AHS: Delicate Turns Back the Clock, Unmasking Another Familiar Foe

Andy Swift
·3 min read

With only a handful of episodes remaining, Wednesday’s installment of American Horror Story: Delicate gave us answers to questions we didn’t know we had, while raising new questions we thought we already answered. In other words, business as usual.

Episode 7 begins with a trip back to Western Europe, circa 42 A.D., where Ivy is giving birth to twins in a dirty pile of hay. With no one to help her, Ivy is forced to pull the babies out of her own womb, and it doesn’t seem like anyone involved is going to survive — that is, until the trio receives an unexpected house call from a Woman in Black. But which one?!

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We then skip ahead (but not totally ahead) to 2013 Brooklyn, where Dex is living happily (but not totally happily) with Adeline, who’s too busy opening her new restaurant to even consider taking care of a new puppy, much less a baby. Another thing she doesn’t have time for is her evil twin Sonia, who drops by to recruit her wayward sister back to the cult she apparently escaped. As Adeline explains, she left because their “mission was wrong,” but Sonia reminds her that it’s their birthright. It’s a hell of a family reunion, the kind that ends with someone accidentally stabbing herself in the hand and passing out on the floor.

Because there’s no such thing as too many time jumps, the episode then takes us back to Ireland (circa 1243 A.D.), where a thickly accented Ivy is basically living like a 13th century Reba McEntire — a single mom who works too hard, who loves her kids and never stops… performing black magic to further her agenda. There isn’t anything particularly illuminating about this flashback, other than to reinforce how long this sick s–t has been happening, and how Adeline has always wanted out.

The hour’s fourth time jump brings us back to 2013, where Adeline receives another unwanted visit at her restaurant. This time it’s Nicolette, who casually pulls out a handfull of teeth (gross!) and asks Adeline if she misses her fast-growing babies. Nicolette agrees to leave without dessert (sad!), but all this talk about babies sends a curious Adeline to the pharmacy, where a pregnancy test confirms that she and Dex are indeed expecting a baby. The fact that she buys the test from the same woman who later “dies” in the bathroom with Anna should be your first clue that this pregnancy will not end well.

The second hint about this ill-fated pregnancy is considerably less subtle. Poor Adeline is strapped down and cut open by the Women in Black, who bathe in the blood of her unborn child to maintain their cycle of youth and beauty — but not before we learn that Talia has been among their ranks for quite some time. As it’s explained to Adeline in her final moments, Dex will someday have a new wife, one who will give birth to the “purest product possible.” It’s all very messed up, though somehow not as twisted as what Dex discovers when he visits his parents.

Excited to share the news of his and Adeline’s pregnancy, Dex drops by his parents’ house of horrors, only to discover the Women in Black draining her blood while his father goes to pound town with one of the masked women. And look, he’s wearing a harness! Lest you think he doesn’t notice his son entering the room, he then looks Dex dead in the eye (mid-hump!) and yells, “This is how you were made!” Worst biology lesson ever.

OK, time to talk about what we all just saw. Did you learn anything you’d been waiting for this week? And which questions do you still want answered in the season’s final two episodes? Drop a comment with your thoughts (and questions) below.

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