Within the first few minutes of American Horror Story: Where is Evan Peters?, Matt and Shelby hash it out over Matt’s bad romance with creepy forest witch Lady Gaga, and Matt stereotypically calls his angry wife crazy.
She forgives him immediately and goes upstairs to look in the mirror and question her life. Like a scene from a hillbilly version of Psycho, Pig Man hides in the shower before Shelb can hop in, and then chases her and the hubs through the house. I don’t know how she continually looks so put together when her beauty and sleep routine is sabotaged daily. That’s the magic of “dramatic re-enactment” I guess.
Anyway, Professor Creep Elias Cunningham jumps out of nowhere and yells “Crotoan!” at Porcine Bates Jr., and then warns that he’ll be back.
This guy is the shadiest dude on the show. Like where have you been? Shelby does not trust the “insane” guy, especially after seeing the video, but she eventually starts to believe him. Matt on the other hand just yells without listening and stares in disbelief at anything anyone says. I’m honestly super over Matt at this point, although it could be because Cuba Gooding, Jr. is super good at playing a whiny guy (looking at you O.J.). Elias explains that Croatoan was both a message left by the colony so they could be found and a word of “dark power and blood magic.” Matt finally puts two and two together and figures out that the prof made the video. Elias says he’s owned the house for years, but has stayed out because it’s so dang spooky, and then goes on to tell them the even spookier history: everyone who has lived there has gone missing or died.
Elias takes them down to the basement to show them all his compiled evidence, and rattles off stories about the house’s previous occupants. Flashback to 1973: the Chen family immigrated from Taiwan and moved to the area to achieve the American Dream and all it brings: TV dinners, American divorce and bell bottom confusion.
The fam starts hearing horror noises upstairs, and it’s pigs. Mama Chen wants to leave and Stacy gets pushed down the stairs. Elias explains that they tried to use some family ancestor magic, but the colonists killed the family. Elias’ information goes back to the 1700’s, when the house was completed by Edward Philippe Mott, who disappeared. Could he be related to the psychopath Dandy Mott of Freak Show? I hope this is another inter-seasonal connection.
Bridget and Miranda, the deadly nurses from previous episodes, also suffered at the hands of the Butcher. They told Elias themselves that the Butcher messed them up by literally pulling one sister apart and decapitating another. Gross.
Turns out every death or disappearance occurs during the “Dying Grass” lunar cycle, a time when a six-day long blood moon gives the colonists hella power. Matt and Shelby are finally believers, and tell Elias about Flora and Priscilla. He knows where they are, and takes them on another trip into the woods. Matt and Shelb see Lady G in the woods, and Shelby takes off after her.
She runs into a clearing, where she finds all the people who have ever died on the property, as well as Flora! Apparently these ghosties can walk between worlds at will, and Elias is shot full of arrows like five seconds later by a bunch of colonists.
Priscilla and Flora run away, and Matt and Shelby run back to the house to find our fave Cricket, who’s so over it. He scolds them for messing up his deal with the Butcher, and tells them that Flora is alive, but getting her back is going to be hard as heck. He met with the Butcher, and she just yelled at him in her amazing Irish accent.
Cricket says he needs to go back to the woods to get the 411, and eventually meets the HBIC, Lady Gaga. He offers Matt to her in exchange for information, and she delivers. LG shows Cricket the colony and how Thomasin White became the Butcher. The colony is poppin’, but requires human sacrifice to achieve it. We see Thomasin sacrificing who we assume to be Priscilla, and it’s intense. Thomasin’s own son is super mad because she’s hanging out with LG, and practicing “devil worship”.
She thinks everyone is super ungrateful, and LG tells her to trick and kill them in order to “enslave their souls for eternity.” Thomasin is so down. She prepares a huge feast and tells them that she’s saved by God. Then she gives them some special fruit that’s actually poison and hacks them all to death, before being killed by Lady Gaga herself.
Cricket says he knows a spell to banish the whole colony, and then catches an Uber back to his hotel to prepare. On his way back, he tries to hit on the Uber driver by asking if he knows what gay for pay is, proving that Cricket his living his best life at any given moment. Before he gets an answer, Flora runs across the road and Cricket jumps out and runs after her into the woods. Cricket noooo!
Back at the house, Shelby and Matt try and stay awake in anticipation of a colonist attack, but fail epically. Matt wakes up and decides to go walk around, when he starts hearing creepy whispers and sees that the cellar where Elias used to live is open. Someone is calling his name, and its none other than LG! Her eyebrows look amazing, proving that a good brow routine is eternal, and she’s waiting for him so she can finish what they started.
She pulls Matt in with her abilities, and shows him how she got her powers while seducing him again. In the flashback, we see an ethereal Gaga killing English soldiers before she’s burned at the stake, apparently at the command of blood thirsty “old gods”, and escaped into the woods.
Shelb wakes up alone and immediately starts looking for Matt, and runs outside to find the Butcher walking towards the house with her pals. Shelb screams for Matt and he runs out surprisingly quickly (and fully dressed?). They have Flora, and are prepped to kill her, when Priscilla hits the Butcher so her BFF can escape. Flora, Matt, and Shelb run into the house, and Flora tells them that the Butcher has Cricket. She wants to use him for a blood sacrifice to keep the colony bound to the land, so she cleaves him in the chest and pulls his intestines out while Matt and Shelb watch from the house. She menacingly points at the pair, and Matt knows they’re next.
Chapter 4 really picked up the pace and had a lot of scary moments, but I’m still eager to see the much hinted at twist in Chapter 6. What will happen next week? Will Evan Peters finally appear? Will Lady Gaga finally get Matt? Hopefully we get more horror, terror, and connections to past seasons. Check back next week for more American Horror Story: Roanoke recaps.
American Horror Story: Roanoke airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. EST on FX.