‘AHS: 13’s Season Finale Gives the Devil Its Due & Is Horrifying For All the Wrong Reasons [Review]

What started with such promise has bottomed out as one of American Horror Story’s absolute worst seasons. While narrative messes that go off the rails are par for the course with this show, AHS: 13 is a particularly egregious disaster that also taints the series’ Holy Trinity of seasons – Murder House, Asylum, and Coven – for cheap, illogical twists. AHS: 13 is such an irresponsible season that it retroactively makes AHS: Apocalypse look brilliant. It’s a magic trick that’s so impressive that it’s worthy of the Supreme.

Unfortunately, as American Horror Story: 13 reaches its conclusion, one can’t help but echo the words of Elsa Mars: “Is that all there is?”

Remember how the season’s penultimate episode ended in the middle of an epic assault against Satan that ended with Queenie and Cordelia’s deaths as all hope was seemingly lost? Well, don’t worry. Apparently none of that matters. Things are chill, and Satan is suddenly ready to generously just throw in the towel.

There’s been plenty of justified criticism over this season’s disjointed storytelling and the reckless nature of a 13-episode season of shorter installments, but “Devil of a Good Time” doesn’t even feel like an episode of television. It’s just a collection of random scenes that kind of gel together. The AHS: Delicate finale was an abrupt disaster, but this send-off is even more of a bewildering disappointment.

This has simultaneously felt like American Horror Story’s longest and shortest season. The extra episodes, while appreciated in theory, have led to such tremendous pacing problems that they have absolutely destroyed any sense of momentum. This finale alone lets John Waters’ Dr. Phibes run his mouth for minutes as he laments over the modern state of kink while Troye Sivan blasts on the soundtrack. 

“Devil of a Good Time” doesn’t have the time to depict any of Mallory’s trip to 1600s Salem, but there’s the bandwidth for Cordelia to sob as she’s nearly forced to kill an innocent dog for no real reason other than to make the audience squirm. A whole pregnancy-to-birth sequence plays out in under three minutes, and it’s so poorly conceived on every level that I was shocked when it turned out to be a dream sequence or some kind of fantasy.