(Contains plot spoilers)
Episode 12 and the finale of season 1 “Afterbirth”and kicks off 9 months ago in Boston just after Vivien caught Ben cheating on her. Ben pleads for forgiveness, saying he will do anything to save their marriage, including leaving Boston and moving away. He shows her pictures of an old house he has found in Los Angeles, revealing Vivien’s love for old houses, making it perfect for a new start. Particularly as the price is low!!
Back to the present day, a very lonely Ben is trying to find the ghosts of his wife and daughter in the house. He pays a visit to Constance who is now looking after the twin who survived, adamant he is taking what he thinks is his son back home to the house. They argue as Constance doesn’t want her grandson in that house, but he threatens her and then leaves with the child!!
Ben is really struggling to come to terms with what’s happened, and Vivien, witnessing his pain, wants to reveal herself to him (as they can choose when and when not to) but Moira persuades her otherwise, that way, he will leave the house and take the baby with him. But Ben has other plans and starts to get drink, planning on taking his own life and sending the baby away to Vivien’s sisters. Both Vivien and Violet appear to him, and persuade him that he needs to leave and start a new life with the baby, away from the house and its evil!!! As he tries to leave, dear old Hayden appears, along with a few other ghosts, which results in Ben being hanged from the chandelier in the hallway!! Although they make it look like he’s committed suicide!!!!! Hayden flees with the baby but she doesn’t get far as Constance and the ghost of Travis team up, with Travis “killing” the ghost of Hayden (how bizarre) and Constance leaves the house with the baby. When the police come round to call on Constance she doesn’t reveal that she has the baby, and tells them that Violet obviously left with the baby after she had found Ben dead!
So there you have it, the house has swallowed the Harmon’s up, leaving the house empty for its next victims to arrive!! However, something the house didn’t embark on was the Harmon ghost family teaming up to dissuade future families moving in, not wanting more families to experience the same hurt and pain that they did!! Moira adds to this by telling the Harmon’s that some of the ghosts living in the house just want to see people suffer in the same way that they did, but others, like her, just wanted the hurt, pain and bloodshed to stop!!! So, all the “innocent” ghosts get together – the Harmon’s, Moira in both forms, the two nurses, Tate’s brother Beau, Larry’s burnt wife Lorraine, the exterminator who died after finding Violet’s body, and the Black Dahlia – begin their campaign to keep the unsuspecting families away!!!
Poor old Tate is also having some problems dealing with his banishment from Violet, but also not wanting Violet to be alone! A new family move in to the house with a teenage boy, Gabriel, who Tate thinks would be a good companion for Violet after seeing Violet engaging with him in his bedroom (her former bedroom). So he tries to kill him but Violet catches him and helps Gabriel to get away, before reminding Tate that she doesn’t need him or his help, and that she has her family now so she isn’t alone. After many dramatics from the whole team, Gabriel and his family leave the house as fast as they can, and the Harmon’s work is done, as they look on very pleased with themselves!!!
Tate tries to talk to Ben about the way he is feeling, but Ben understandably doesn’t want anything to do with him, telling him he’s a psychopath and the fact that he doesn’t take any responsibility for his own actions and therefore will never feel remorse for anything he has done! Tate finally admits the whole shebang – everyone he has killed and raping Vivien. He tries to apologise to Ben but Ben tells him he has to seek forgiveness from those lives he destroyed, and until then, he will never be able to move on!!
Finally, Vivien goes down to the basement only to find her baby with Nora, the baby that is hers and Ben’s. It turns out that the baby lived very briefly before dying, therefore the spirit remains in the house and taken on in its ghost form. Ironically, Nora realises that she doesn’t have what it takes to be a mother (after all those years of wanting and wanting), tells Vivien that the baby is giving her a headache and Vivien offers to take the baby off her. Moira tells Vivien that it was Nora’s spirit that strived to be a mother after the awful things that happened to her and her family, thus explaining her actions for not wanting this child!!! In an emotional scene where everything ironically seems to be happy, Vivien asks Moira is she will be the baby’s godmother! Aww!!!!! The final scene of the house sees the Harmon’s celebrating Christmas by decorating a Christmas tree, with no current residents other than the ghostly spirits that reside! Hayden and Tate watch on from the garden where Hayden tells Tate that he needs to get over Violet as she will never forgive him, but Tate decides he will wait, even if it means forever…………..
The finale concludes with a jump in time to three years later with Constance visiting the hairdressers. The hairdresser remarks that she hasn’t seen Constance in quite some time and she explains that all her time has been taken up with looking after a baby called Michael. She makes up a story that Michael’s parents were dead and even though all her life she wanted to be famous and to be important, everything that had happened to her in her life, all the tragedy, death and deceit, was leading her to this moment, looking after Michael. She believed that this was her true calling.
When she returns home, she calls out to the babysitter but notices blood on the floor, she goes to Michael instantly only to find the babysitter lying dead on his bedroom floor, with blood stains all over Michael!! Michael looks back at her with a grimace on his face!!!!!!!
Well, there you have it. And very nicely set up for Series 2!!! Although the episode was good, it did feel like a bit of a non event, especially after the last episode where so much happened and the dramatics were at their peak! All the loose ends were tied up so not much was left to the imagination but I still kind of liked it! I especially loved Constance’s mini monologue in the hairdressers which was delivered with her usual brilliance and an interesting theory on what her role in life was. I am very interested to know where the producers will take Series 2, and at what stage Michael will be at when the series kicks off. We obviously have a little devil in the making, so I’m hoping that the next series has more gore, and definitely more sadistic and devious elements.
However, until then, I definitely plan to watch the series from the beginning again!! In an interview with “Entertainment Weekly”, one of the co-producers Ryan Murphy commented on how the story developed and all the little hints they were giving off all series: “ I’m excited for people to see it on DVD, because now that they know how it ended, (they can) go back and see all of the little things, like people who have no reflections in mirrors. When you go back, you will see everything was set up”.
By Kirsty Wavish
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