In American Horror Story season 12, episode 4, Anna Alcott’s pregnancy storyline grows even more elaborately weird while a bizarre flashback to English history confuses matters further. American Horror Story has never been an easy series to follow. Season 7, Cult, started as a straightforward satire of the 2016 election before becoming a gruesome mélange of fantasy, horror, and dark comedy that involved killer clowns, the ghost of Valerie Solanas, and the Zodiac Killer. Similarly, season 2, Asylum, seemed like a relatively comprehensible story of a corrupt mental institution until the zombies, possessed nuns, alien abductions, and serial killers dressed as Santa Claus appeared.
Now, American Horror Story 12: Delicate is taking the same route. After a couple of fairly uncomplicated episodes, the show took a dive into the surreal from the opening moments of American Horror Story season 12, episode 4, “Vanishing Twin” and onwards. This episode began with a flashback to 1555 England and only got stranger from there as the slow-burn story of the season suddenly ramped up its pacing by a few notches. The identity of the cultists following Anna was revealed, the status of her pregnancy was updated, and viewers discovered a dirty secret involving Kim Kardashian’s American Horror Story character.
Mary Tudor Is Involved In American Horror Story: Delicate’s Mystery
The hooded, cloaked cultists that Anna seemingly hallucinated in American Horror Story season 12 episode 3 may have been perceived as people who only existed in Anna’s dreams and imagination. However, no such comforting notions can be relied on after the cold opening of “Vanishing Twin.” This bizarre sequence proved that the two cultists were around in 1555, setting up Mary Tudor’s reign in exchange for a monstrous demon child that the monarch gave birth to. Under their masks, the cultists were played by American Horror Story mainstays Billie Lourd and Leslie Grossman.
Anna Is Treating The Dead Raccoon Like Her Baby
Back in the contemporary storyline of American Horror Story season 12, Anna was not faring much better than Mary Tudor. Although she knew that her pregnancy might be viable after all, this did not stop an unhinged Anna from bringing the maggot-infested corpse of a dead raccoon into her basement and dressing it in baby clothes. Anna soothed the rotting carcass in a bassinet after hiding it from Nicolette. This strange scene proved that Anna wasn’t entirely well but, unfortunately, her best friend wasn’t much support either.
Anna’s Crisis PR Team Is Connected To Her Pregnancy
Minutes after she saw one of the cultists hooded and cloaked in her garden, Anna met the unmasked cultists in the guise of a pair of crisis PR specialists. They were hired by Siobhan to rehab Anna’s image and proposed a viral feminist Instagram reel as the best way to achieve this. One of American Horror Story season 12’s biggest risks was casting Kardashian as a main character due to her lack of acting experience, but the deadpan satire of celebrity culture in this scene proves that she is in on the joke.
Siobhan Is Sleeping With The Director For Her Own Gain
Speaking of Kardashian’s character, “Vanishing Twin” soon revealed that she’s been hiding something from Anna. Siobhan was sleeping with Hamish, The Auteur’s witless director and he seemed deeply enamored with her. The feeling wasn’t at all mutual, with Siobhan branding him “pathetic” and threatening to castrate him if he kept alluding to the source of his creative inspiration in interviews. Siobhan knows something suspicious about where Hamish got the idea for The Auteur but, whatever this is, it is a secret that the duo are both still hiding by the end of “Vanishing Twin.”
The Women Empowerment Video Helps Anna’s Public Image
Despite how corny the PR team’s pitch seemed (and how hilariously over-the-top the reel itself is), Anna’s female empowerment social media post garnered the traction and popularity that she needed to rehabilitate her image. The gross public vomiting of American Horror Story season 12, episode 2 became an absurd statement about bodily autonomy in Anna’s larger-than-life viral post, which impressed Nicolette and won over the public, judging by its online popularity.
Anna Is Still Pregnant After The Suspected Miscarriage
As if Anna fixing her image wasn’t enough, she also discovered that her pregnancy was viable after all during an ultrasound. Initially, Dr. Hill claimed this was impossible, but he walked back this comment after detecting a heartbeat. Hill played his mistake off with an excuse about “Vanishing twins,” a phenomenon where miscarriages are diagnosed due to doctors missing multiple heartbeats in early scans. However, things weren’t all rosy. Anna saw Nurse Ivy on her way out of the clinic and, this time, the mysterious figure was even closer to Anna than she was in her first appearance.
Dex’s Mother Thinks She Was Satanically Abused By Her Husband
Dex’s mother claimed that a therapist specializing in repressed memories proved to her that Dex’s father subjected her to years of forgotten Satanic ritual abuse. This mirrors the plot of the classic horror movie Rosemary’s Baby but also aligns with a real-life craze from the 1980s. False claims about repressed memories led to numerous high-profile cases such as the McMartin preschool trials, wherein innocent caregivers were imprisoned for imaginary Satanic ritual abuse that never took place.
Anna Gets Nominated For A Golden Globe
Even after she threw up in public while accepting her Gotham Award, Anna’s grim awards season ordeal isn’t over yet. The PR blitz organized by the two cultists succeeded in netting her a Golden Globe nomination, a fact that Anna learned after she spent a sleepless night snacking on ice cream and pickles. Anna forgot all about the strange noises that she heard emanating from the basement’s hidden door earlier in the night upon reading about her nomination, but this didn’t necessarily mean that her behavior returned to normal. Instead, after seeing the good news, Anna celebrated with a less conventional craving.
Anna Eats The Dead Raccoon
The sight of Anna chowing down on a rotting raccoon carcass that she had dressed as a baby earlier in “Vanishing Twin” seemed to imply that she really was losing her grip on reality. While Kim Kardashian’s American Horror Story character and Matt Czuchry’s suspicious love interest Dex both appear to be manipulating Anna for their own gain, American Horror Story season 12, episode 4’s ending made it very clear that Anna herself was also not in a good way based on her strange, dangerous actions.