Episode Report Card M. Giant: B | 73 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT The Power Is Up for Grabs
By M. Giant | Season 3 | Episode 12 | Aired on 01.22.2014
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Queenie's got her big trial for the Seven Wonders coming up on Saturday, because why not? Instead of cramming, however, she spends her time trying to find out what happened to Marie. When she does so -- with an assist from Papa Legba (who first visits her in her own personal Hell and then shows her some footage of Delphine dismembering Marie in Cordelia's greenhouse) -- she sets out to kill Delphine, who is now a tour guide in the museum that used to be her house, busily whitewashing her own history. Before striking the blow, Queenie offers Delphine a chance for redemption, which Delphine mockingly spurns… earning her a stab in the heart in her own attic.
Cordelia manages to have a tender moment with Fiona, who is feeling maudlin in her final weeks. That is, until Fiona touches her and Cordelia receives a vision of the academy littered with corpses -- including her own -- with Fiona the last woman standing. Looks like the re-blinding worked after all. So Cordelia pays a visit to the Axeman to inform him that Fiona is going to ditch him too after she kills gets her power back by wiping out the coven. After that, Cordelia's next move is to go back to rooting through Misty's stuff in order to supernaturally triangulate her whereabouts. Cordelia succeeds, but when she takes Queenie to the cemetery in the dead of night it's the latter who magically exhumes Misty and resurgences her back to life.
Also back? Zoe and Kyle, after Kyle killed a drifter in Florida and Zoe brought him back, which of course makes Zoe think she's the next Supreme… because she's the only one who hasn't yet. When Misty returns to the Academy and commences kicking the crap out of Madison in front of the rest of the coven, the fight is interrupted by the Axeman, who makes an abortive attempt to kill them all. Just like he killed Fiona, after finding a single plane ticket in her purse and hearing that indeed, Fiona 2.0 would not feature Axeman compatibility. Cordelia sees it all in a vision, which means so do we and then the surviving members of the coven kill the hell out of the Axeman.
Meanwhile, in Hell, Papa Legba has Marie in breach of contract, given how she's in pieces all over the city and will no longer be able to keep up with her payment. With Marie mortal, so is Delphine. And thus Marie will spend all of eternity being forced to torture Delphine and her daughters. Yes, I just started a paragraph with the words "Meanwhile, in Hell," but the point is that all three former queen bees appear to be out of the picture for the duration.
So finally, there's nothing left to resolve but the identity of the next Supreme, which will supposedly be determined next week. Given all the new power manifestations we've been seeing lately, it's anyone's game. But it'll doubtless be the last person we expect, so… congratulations, Myrtle?
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Am I the only one who still isn't used to the F/X announcer saying the show is only rated "TV-MA LV" instead of "TV-MA LSV?" I was starting to think those seven letters were the show's code name.
This week's historical-context-providing flashback returns us to both Salem and the silent film era at the same time, somehow. To clarify -- because I think we can all agree that such an opener calls for clarification -- we appear to be watching a grainy, black-and-white movie of colonial-style witches entering a half-constructed barn, over a piano track that sounds like it's coming out of a Victrola. It looks like an educational or magical-hygiene film from the 1910s or something. The first idiosyncratically-punctuated titles read, "Guided by ancient tradition witches survive only if united under a strong, singular authority. Every generation needs its leader The Supreme. No simple test could Ever determine the sovereign among us. We rely upon seven. The Seven Wonders." Aaand, [sic]. Inside the barn, one of the young witches is concentrating as the next titles repeat, "The 'Seven Wonders'. Seven acts of magic so advanced, each pushes the boundaries of craft into art." Yes, we've heard.
The young Supreme candidate from the supposed past summons a machete flying from the wall into her hand as the titles tell us the first wonder: Telekinesis. The second wonder, according to the titles, is "Control of the mind, also known as…Concilium." Which is illustrated by the young witch making one of her fellows Prancercise around the barn. Then there's Transmutation, in which she disappears from one spot in the barn in a puff of smoke and reappears behind another witch, employing all the bleeding-edge special effects technology of the early twentieth century. For Divination, she accurately sketches a picture of a bird that another witch is holding behind her back. It would suck if you could do Divination but couldn't draw. Vitalum Vitalis is supposedly "The balancing of scales between one life force and another," and is demonstrated by the young Supreme candidate breathing on another witch's face to make her look younger, only to discover her own hands suddenly ravaged by age. That looks dead useful.
Decensum is defined as "…A perilous descent into the nether worlds of afterlife," which the Mack Sennett-level movie magic depicts in the form of a secondary image of the witch briefly rising above her body and returning, whereupon she collapses. Finally there is Pyrokinesis, which, like telekinesis, supposedly didn't need to be defined because everyone knew what it meant a hundred years ago. As the young witch slashes open her palm with a kitchen knife, we can hear Fiona's voice saying, "The highest honor comes at the greatest price. Death is not uncommon and danger inescapable." The young witch drips the blood from her hand into a candle flame, and like your parents always warned you would happen if you squirted lighter fluid onto an open flame, she goes up herself like a Roman candle. Or at least as convincingly as can be suggested by simply superimposing film of a fire over the film of the witch. "Attempting the Seven Wonders can get you killed," Fiona says unnecessarily. Then we're in the kitchen at Miss Robichaux's, as the light comes up theatrically on Fiona's face as she sits across the table from one of her own potential replacements. "But perform them, and you are the next Supreme." That's exactly what Diana Ross told Mary Wilson.