This episode of American Horror Stories is one I absolutely couldn't wait to see. So, naturally, it fell within with a week that real life (and also The Sandman premiere) got in the way and I only got around to watching it at a regrettable hour on Tuesday night. But this episode is one I've been hoping to see in the AHS universe for a long time.
If I had to think about what scared me the most in my childhood, Bloody Mary ranks very, very high on the list. I can remember almost the whole scene of hearing about her for the first time. It was art class, third grade. For some reason, some of the kids at my table started talking about ghost stories and scary encounters, and, since I really had no one to talk to, all I could do was listen.
Being an eight-year-old child who was afraid of just about everything at the time, a lot of the stories got to me. I remember one about a disappearing house, and another about a girl who swore she saw scissors hovering by her sister's neck one night, with no one holding them, but none of the stories hit me quite as hard as the one about the woman in the mirror known as Bloody Mary.
Looking back on it, I actually had a pretty silly image of this character in my mind. When one of the girls that was talking about her that day described what someone had claimed to have seen in the mirror, she referred to it as "a face with no skin", and, being eight years old with no real knowledge of anatomy, I remember picturing a head that was literally just blood with eyes and hair. Like, in my head, Bloody Mary more or less looked like Gossamer from the Looney Tunes. But regardless, I became afraid to go near mirrors for long periods of time after that day, and worried that even thinking the words "Bloody Mary" while in the presence of one was dangerous.
It also didn't help matters that I guess some virus started going around a day or two after and nearly all of the kids who had been talking about Bloody Mary were absent for a few days. What are the odds, right?
So yeah, the period in my life during which I was terrified of Bloody Mary is definitely something that has stayed with me all these years, so I was excited to see how the AHS universe handled it.
Bloody Mary introduces us to a group of four friends: Elise, Maggie, Lena, and Bianca, the latter of whom is Elise's loner little sister who basically just tags along. The four girls are having a slumber party and get absolutely hung up on doing the traditional "Bloody Mary" thing...only in this version of the story, Bloody Mary also apparently sees the future and grants wishes. Bianca insists that Bloody Mary is real, and doesn't want to do it, but finally agrees to it at Elise's insistence.
Now, these girls are clearly supposed to be around seventeen years old, (Bianca talks a lot about college and she's the youngest of the group, so I'm assuming she's a junior and the other girls are seniors? Unless she and Elise are fraternal twins and are both either juniors or seniors?) so it's a little unbelievable to me that they'd be this hung up on an urban legend, to the point of fully and completely believing in it. But, it turns out they have every reason to believe, became Bloody Mary does appear, and promises each of the girls that their dreams will come true...but only if they agree to do awful things to make it happen. Bianca wants to get into Yale, and she's told that she needs to accuse her guidance counselor of rape to make it happen. Maggie wants to get back with her ex, and is told she will have to leak his current girlfriend's nudes to do so. Lena wants to be cheer captain, but must drop the current cheer captain from the top of the pyramid, paralyzing her. Elise's thing is money, but whatever Bloody Mary asked of her is so horrible she won't even say it to the others.
Bianca and Elise wind up running home after that, and we see what an awful home life they have. They live with a mother who neglects them, forcing them to sleep outside because she has a man over. You can see why Elise wants money and why Bianca wants to get out and go to a good school.
Hallucinations of Bloody Mary continue to haunt the girls in a very Nightmare On Elm Street type way throughout the next couple of days. As the girls research the Bloody Mary legend, they realize just what they've gotten themselves into, yet Lena and Maggie both find themselves unable to complete the brutal tasks Bloody Mary has assigned them. (Am I the only one that thinks Maggie got the best deal here, though? I mean, I definitely don't condone leaking someone's private content, and I'm so old that there was literally a girl in my high school who carried her nudes around in the little envelope from the grocery store, but like...I feel like between paralyzing someone, accusing a teacher of raping an underage girl, or leaking nudes, the nudes at least have a shot at blowing over. Again, not that I'm condoning it, but it's at least a teeny bit tamer than being told to physical harm to someone, like Lena was. Also, what Maggie actually found in the girl's locked files was a sex tape with someone who wasn't her boyfriend, made while they were definitely together. Maggie's a better person than I am because I can tell you if I had something like that on the girlfriend of my high school crush...Granted she'd been bullying me and stealing what few friends I made since the first grade, but I digress.) Due to their non-performance, Lena and Maggie are both found dead with their eyes scratched out, and while I may not be afraid of the legend of Bloody Mary anymore, I'm definitely afraid of eye gore, so thanks for that, AHS. lol
Elise is determined to find a way to stop Bloody Mary without completing the tasks they were assigned, and she and Bianca do some research that leads back to a woman named Margaret Worth. (And I am unable to think of anything but the comic character "Mary Worth" whenever the name is said.) At first they think that Margaret Worth herself is Bloody Mary, but it turns out to be a lot more complicated than that. We learn that Margaret Worth claimed her home to be a safe haven for slaves looking to escape, but in reality she was actually using a Black girl to lure them to her, all the while abusing them and making deals to sell them back into slavery. Bloody Mary, it turns out, was one of the slaves, who called upon ancient powers to save herself, and was imprisoned and doomed to her current state after killing her captors.
The big twist, though, is that Elise has been working with Bloody Mary since that night at the slumber party. Bloody Mary saw into her soul, and saw that it really wasn't riches she wanted, but to be untouchable, godlike. And so Bloody Mary offered this to her under the condition that Elise would free her, gathering things of hers, taken from the sisters' research, along with the blood of three innocents, who turn out to be Maggie, Lena, and Bianca.
Bianca isn't ready to die without that Yale acceptance letter though, and ends up turning the tables and killing Elise. In turn, she's the one to free Bloody Mary, but this also comes with a price. The two more or less swap souls, and Bianca is deemed to be the new Bloody Mary...I suppose until she can find someone who wants what Elise did to switch places with.
All in all, I think this was a very good episode, definitely one of my favorites, and provided a very interesting backstory for a legend that everyone knows, yet know one really seems to know the exact origin of. It brought me back to the childhood fear, that day in the art room in my elementary school, and put a very intriguing face (with skin this time!) to the monster from my nightmares. Yes, it was a bit unbelievable to me that a bunch of teenagers teetering on adulthood would have the same reaction to something that I did when I was only eight, but once the story gets going, it doesn't matter anymore. It's well acted and definitely one of the more "edge of your seat" episodes this season. I will say, though, I'm starting to feel like I'm watching M. Night Shyamalan movies every week, waiting for a big twist to hit. None of them have been bad so far, and this season is still far, far superior to the first, but I always worry that sometimes writing around a plot twist can cause the actual plot to go out the window. We'll hope things stay true to form in these next three episodes.
Also, I think it's worth noting that the character of Bloody Mary made such an impression on me that I did actually dress as her for Halloween one year, as an adult.
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