AHS 1984 - Episode Four - True Killers
Wow...I always forget every season just how twisty this show is. We saw the beginnings of some twists last week, but by the end of this one the game has changed completely. (You can check out all my recaps HERE)
We start off with a flashback explaining how Montana met Richard Ramirez. Your standard rom-com meet cute, she’s teaching aerobics blasting some Billy Idol, and he comes in digging the music, and then after the class he kills a guy who was mocking her taste in music. Montana says that this is the most twisted thing anyone’s ever done for her, and then they make out.
Montana asks a favor now of Richard, that he kill someone for her. As it turns out, in a soap opera twist, she’s the sister of Brooke’s friend whom her fiancé shot in the head at her disastrously red wedding. And as such, she wants revenge. He agrees, and this is what set him after her in the first place.
Now back in the present, Xavier seeks the assistance of Bertie the cook who is making baloney sandwiches for the soon to be arriving campers. They’re interrupted by the arrival of Mr. Jingles, whom Bertie talks to for a bit as they were friends once before he became a mass murderer, before Xavier is revealed and is then thrown into an oven by Jingles before stabbing Bertie.
She isn’t dead just yet though, and frees Xavier but not before his face is burnt slightly from the oven, and she silently then begs Xavier to end her pain which he does, stabbing her once more.
Back to Brooke, she’s running through the woods and gets caught in a net trap that Donna, the former Nurse Rita, had set for her. Donna explains that she herself is not evil, just a psychologist, who is studying evil.
Ramirez soon finds her after Brooke informs him she’s trapped, but Mr. Jingles shows up now, and at first Ramirez expresses his fandom for the murderer, and then we get our Freddy Vs Jason moment as the two begin to fight.
Meanwhile, Brooke finds Donna waiting and finds out that she was the one who let Jingles out, and they fight now as well, ending with Brooke knocking out Donna.
She then sees the end of Jingles Vs. Ramirez which ends with Mr Jingles shoving him onto a tree branch through the back of his head out of his mouth, in an epic Mortal Kombat like fatality.
So, at this point, we’re down one killer, either some twists are going to happen soon or this season just got a whole lot shorter. But just wait..there’s more.
Jingles shows up in lead counselor/owner Margaret’s cabin, where it’s revealed their relationship was much different than we had thought. Back in 1970 she was getting mocked endlessly by the other counselors for her rule following ways, her only real friend was Mr. Richter, the Vietnam vet , who offered to protect her.
He didn’t though, so she took matters into her own hands. She, as we now find out, is the real killer of 1970, but she framed Richter and had the perfect backstory for him as tortured war vet, creating the legend of Mr. Jingles before getting him locked up in a mental hospital. The electroshock therapy and other inhumane methods made him believe that he was the killer that people thought him to be.
After this reveal, she shoots him, seemingly dead. So now we’re down to no killers. Oh wait, what’s this. Back in the woods Ramirez’ body is being lifted up from the ground by unseen forces, an awakening. Donna sees this, and also sees his wounds healing Wolverine style before being being released to the ground with an evil grin, he’s baaaack!
Back in the cabin, Trevor arrives and sees Jingles body, she explains how she killed him to save everyone, but not before Jingles killed Trevor, she explains, before stabbing him. She turns back and Jingles body is gone, leaving only a bloodstain where he once was.
Brooke and the other survivors meet with Margaret in front of a burning car, which was their only hope for getting out of there, and she lies and states that Jingles killed Trevor.
And now we wait, just like our surviving counselors, for what comes next. I thought last week changed things, but this one completely flips the game on its head. This is by far one of the best seasons of the show I’ve seen, and a better slasher homage than Scream Queens, as much as I loved that show too. How many more twists and turns can we have? Guess we’ll find out next week, same stab time, same stab channel.
