BWW Recap: Is it All Connected on AMERICAN HORROR STORY?

Three weeks into American Horror Story's sixth season and just three more weeks until the all too anticipated twist that creator Ryan Murphy confirmed in episode 6. "Chapter Three" brought us death, gore, and some trademark disturbing fornication. It also didn't light up on the horror, which has been what "My Roanoke Nightmare" has been most undoubtably praised for.

We jump right back in where we left off the previous week, where Lee, Shelby, and Matt discover Flora's jacket hanging high upon a tree. How they and the police don't immediately sense that something beyond the ordinary kidnapping or disappearance is going on is questionable considering Flora is a small child and how she, or anyone, could have gotten her jacket so high on a tree stump with virtually no branches seems an impossibility, but that's the horror trope for you. The cops fully embracing their stereotypically horror-movie level of ignorance and incompetence are going to clearly be no aid to this family, but it seems they've rounded up enough people to call it a "search party" and thus the investigation pursues. Lee, being an ex-cop herself, heartbreakingly begins to recite all of the percentages and numbers of missing child cases, and having that ticking time bomb going off in your head as the hours go by and it becomes less and less likely that you will find happiness at the end of your journey, is an absolutely cutting layer to Lee's fear and grief. "My Flora is not gonna be one of those damn numbers," Lee insists.

Their search continues and they find scattered remnants of Flora's doll paired with dead pig carcasses and follow this path towards this absolutely decrepit house. Sarah Paulson does some brilliantly subtle acting here as they approach the unknown property and she reaches out for Matt, gripping onto his shirt as they move forward. That little moment draws a light upon the history between the two and their natural connection, as well as highlights what is essentially the breaking of Shelby's safety net at the end of the episode.

They do not find Flora in the house, but they do find the unexpected, called towards the scene by another pig squeal that has been a constant and present sound in all of the previous episodes. The trio stumble upon two feral children feeding on the milk of a pig. They are taken to a hospital and are being interviewed, as for once the police actually found what Shelby, Matt, and Lee claimed was there, but all they can get out of the children is the word "Croatoan" that they screech in a blood curdling cries. Mason, Lee's ex husband, shows up at the hospital angry and anxious, demanding answers.

Panic, fear, and exhaustion sets in as the investigation reaches the 72 hour mark, which for Lee, signifies the very real possibility that the outcome of this search might not be so positive. As everyone settles in for some much needed rest for what will presumably be an early morning, Matt gets a phone call in the middle of the night; it's the police. They tell him they have found a body so he wakes up Lee and the two, along with Shelby, reach this crossed effigy where the burned body of a full grown man hangs. A ring has been recovered from the scene and it's marked with an M. It's not Flora, but it is Mason. Poor Mason, whom we've only gotten to know in a very short space of time but who seemed to always put Flora first and foremost. Although, our last memories of him are slightly tainted after he shoved Lee all too roughly earlier that night.

Shelby and Matt review the security footage from that night to see if they could discovery anything about what happened to Mason and they find that he wasn't the only one who went out that night. Lee followed him out and returned four whole hours later. Shelby begins to get suspicious and worried, fearing what she sees in the tape. The tension in THE ROOM breaks however when an eccentric psychic name Cricket walks in through the door (which apparently, despite all that has happened, they still choose to leave unlocked?!)

He contacts the spirits and we get a lot of information about the greater picture of what and why all the horrors happening to them are occurring. Kathy Bates shows up as a butcher with her meat cleaver, covered in dirt and blood, and in full head to toe colonial ware. She claims that they are protecting the land from trespassers and Cricket shouts back that the land does not belong to the dead. Candles are cut in half and windows smashed as Cricket roaringly explodes shouting "Croatoan," the second time the word has been uttered this week.

Cricket, while unconventional, is not unsuccessful and our characters are told that Pricilla has taken her, that creepy colonial ghost. Lucky for us, Flora said Pricilla told her she wouldn't die until the last and so she's still got a while to go. Cricket claims he can help but then demands a fee; a fee that Matt finds absolutely ridiculous and he kicks Cricket out, calling him a fraud. On his way out, however Cricket whispers something to Lee; something about Emily, Lee's other daughter. In the bombshell of bombshells this week, Lee had another daughter who too went missing. Emily was Lee's first daughter and she left her in the car for a few moments when she runs inside a supermarket for a quick errand. When she came back to the car, Emily was gone and she never saw her again.

With this in mind, it completely informs a lot of the mystery regarding the character's emotions, reactions, and motivations. While pushing Lee was inexcusable, Mason's anger, fear, and SUSPICION of her wasn't as far fetched as one might think if this couple has already been the victim of one missing child's case. If he already lost one daughter for what he could blame for Lee's negligence, he would certainly be in a position to feel like he should again. When something unexplainable starts to feel like a pattern is emerging, it's easy to point fingers to seek and explanation.

As Lee's real life counterpart recounts her memories of Emily, she calls for the camera to cut and we have our first look as the behind the scenes of this documentary while she takes a moment to recompose herself. Could this be a hint that we're going to see more behind the scenes of "My Roanoke Nightmare" in the future? Was that a little bit of visual foreshadowing and storytelling to ease the audience into the idea that we might not just see the talking heads of these people and the overall plot will extend far beyond the docudrama that is being presented.

Lee, desperate for more information, pays Cricket and asks him for all that he knows. He tells her of the history of the Roanoke COLONY that went missing. Kathy Bates' character is left with he charge of holding up the COLONY while the governor of Roanoke, her brother, goes off. Then, the history of the lost COLONY begins to play out. In a ghost story that tells of how 116 settlers disappeared from Roanoke without a trace, a single body or any items. It was all gone, as if they were never there. It's a mystery for the ages and AHS is flaunting it's stuff as it heads into it's sixth steady year is ready to tackle it. However, Kathy Bates' fellow colonists are not so happy with her and bring her into the forest, head caged shut without the key, all for not living up to impossible male expectations. How relatable this meat cleaver wielding butcher is!

While starving and dying out in the woods, Kathy Bates' character sees an apparition that is played by Lady Gaga, declaring her to eat a pig heart. In a stunning performance as what the Enchantress should have been, Gaga brings her A game and completely commits to the role. "Surrender thy soul to me" Gaga's demands says and our favorite butcher says yes, diving into that pig heart. Now joined by this spirit, Bate's mask comes off and she heads back into her colony, killing all those who had done her wrong. She moved the COLONY into Shelby and Matt's current property and thus their instance that the land is theirs.

However, that is not all that goes down as we count down the last five minutes of the show. Lee, Cricket, Shelby, and Matt confront the colonists and promise that if Flora is returned healthy and safe, they will move out on their own free will and even burn it to the ground. Shelby is frustrated and shocked, as Lee and Cricket just look mad, as if they are talking to no one and talking nonsense. She runs off to find Matt who has disappeared and comes upon him copulating with Lady Gaga's spirit in the woods while two of the hillbillies pleasured themselves and watched. Digested, heartbroken, shocked, and hurt, Shelby runs back to the house where Matt and Lee find her much later, Matt having no recollection of what Shelby is talking about. Shelby immediately protests, demanding that he not gaslight her, and a cop on the lawn begins to arrest Lee. Shelby had called the cops on her, hurt from what Matt had done and angry with Lee for the situation. While Shelby's acts seem harsh, if all she had ever thought of Lee mostly existed out of pre- judgement regarding her past with substance abuse issues and the loss of her first child, and then was confronted with the video tape evidence that Lee was out, it's not completely mad that she might actually fear the worst. She feels betrayed by Matt and Lee, people she called family, while the two stare helpless and accusingly at her, horrified that she could do such a thing to her family.

Overall, this episode was successfully horrifying and suspenseful, leveling with the other two episodes that had previously aired, but one can only hope that we might start seeing more hints of what the exciting twist of the season that everyone can not stop theorizing about could be! Will all seasons of AHS start to connect? Are we already getting tie ins with the obvious parallels to murder house in "Chapter One", the psychopathic nurses in "Chapter Two," and Cricket's possible connection to his actor's "Coven" counterpart in "Chapter Three"? Or perhaps the docudrama will become reality once more. How interesting it would be to see "My Roanoke Nightmare" turned on it's head and forced to internalize it's own format as perhaps the nightmare never really ended.

Photo Credit: FX

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