American Horror Story Coven: The Seven Wonders
Well, here we are at the end of another season. The Seven Wonders have been completed and a new Supreme has been crowned, or whatever the proper term is for creating a new witch Goddess. Let’s recap how the finale played out and take a quick look at the season as a whole.
It’s the last episode, of course there are spoilers
With last week’s episode we lost Marie Laveau, Madame Delphine LaLaurie and Fiona Goode leaving Myrtle Snow, Cordelia Goode, Zoe, Madison Montgomery, Queenie and Misty Day as the remaining witches in the coven. The episode starts out with Stevie Nicks singing something about the Seven Wonders then we head into the opening credits.
We begin with all of pomp and ceremony that you would expect from a group of drama queens. Cordelia and Myrtle have lots of meaningful things to say about the privilege of performing the Seven Wonders, and then they eat caviar and drink champagne and begin the trials. I have to say it started out interesting, with plenty of bitchiness provided by Madison and watching the girls’ use the powers but the trials only lasted about half the episode and the climax was somewhat of a disappointment.
The first witch to fail is dear Misty Day. One of the trials is to venture to the underworld and return by dawn. Each girl went into their own personal hell but they only showed two of them. Queenie was in the chicken shack and was the first to make it back to the realm of living. Of course, she already did that trick last week so nothing new there. Madison’s hell was being on a live TV version of The Sound of Music and not being the lead – they didn’t show it. Zoe’s consisted of Kyle breaking up with her over and over which they didn’t show and I could care less. Misty’s hell was in biology class and being forced to dissect a dead frog but she doesn’t and revives it, then the teacher makes her kill the live creature and this repeats. Unfortunately, Misty isn’t strong enough to make it back and dies in puff of ashes.
The Coven morns her for all of a minute then continues on with the trials. There’s some mind control in which Madison drags Kyle into blah, blah, blah. The next witch to die is Zoe 🙂 I just don’t like her character. So the girls are performing the transmutation test, zapping around playing tag outside, ignoring Delia’s warning and Zoe ends up zapping on top of the pointy part of the fence. In the greenhouse, Queenie is unable to bring her back and Madison flat-out refuses to do it, demanding to be crown Supreme or kiss her ass. There is much crying from Kyle and Delia as Zoe remains dead.
At this point Myrtle finally states that she believes Delia is the next Supreme and convinces her to complete the Seven Wonders. She catches up to Queenie and Madison easily before beginning the divination test. Delia finishes it even with Madison berating her the whole time but finally, the super bitch falters as Madison is unable to complete the divination (Queenie doesn’t even get to try it). All in a huff, Madison storms upstairs and starts packing but doesn’t get far as Kyle is pissed that she wouldn’t bring back Zoe and proceeds to strangle her, which she doesn’t stop with her powers. Spalding shows up, tells Kyle he is the help and they need to bury the body.
It seems like the trials have come to an end with the exception of one last test. Delia must perform resurgence or whatever they call it and she does, bringing Zoe back to life. After Delia passes out and wakes up, she has her eyes back and ta da – Cordelia is the Supreme.
It started to fall apart when Delia began the trials and the rest of the episode just didn’t work for me and left a few plot holes unfilled. First, let’s address how the girls were demonstrating the abilities of the Supreme without any of them actually being her. The explanation is reasonable enough – Delia didn’t acknowledge the power that she had and it kind of just rubbed off on the girls making it seem that they were manifesting the powers. Ok, I’ll give you that. But then we find out that Fiona is not dead, which if Delia is the new Supreme she should have known because her powers aren’t complete until the current Supreme has died and passed the last of her power to the new Supreme. Too wordy? Nah.
So how did Fiona survive the attack from the Axeman? It didn’t happen. She planted the memory into his head knowing Delia would find it and do whatever she could to find the new Supreme before Fiona. Fiona set up finding the new Supreme and getting the Axeman killed by the Coven, then returns to confront Delia and damn, Fiona looks like death. Here is where you think that Fiona, so desperate to live and be powerful would take the opportunity to kill Delia for the power since she hasn’t shown much love for her daughter. After much chatting, Fiona dies of natural causes and we get to see her personal hell which is waking up every morning with the Axeman in the country house that he wanted to take her to. The house smells of catfish and has knotted pine walls (horrifying) and she is stuck there forever. We do get one last shot of Papa Legba laughing at Fiona’s torture but if she doesn’t have a soul, how does that work since he rejected her deal of immortality a couple of episodes ago?
Delia is now the full on Supreme with Zoe and Queenie as her council. Kyle has taken on Spalding’s role as “the help” and Spalding is apparently still in the attic with the baby. But that’s not all. This happens after Cordelia goes on national television to proclaim witches with supernatural power exist and invites any girl/woman with potential powers to go to the Coven in New Orléans. And there is one final death – Myrtle Snow. She points out to Delia that she killed a sister witch and must suffer the punishment for it by being burned at the stake….again, which Delia reluctantly agrees to. The end of the episode shows hundreds of girls in black lined up down the sidewalk outside the house, Kyle welcoming the new brood and Delia making speech.
Final Thoughts – The Seven Wonders: This episode started out strong but went sharply downhill when Delia started the Seven Wonders. I don’t think there could have been a better Supreme but I didn’t like Delia’s outing of the Coven to the world. Yes, their group was dying with only the 3 of them left but come on; there must be a better way to recruit. I thought Fiona’s death was too abrupt in the last episode and I really did think she was going to kill Delia and retain the title of Supreme, not wilt and die.
Now comes the bitching about things left unanswered or just plain ignored. Fiona not having a soul and ending up in hell with Papa Legba as a spectator. What about the Organization of witch hunters. When they killed Hank’s father, he implied that there were more branches of his killing club but nothing further came of it. There is a BABY in the attic with a GHOST. Really, no one has noticed a baby in the house or ghost Spalding? I thought these were powerful witches and you know, a Supreme. Madison was a movie star, why is her disappearance glossed over after all the media coverage of the Coven? And didn’t Madison and Zoe promise themselves or make some sort of pact with a demon to revive Kyle, what’s up with that.
Final Thoughts – Coven Season 3: This season had a lot of promise with the setting of New Orléans, witches and voodoo. The characters were good, except for Zoe and Kyle (killer vagina, what a horrible power) and the general strife that was faced and the mystery of the new Supreme; all this had potential. The problem is that it started to fall apart over the last few episodes and then the finale left too many things ignored and went to kind of a silly place with the Coven getting media coverage. All in all, there were plenty of good parts throughout (zombies on Halloween and the only part that I actually liked Zoe in) but it didn’t maintain and carry through to the end. Season 4 is slated for October. What will we get this time: Carnival, Aliens, Demonologists? We shall see if they can get back to the goodness of Season 1 which drew me into the show and made me love it.
Dawning Creates 