Probably what could be considered the worst episode in American Horror Story history, Wednesday’s episode of Apocalypse, titled Sojourn, forced audiences to suffer through 37 minutes of complete nonsense.
Cordelia (Paulson) confronting Michael (Fern) after last week’s burning
Following Michael Langdon (Cody Fern) as he hit a weak point in his plan for world annihilation and ultimately found support in the Church of Satan, the episode consisted essentially of half an hour of “Hail, Satan!” being screeched multiple times in each scene by goofy, ill-presented members of the church and the introduction of Dumb and Dumber-esque characters that we are supposed to fear as they formulate the means of destruction that we will see once Michael’s plan (whatever that is) comes to fruition..
The only saving grace of the episode was learning more about Sarah Paulson’s character, Wilhemina Venable, as we saw her working aside Dumb and Dumber in a full purple outfit—the only callback we have received in five episodes to the original setting of the season. Given the fact that there are only two episodes left of this season, it’s insulting to the audience that this lackluster installment was presented as an episode. Although the train wreck seemed imminent after the first half of the season, I had no idea it would turn into that kind of a mess.
Evan Peters and Billy Eichner’s characters.
I’m afraid to admit that the potential of the story is entirely gone—as the preview for next week’s episode seems intriguing enough—but, it’s impossible to not admit that AHS has hit a wall. We know that the showrunners are capable of a good story (see: Cult), so it makes no sense that this disaster is what we got for Apocalypse; which is made worse when the fact that it is the Murder House-Coven crossover is taken into consideration.
As much as I yearned for seeing the Coven story expanded, I would’ve refused to it if I had known that Apocalypse as it is now would be its sequel. I won’t make any declarations on where the season stands amongst its predecessors, but I will say that it is definitely not what it should have been.