American Horror Story: Cult Episode 8 Recap: Orgies, the Dark Web, and a Surprise Cult Inductee

As the real world gets more frightening by the day, the world of AHS still bests our worst nightmares. In that way, it’s a kind of tonic: Things really could be worse. And this week things get taken to the absolute limit, culminating with a surprise inductee to Kai’s cult of killers.

Because Kai’s cult has gone completely alt-right, as we see via a visit by Dr. Vincent, Kai’s brother. He encounters a basement of supporters in Nazi-style uniforms, and tries to patch things up with Kai, since Ally allegedly colluded to murder him. Wait, hold on: how does Kai know Ally is Rudy’s patient? This is a clear breach of patient confidentially. Rudy praises Kai’s work as really making a difference. So whose side is he on? It’s still been unclear.

Besides the basement, the Butchery is cult headquarters. The women (Ivy, Beverly, Winter) have been relegated to domestic roles, Handmaid’s style, and Beverly has totally lost faith. She demands Winter to get real about Kai.

But Winter says she’s wrong. Flashback to 2015: she and Kai are having fun on the dark web casually denigrating women’s rights and encouraging to antiabortion activists… for laughs! Even though they are liberals! (Not cool.) They get an invitation from someone named Pastor Charles to go to “Judgment House.” And they go! (Not cool.) Once there, Pastor Charles locks them in a dark-web house of horrors: a woman bleeding to death from an abortion, a drug addict chained up to die. Kai and Winter decide to break them out and kill Charles, who kidnapped people to be in his show. Apparently, the murder of Pastor Charles was Kai’s breaking point. He got decided that burning the world down was the only answer.

Back to the future, where it’s pinky time with Winter and Kai. He demands her loyalty, and comes up with a crackpot plan to birth a messiah, fathered by him and mothered by Winter. But it won’t be incest, he says, because Samuel will impregnate her while Kai has sex with Samuel. Pretty sure that’s not how this works.

Ally is out of custody! She apparently had to spend time committed. Dr. Rudy Vincent comes over and she chews him out, but now he believes her truly. He’s seen the cult, and he knows the man who has been tormenting her… because he is his brother. So is Rudy really on her side after all? Rudy produces a family photo– Kai, Winter, and Rudy– and Ally flips out. I don’t blame her: How did it not come up that her babysitter was named Winter? How many Winters are in small-town Michigan? She’s immediately suspicious of Dr. Vincent, but he claims Kai must’ve broken into his case files. She later invites Kai over to offer him information– that is, his brother. She wants her son back at any cost. And there’s one big change after all Kai’s efforts to terrorize her: she’s finally been cured. She’s not afraid of anything anymore.

Meanwhile, Kai has convinced Samuel and Winter to act out his messiah plan. (Gross.) “I can’t believe I was at the women’s march three months ago,” Winter deadpans, as they sit in creepy robes. But at the moment of truth, Samuel can’t get it up– he just isn’t into women. Winter loses her nerve, thankfully, and stands up to her brother– only to find how truly far off the deep end he’s gone.

Winter gets exiled to dumping garbage around town (Kai doesn’t believe in global warming). Samuel calls her “servant” when he picks her up. Things are bleak. We get another insane origin story about how Samuel ended up in the cult: He busted Kai for selling prescription drugs, but then blackmailed him. Samuel wanted sexual favors in return for not prosecuting Kai. When Winter calls him out as a predator, he responds with the ridiculous claim: “I didn’t know what I was.” (A dinosaur a.k.a. predator?) He collected Nazi memorabilia and choked women to get off since he wasn’t attracted to them: it seems pretty simple he was/is an all-around terrible person. Kai, however, impressed him, and helped him own his masculinity– by screwing him. Winter astutely points out Samuel is gay and an angered Samuel tries to rape her. But the tables turn and Winter pulls a gun on him. In the proclaimed spirit of Valerie Solanas, she shoots him dead.

In the cult basement, the betrayers–Beverly and Rudy– are brought forth to be reckoned with by the clown consortium. Rudy is violently murdered in front of Winter, who sold out Beverly claiming she murdered Samuel. With these two gone, the cult now has total loyalty, and Kai welcomes the newest cult member… Ally! Ivy looks shocked. Where do we go from here? Who will be the enemy of the cult? Maybe Ally is her own double agent.