Was this the best episode of Season 6 so far? It may just be all the Lady Gaga, but this felt like the most satisfying and scary hour AHS: Roanoke has delivered yet. Questions were answered, backstories were explained, and two characters were taken from us too soon. Here are our seven key takeaways from 'Chapter 4.'
1) Lady Gaga's hour has come.
The Witch of the Woods—aka Scáthach, aka Lady Gaga—and her backstory were front and center in this episode. And here's a twist: she's not a ghost! She was an English girl who stowed away on a ship to America with a bunch of white soldiers, who wanted to burn her at the stake when they discovered her.
That plan resulted in "The Massacre Of The White Soldiers" (don't mess with Gaga, TBH), and Gaga escaped into the wild, where she's been developing her powers ever since. The Butcher may seem formidable, but according to Cricket, Gaga is "the bitch with the real power."
2) The man from the basement videotape is alive!
But not for long. Beardy Denis O'Hare—whose actual name is Elias—shows up to save Shelby and Matt from the knife-wielding pig man, and delivers some exposition about the house which he used to own.
He also explains the meaning of "Croatoan," the word left behind by the Roanoke colony after their disappearance. It's "a word of dark power and blood magic," and it can sometimes be used to ward off aggressive ghosts. But it doesn't always work, as becomes clear when The Butcher and her clan shoot Elias dead with arrows.
3) Matt and Shelby picked a really bad time to move in.
October, as it turns out, is pretty much the worst time to be living in that house. After the pig man's appearance, Elias explains that multiple former residents of the house have disappeared, always in the same few days of October. We briefly see some flashbacks to a Taiwanese family called the Chens, and we also see the psychotic nurse sisters meet a well-deserved gory end in the forest.
So why all the October bloodletting? After making her deal with Gaga, the Butcher led her colony away from starvation and to "the land of plenty" where they now live. The catch? Every October, during the same lunar cycle, the colony has to make a blood sacrifice to enrich the land and pay back their debt.
4)Gaga is really, really into Matt.
Turns out there's only one thing Gaga wants, and it's not blood. "She still has needs as a woman," is how Cricket puts it to Matt, who still has no memory of his tryst with Gaga from last week. Cricket promised her more time with Matt in exchange for information.
Matt is indignant to learn that Cricket has effectively pimped him out to a forest witch, but later in the episode he finds himself being irresistibly drawn to Gaga's candlelit hut to make out. "I tried to resist, but it was impossible," he says, calling this "the most intimate connection he's ever experienced".
But hearing Shelby's scream seems to break the spell, and Matt runs back to his wife before round two really gets underway. We may have ourselves a love triangle.
5) Uber may be evil.
Or at least Cricket's mind-bogglingly sexy Uber driver, Rhett Snow. Cricket gets distracted from hitting on Rhett when he sees Flora dash across the road in front of the car, and chases her into The Forest Where Nothing Good Ever Happens. Rhett waits a while for Cricket to come back, then gives up and presumably gives him a one-star rating. Nothing sinister there, right?
Except that the surname "Snow" is a pretty striking callback to Frances Conroy's Myrtle Snow, the eccentric witch from AHS: Coven. Coincidence? In those woods? Nah. Rhett also appears as a talking head in the documentary—only the fourth character to be featured after Matt, Shelby and Lee—which suggests we haven't seen the last of him.
6) Flora is safe.
But probably traumatized for life. Elias, Matt and Shelby find her in the forest, playing some kind of horrifying ghost game with the murder nurses, the Chen family and other members of the Butcher's clan. Later in the episode they're able to get her back, thanks to Priscilla—Flora's not-so-imaginary friend—who attacks the Butcher, allowing Flora to escape her grip.
Lee, by the way, is completely absent from this episode after being arrested last week, and Matt and Shelby are both too distracted to even mention her.
7) Do not help Matt and Shelby, because you will die.
RIP, Cricket—you were too sassy and adorable for this world. Between him and Elias, the ghost colony are gradually picking off Matt and Shelby's sources of aid one by one. Cricket's horrifyingly grisly death does illuminate something else, though…
8) Those talking heads aren't the real Matt and Shelby.
"I've heard about disemboweling, but… to see it…" Okay, there's nothing unreasonable about this sentiment from Matt, but it does feel like a weirdly detached understatement. This is supposed to be the real Matt and Shelby, but nothing about their emotion in recounting the stories feels genuine. It feels like they're acting, and Lily Rabe and André Holland are too good for that not to be intentional.
Side note: When he's trying to convince Shelby that he doesn't remember banging Gaga last week, Matt says, "It's like a part of my brain was carved out." Figure of speech? Or foreshadowing?
