American Horror Story: Cult Finale Delivers Revenge and a New Beginning

Kai's cult met its fate in the finale of season 7 of the FX hit

By Lauren Piester Nov 15, 2017 4:04 AMTags

Bye forever, Kai Anderson.

American Horror Story: Cult's divine jerkface got what was coming to him in a few ways during tonight's finale, starting with his little murder practice party being raided by the FBI, thanks to Ally. 

He was going to have his lackeys kill a bunch of pregnant women, Charles Manson-style, until the feds showed up and took them all down. Kai confessed to everything, avoided a trial, and got life in prison, which he saw as no problem. 

He just sort of reformed his cult behind bars and seduced a guard into helping him with a plan that involved giving another prisoner his exact tattoos, killing him, and shaving off his face so everyone would think Kai was dead.

Then the guard helped Kai escape, just in time for him to show up at Ally's senate debate. 

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But as it turned out, Ally had planned the entire thing, got the guard on her side, and set everything up to be able to explain to Kai that there was one person more powerful than a humiliated man—a nasty woman. 

Then Beverly shot Kai in the head, and that was the end of Kai's cult, but not the end of all the cults. Ally, with Beverly and her new girlfriend by her side, won the senate race and apparently started her own cult of powerful, angry women. But this cult wears cloaks instead of clown costumes, so we don't hate it nearly as much. 

So that's how it all ended, which is, in a way, exactly how we thought it would end. Ally knew too well how powerful a cult could be, so she got a cool green cloak and took the concept for herself. 

FX

So now that we've seen how it ended, it's time to ask ourselves if we liked how it ended. Or if we liked watching it at all. And that's a different question from whether it was good or bad, because honestly, IDK. 

While most seasons of AHS tend to get a bit more abstract by the end, Cult mostly made narrative sense all the way up until its final moments. And we kept watching, but after a certain point it was hard to keep caring. Once everyone was either dead or fully in the cult, there was little to hold onto and almost no one to root for. 

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The fact that Ally was on her way to her very own cult was so clear for so long that it was kind of sad to watch her get there, even if we did get to see the very satisfying demise of Kai in the process, and even if Ally's cult sounds like one we might actually be willing to join with everything that's going on. 

And while we hated the clowns in the beginning (along with all those damn holes), we have to say we kind of missed them by the end. There was a morbid sense of humor at the beginning of the season that was lost somewhere in the middle, when everything got so serious. 

FX

Paired with the serious insanity of real life, it just wasn't very fun to watch, and it was just kind of annoying. Kai was so annoying. Every speech he gave, every word he said was annoying, like all the worst representations of angry men on the internet. Why was anyone paying any attention to him at all, we ask ourselves too often. 

Anyway, we're off to deny interviews with Lana Winters and Rachel F—king Maddow while also wondering what it would be like to watch Sarah Paulson as Lana Winters interview Sarah Paulson as Ally Mayfair-Richards on an all-Sarah Paulson season of American Horror Story. 

See you in season eight! 

American Horror Story airs on FX.