. Now with the hunters on their doorsteps and the threat of extinction very real indeed, it’s going to be a joy to watch Marie act with the coven to defend the lineage of witches. I’m hoping for some real fireworks.
Alice Rush
Originally published December 13, 2013. Updated April 11, 2018.
