While this season of American Horror Story has been about showing current headlines, a scene involving a mass shooting that was supposed to air in this week’s episode was edited down to refrain from showing explicit violence.
This scene takes place at Kai’s (Evan Peters) rally for city council candidacy. An unknown shooter targets him along with several other people in the crowd. The SWAT team arrives and Ally (Sarah Paulson) is holding a gun, which definitely didn’t look good for her.
Flashing back to an earlier scene from last week’s episode when Meadow (Leslie Grossman) explains the cult to Ally. After Ally hangs up with Ivy, she receives a call from Dr. Vincent (Cheyenne Jackson), who tries to tell Ally she is having an episode but she denies it.
After hanging up with Dr. Vincent, an angry Ally decides to go across the street again to find Meadow. She finds her tied up in the garage and rescues her, and takes her to the restaurant to talk.
Meadow explains all of the cult’s “projects” to Ally, giving her evidence that Ivy is also involved. For example, in the episode where Oz’s new guinea pig was put inside of the microwave, Ivy left the alarm inside the house turned off and texted the cult when they were on their way home. The cult’s main goal is to make Ally go completely crazy.
Next, Meadow makes a flashback to December 2016 and how she fell in love with Kai. She fell for his compliments and constant attention. One day, Meadow overhears him saying the same things to Ivy. Meadow becomes outraged and tries to leave the cult, while also bashing Kai’s campaign.
Ally urges Meadow to tell everything to the FBI. Meadow claims the only way to stop the cult is to kill Kai. At this point in the episode, it seems like Meadow is just a ploy to get Ally involved.
Then, at a town hall debate, Kai gets called out during his propositions about crime in the city and how all he wants to do is make people scared. She claims Kai is not a conservative, but he is a reactionary. The crowd applauds this stranger and that is when viewers meet Sally (Mare Winningham), a write-in candidate for council.
In another flashback to the aftermath of the election, Ivy worried about what her and Winter (Billie Lourd) did to Gary, the Trump-supporting grocery store clerk. Winter introduces her to Kai, and he tells Ivy that he knows what happened with Gary. He asks her what fills her heart with dread — which turns out to having to do with Ally. Ivy explains that it started when Oz was born. Ivy had health complications, and she was jealous Ally got to carry their son. And of course, she was angry Ally voted for Jill Stein. Kai makes a compromise with Ivy, creating a plan to make Ally look crazy so that Ivy can get custody of her son.
Ally leaves Meadow with Dr. Vincent and heads to Sally’s house after seeing her on TV earlier. She explains the cult to Sally and she isn’t surprised and agrees that Kai is no good.
All of a sudden, the clowns arrive. The attack was probably planned after Kai was called out at the town hall debate. Ally flees from the scene and Sally grabs a gun, but she finds herself outnumbered. After trapping her, Kai reveals himself and decided to go on her Facebook account to write a suicide note on Sally’s behalf and then shoots her.
Ally is hiding and one of the clowns leaves the group to go find her. As the clown opens the door, Ally recognizes that it is Ivy. She leaves, pretending she did not see Ally.
Back at Dr. Vincent’s, Meadow is nowhere to be seen and he claims she didn’t know anything about the cult. He reminds her that she is having an episode and needs to commit herself to a psychiatric hospital.
The episode ended where it began with Ally arriving at Kai’s rally. By now, viewers assume she is the shooter. Ally sees Meadow pulling a gun from her purse in the crowd. Meadow shoots at a bystander, Kai and then at others. Ally tries to pry the gun from Meadow’s hands but Meadow kills herself with it instead. The SWAT team arrives and Ally is the one holding the gun now.
Flashback again to right after Meadow bashes Kai’s campaign. Kai says she is right and claims only she can help him go national by “trying” to kill him. He creates a new plan to have Meadow explain the cult to Ally because no one will believe her.
The episode ends with Ally in handcuffs and Kai being wheeled away to an ambulance. Will this be the end of Ally or will she continue to fight Kai and his cult?
American Horror Story: Cult airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. on FX.
