A Bloody Backstory Reveals Itself on American Horror Story: Roanoke

“But it’s something that will be part of this season”.

This story triggers Matt’s memory, and he finds the letters, hidden behind cheap wallpaper. Here’s what we learned. We caught a quick glimpse, here and there, of what looked like a nurse, wandering the halls. What’s clear, however, is that the season appears to be sticking very much to the tone and flavour of its premiere episode; with old-school chills taking their place front and centre. I don’t blame her; some of them were missing half their heads. When Lee and her ex-husband Mason ask Flora why she’s talking to the seemingly imaginary girl, Flora says “so she won’t kill us”.

Explicit links between the first season of American Horror Story and My Roanoke Nightmare have already begun to surface, including that disturbing pig motif and the prominence of the word “murder” in Chapter Two. Normally, you have to live out your afterlife in the building you were killed in.

Anyway, let’s go right ahead and DIAL (SPRAY PAINT?) M FOR MURDER HOUSE because goddamn it, friends, we’ve got a way-back play-back on our hands. People do things against their will when they’re under enormous pressure; the very solid and self-assured Lee loses her sobriety, for example. Her parents pace the house looking for her, only to discover her chatting away in a hidden nook at the top of the stairs.

Priscilla hangs out with Flora some more. This seems odd to me, since the Roanoke colony was founded by Sir Walter Raleigh, who is about as English as it gets. The episode ended with the group finding Flora’s jacket several hundred feet up in a tree. That’s when we see a bloody cleaver stuck in the door nearest to Matt and Shelby. They find a video of a former resident of the house.

The next day, Flora’s father shows up to collect her and take her home but she has disappeared. First, Shelby stumbles into a human sacrifice ceremony of a man wearing a pig’s head led by Bates, Wesley and Gaga’s characters. Instead of jumping into those inquiries, though, let’s take a step back and reflect on Miranda (Maya Berko) and Bridget (Kristen Rakes), those two murderous nurses. Matt realizes that the phone is possessed, as it is not plugged in, and as he turns his head, he’s confronted by two nurses and an elderly woman in bed, all of whom were not there seconds prior.

On it, a previous tenant of the house (Denis O’Hare in a madman’s beard) explained that he came to write a true-crime novel about the evil nurses who ran an old folks’ home exclusively for the goal of killing off patients whose names started with the letters M, U, R, D, E, and … well, you get the idea. So, in some twisted fashion akin to the game of HORSE, the grown-up versions of the twins from The Shining chose their victims so that their initials spelled out “MURDER”. Do the settler spirits need Flora to complete whatever ritual they started?

Cunningham suggests that while the ghosts inhabiting the house are risky, there is actually something even worse. (Because writing REDRUM on the mirrors would have been too subtle.) However, the nurses never finished spelling their favorite word.

At night, Matt and Shelby, awakened by pig squeals, venture outside. Most likely, it’s something the viewer hasn’t seen yet.

During his interview with Variety, the actress explained how it was a test for her to secrecy on the subject of the new season to the broadcast of episode 1 last week. It’s a surprise again.

“I didn’t think it could get any worse”, real life Matt says, providing helpful foreshadowing.

Lee awakens to discover the nurses, who quickly disappear. There is a lot more of the same between the two episodes, but it turned out to be a relatively entertaining episode that distracts the audience by raising questions about what’s going on in this little house with this married couple.

At night pig screeches bring Shelby and Matt outside armed with a bat.