The remaining episodes will be typical horror story fare, watching almost ever character being killed in unique ways. Given this inevitable conclusion and inclusion of “shaky cam” footage, these last few hours will be hard to watch. Will there be a final twist at the end? It may still be revealed that the last few episodes were also a carefully illustrated “reality.” Perhaps the final curtain will reveal all cast and crew alive and well and having a tremendous laugh at the audience’s expense. Frankly, I would find that a cheap and divisive ending.
The episode opens with Dominic looking in horror at the scene in front of the mansion. The Butcher has just killed her re-enactor Agnes. Dominic has finally come to the conclusion that recent events are no longer being orchestrated by the show. He addresses Sid via the camera in the room. “I just wanted to be the ‘good villain’. Get me out of here!” Shelby replies cryptically, “No one is coming!” Dominic makes eye contact with the Butcher through the window. They decide they have to escape the house through the tunnel.
Dominic’s necklace camera provides shaky footage as the couple rushes down the stairs. Shelby encounters Matt’s corpse and she almost can’t go on. Dominic urges her forward to the tunnels. (Stationary cameras provide images in the darkness.) Ahead in the tunnel appears a figure. Shelby assumes it to be Mott, who had helped Matt and her flee the first time. But suddenly, distorted figures covered in blood crawl towards them. The Chen’s chase the living down in the dark.
Mama sharpens her knife as she instructs her sons on the unique art of butchering Lee alive. Lee spits back, “I’m not an ‘it’, I’m a human being! People don’t eat people!” One of the boy’s responds, “The Polk’s eat people.” It doesn’t appear they will be diverted from their task. Mama proudly begins to tell Lee the history of cannibalism in their family. It was during the depression, and “hobos” ate their last hog. Enraged, the patriarch decided to tie up and eat the culprit. Mama boasts, “We had found our power, our place!” She slurps, woefully reminiscent of Hannibal Lector in “Silence of the Lambs.”
Lee promises them they will receive the death penalty should they go through with torturing her and consuming her. Mama laughs, relating that the police are paid by the family and leave them to their “business.” Lee screams as one son cuts her. Her severed ear is dropped into a pickling jar! Realizing in horror what just happened, Lee asks the boy “Jether” why he took her ear. Jether states the ear is a prized Christmas present. He describes other Polk traditions such as letting the boys “cuddle with Mama” (incest is implied) and receiving weapons and ammunition. Lee cries that she wants another Christmas with her daughter, Flora. She asks Jether to remove a photo of her daughter from her back pocket. (Lee is planning something to get away.) She tells the teen, “Every mother loves their children.” But Jether counters, “Not every mother.” Jether is upset he wasn’t chosen to be on television like his older brothers. Lee promises she can help him achieve this dream. She tells him about the new show. “I can help make you famous if you help me!”
Jether tells Lee the story of the most famous member of the Polk family, Kincaid Polk. He brought his pigs to Chicago for slaughter around the same time as the 1892 World’s Fair. (In last season’s Hotel, the Patrick March character was modeled on real- life serial killer H.H. Holmes. Mr. Holmes operated his “Murder Hotel” preying upon young un-chaperoned women attending the Chicago World’s Fair.) Jether explains Kincaid would don a pig’s head and slaughter people. He had seen how the Butcher sacrificed people for the Colony in a similar fashion. The “Pig Man” we’ve seen this season is this Polk ancestor.
Lee makes another plea to the teen, “You could be even bigger and more famous! Let me go!” Jether becomes agitated, “I can’t ever leave, shut up!” The camera zooms out, making it seem that the show also placed cameras at the Polk’s property. Jether snorts a white powdered substance and offers some to Lee. Lee declines, explaining that she is an addict in recovery. However, it dawns on Lee that she is not going to make it out of this situation alive. She asks Jether why they torture their victims in this manner. The boy explains it comes from “tradition” before refrigeration and has been kept because “fear makes for a good tang in the jerky.” Lee accepts the offer of drugs.
Dominic and Shelby have barricaded the tunnel to keep out the Chen’s. As the couple makes their way upstairs, Dominic hurts his arm in a slamming door. Shelby opines, “We are going to die! There is no escape!” Dominic tries to give her hope, “I’m going to get a spin-off and you are going to open a yoga studio!” Shelby states she thinks Dominic is a “really good actor.” Despite the walls crashing in on them, the actor can’t help but embrace this complement. “You really think so?” The Pig Man appears in the kitchen; Shelby is able to stab the creature with a knife before running away. The Chen’s daughter appears in the doorway as the chandelier from the third-floor shakes and crashes to the floor, narrowly missing Shelby. The nurses pursue the couple as they rush upstairs to seek refuge in Matt and Shelby’s former bedroom's bathroom.
Once locked in the bathroom, Shelby bursts out laughing much to Dominic’s consternation. Shelby cries she’s killed the only man she ever loved and there is no place left for her. In a sudden motion, Shelby cuts her throat with a knife from the kitchen, killing herself. (And my prediction she might be the lone survivor of the series.)
Lee calls to Jether to get the picture of Flora out of her back pocket. Jether covers Lee’s wounds with a towel. He removes a large portable camera and begins to film the scene. Lee gazes at her daughter’s face. “I love you, and I always will. I have to tell you the truth; I killed your daddy, alone. He was going to take you from me and I couldn’t let that happen. One day, I hope you can forgive me. I need you to go on, and rise up!” Jether confesses he’s never killed anybody before; his brothers liken it to butchering a pig. The boy reckons it’s his turn but he doesn’t want to hurt Lee, “I like you.” Lee seizes on the teen’s inexperience and offers him to let him touch her in a sexual way. The boy asks if he can tape the encounter so he can “watch it later.” Lee coos, “I want to make you feel good!” Once the boy frees her hands for the encounter, Lee is able to grab the boy in a tight headlock until he loses consciousness. With Jether passed out, Lee gets up and grabs the boy’s knife before fleeing.
In the bathroom, Dominic sits across from Shelby’s motionless corpse. He addresses the camera, “Sidney, why are you doing this? Save me!” He continues to bemoan the fact he had first class airline tickets to Thailand for a vacation next month. No matter the circumstances, the actor’s of Roanoke are selfish to the core.
Audrey and Monet cry to their captures that they are “actors” whom should not be punished for the actions of Matt and Shelby. (Whose discovery of the “feral children” had them removed from the Polk’s custody.) Monet entices the hillbillies to go after the real Matt and Shelby. Monet states they can find them back at the mansion. The Polk’s are unmoved, “The Others (The Colony) will get them soon enough!” The Polk’s are gathering teeth for the “rain teeth” tableau seen in the earlier episode, which they explain “honors” the human sacrifices made by the Colony. They fear they don’t have enough teeth and look at Audrey and Monet as a good source for more teeth.
The older man readies some pliers to pull Monet’s tooth but she is able to resist him, break the chair and flee. Audrey pleads with Monet not to leave her there, as she is certain she will die.
Mama enters moments later and is furious to see her kin on the floor and one of her prisoners has escaped. She instructs one of her boys to “Go get it!” Audrey pleads with her “I didn’t do anything.” As Mama peers in Audrey’s mouth, the actress spits in her face, “I paid good money for these teeth!” Mama sneers that she could have strung her up like her young husband. At the mention of Rory, Audrey is further enraged, “You’re not good enough to say his name, pig psychopaths!” Audrey continues to insult Mama’s children. Mama moves to pull Audrey’s teeth out with pliers.
Ismael pursues Monet through the woods. (Through the point of view of a shaky iPhone camera.) Monet screams and runs.
Back at the Polk compound, Lee knocks out Mama. Audrey continues to scream wildly, alerting any other Polk’s in the area to what is happening in the shed. Audrey retrieves her wedding ring then focuses her hammer on Mama’s head, bashing it in savagely killing the old cannibal.
Audrey and Lee flee back to the mansion via the tunnels. Lee confesses she snorted oxy with the Polk’s and is in desperate need of something to alleviate her pain. Audrey promises she has some drugs in her luggage.
Lee is shocked to discover her brother’s badly beaten corpse in the basement. Audrey implores her to keep moving upstairs. As they make their way upstairs, they are puzzled by the broken chandelier and lack of living people in the home. When they make it to Audrey’s room, Lee breaks down. Audrey offers her a joint and states she’s sorry about Matt. Audrey is fixated on the loss of her “perfect” teeth.
Audrey finds Shelby dead in the bathroom and wails, “I feel like a part of me has died!” Dominic sits on the floor nearby; he explains that Shelby committed suicide. He asks, “Did you find Sidney?” Audrey screams her reply, “Sidney is dead, and there is no help coming!” Lee is suspicious that Dominic is responsible for Shelby and Matt’s deaths. (Cuba played O.J. last spring in American Crime Story, a man accused of killing two people with a knife!) Dominic explains Matt was having sex with “that thing” and Shelby killed him. Lee doesn’t believe Shelby could have killed her brother. Dominic insists it’s all “on the tape.” Lee calls him a liar and yells at him to get out.
Audrey notes, “Shelby is way too self-centered to have ever killed herself! I know I played her for six months! I know her better than I know myself!” Audrey continues to act as a perfect “reality” star in turning the focus of all events back to how they relate to her. Lee pushes Dominic out the door, locking it behind him. Pig noises are heard outside. Audrey wants to let her former co-star back in but Lee stands firm. Lee sneers, “It’s his fault they’re all dead!” The Pig Man kills Dominic in the hallway.
Audrey wails, and then continues to film a message for her fans. “If I die, just know I had so many wonderful performances waiting for you! I love you, always.” The house around her is dead quiet.
Somehow, Audrey and Lee have made it through the night. Lee has a bold plan to return to the Polk’s in order to destroy the evidence of their crimes. Audrey protests that Monet and she were clearly tortured, even force fed bits of Lee’s leg. (The real reason Lee wants those tapes is because of her confession of killing Mason.) Lee explains that even with taped evidence a corrupt legal system could sway a jury to find Audrey at fault for “killing an old woman with a hammer.” Lee’s plan is simple, “Destroy the tapes, hot-wire a truck and get out of here.”
Audrey gives Lee some more pills for the journey. The actress looks at Dominic’s corpse mournfully as they leave. “He was a wonderful scene partner!” Lee doesn’t want to see Matt’s body again. They will exit out the front door. As they go to open it, a man wearing a pig head stands before them. He quickly removes the head. Audrey exclaims, “Dylan?” It appears he was a reenactment actor who played the part of the “Pig Man.” Why he’s there is a mystery.
Next week’s preview offers more shaky camera perspectives of the remaining players inside the house. The authorities might finally be on their way to the scene of multiple grizzly crimes. Will they believe how these deaths occurred? I suppose it's not over until the last survivor emerges from the mansion. It still seems possible the “Return to Roanoke” is yet another fictionalized drama. Sidney may have the last laugh…
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