This recap of “Mid‐Western Assassin” will be based on the unedited cut of the episode, sincet — as most are now aware — it opens with a graphic mass shooting scene, which was filmed months before a gunman killed 58 people at a country music festival in Las Vegas on October 1. One of the criticisms that has been made about American Horror Story: Cult is that its too soon for many Americans to want to relive the 2016 election, but there was no way of predicting that the deadliest mass shooting in the history of the United States would occur just a week before the episode was to air. Then again, these are sadly the times we live in, and if you depict an act of widespread violence onscreen you have to at least consider the possibility that a similar atrocity will play out in real life; sending PR reps and film editors scrambling. Heck, this was even a running joke on the season four episode of Bojack Horseman, “Thoughts and Prayers.”
At any rate, the episode does indeed open to violence. Chaos erupts at a political rally as gunshots ring out, sending attendees, including Ivy and Harrison, scrambling for cover — while others are not so fortunate. Ivy dives behind a fountain and attempts to escape with another man, who is shot in the chest. When she reaches out to grab hold of his hand, another bullet splatters his brains everywhere. As police rush towards the shooter it’s revealed that the event is a campaign rally for Kai Anderson’s city council run, and the person holding the gun is none other than Ivy’s estranged wife, Ally. The camera then pans to show Kai, in all his faded blue manbun glory, collapsed on the stage presumably dead or injured.
After the credits roll, the episode flashes back to the scene from last week’s “Holes” in which Meadow pleads for Ally to let her inside, revealing the names of the cult members. Within minutes, she suspiciously gets a call from Dr. Rudy Vincent — now revealed to be the cult’s possible leader — who claims Ivy had called him out of concern. He tells her to let it go and get some sleep, so naturally she grabs a knife out of the drawer and heads across the street where she finds Meadow gagged and bound to a chair (as well as Harrison and the detective getting it on, which makes it easy to steal their keys while they’re distracted). The two just barely escape and speed away in Ally’s car.
For some reason, even though she knows her wife is no longer to be trusted, Ally takes Meadow to the couple’s restaurant, where she proceeds to spill the full beans about how they’ve been terrorizing her, why, and what they’re overall hoping to accomplish: to instill a sense of fear into people. On the restaurant’s television, Beverly reports from the scene of a city council debate attended by Kai, who is, of course, running for a seat, and Meadow reveals that he’s the one behind it all.
In yet another flashback, Meadow narrates that while she had been in love with Harrison since she was ten, she “never knew what love was” until she met Kai, who tells her that she “burns brighter than anyone.” The two indulged in a torrid love affair until, one day, Meadow went down to the basement to find Kai giving the same line to Ivy. (Of note in this flashback, is that Kai is once again seen taking prescription medication, which further suggests that his brother is the one controlling him.) Meadow flips out and tries to leave. “When’s the last time a seat on the zoning board led to world domination?” she asks, mimicking R.J. questioning Kai’s motives before the cult played a game of Pin the Nails in R.J.’s Head.
Naturally, they don’t let her go, at which point the timeline catches up to when Ally found her. Back in the present — err, the flashback present — Meadow tells Ally that they only way of stopping Kai is to kill him.
Meanwhile, at the city council meeting, Kai is all blah blah monsters this, fear that, before a woman named Sally (Mare Winningham, who most recently played the maid in Hotel) stands up and calls him on his bullshit, accusing him of being a snake oil salesman. She tells Kai that he’s not a true conservative but a reactionary, and that he uses fear to exploit people. After comparing Kai and Trump to the flies attracted to the garbage, she throws her hat in the ring for candidacy — which means obviously that she’s going to be super dead pretty soon. (Seriously how is literally no one putting these murders together?)
In yet another flashback to the day after the election, Ivy freaks out to Winter about what they’ve done, having seen Gary with his bloody stump show up at their polling place the night before. We finally learn that Ivy joins the cult partially out of blackmail when Winter brings her to see her brother “who can fix anything” and Kai threatens to tell Gary that she’s responsible for the loss of his hand. When he plays the pinky game with Ivy and presses her as to what fills her heart with dread, she blurts out, “the thought of lying in bed next to my wife.”
It’s finally revealed that their son Oz is definitely not the Murder House baby — as many popular fan theories have suggested — but carried to term by Ally, who never let Ivy forget it. (Also, she didn’t wean Oz until he was three, apparently?) Kai agrees to help Ivy get Ally out of his life while keeping full custody of Oz — which clearly, up to this point was working.
In the main timeline of the episode, Ally leaves Meadow with Dr. Vincent, because that seems like a smart idea, while she goes to visit Sally, the woman now running for city council. Ally tells Sally all about the cult and that Kai is behind everything, and incredibly, Sally actually seems to believe her. Of course it’s already too late, as the gang of clowns suddenly break into her house as it was fully predicted they would. Kai finds Sally’s Facebook open and composes a suicide note, before shooting her with her own gun while Ally cowers uselessly, having run and hid in the bathroom. Before they leave, Ivy and Ally encounter one another, and she comes to the full realization that the mother of her son is a murderer.
Ally escapes and goes back to Dr. Vincent’s, only to find that Meadow claimed not to be in any danger and left. It’s worth noting that before leaving, Meadow also did not seem to recognize him as Kai’s brother, which indicates that she is unaware of any involvement on his part. Dr. Vincent attempts to get Ally to commit herself into an inpatient facility, and she leaves in anger.
Finally circling back to the scene in the cold open, Ally is seen heading to Kai’s rally to… do what exactly? Tell everyone that he’s a murderous cult leader? Her plan is unclear, but as the episode comes full circle it’s revealed that Meadow, not Ally, was the shooter. As Ally attempts to wrestle the gun away Meadow tells her, “this is the face of true love” before turning the barrel on herself, leaving Ally holding the handle.
And this, apparently, is how Kai’s plan comes to fruition. By getting himself shot and becoming a martyr, he’s now secured himself a national platform, which he had apparently schemed the intricate plan with Meadow the entire time. And as a bonus, they’ve now at least temporarily gotten Ally out of the picture. You’d have to think someone would have been able to identify Meadow, not Ally as the shooter? But the episode ends with her being taken away in handcuffs, and Kai on a stretcher, but very much alive.
So where do we go from here? Will the story stay set in suburban Michigan or are Kai and his merry band of murderous clowns off to DC? Next week’s episode is titled “Valerie Solanas Died for Your Sins: Scumbag,” referring to the female assassin who attempted to kill Andy Warhol (who will be played by Lena Dunham), with fellow cult leaders Charles Manson, David Koresh, and Jim Jones also making appearances — all likewise played by Evan Peters. It’s obvious that Kai’s assassination attempt is a parallel to the real-life story of Warhol and Solanas, so how they’ll attempt to intertwine the stories going forward should be interesting, to say the least.
