‘American Horror Story: Roanoke’ episode 6 review: ‘Return to Roanoke: Three Days in Hell’ — plus, death

We were promised an enormous twist at the center of “American Horror Story: Roanoke” Wednesday night, and after watching it, we do definitely think that the show delivered on said promise. The Blood Moon arrived, and as it did, we arrived at the beginning of what would become a massacre.

This may be the biggest surprise of all during the episode: The show basically gave away that other than one person, every single person who reentered the Roanoke house died during the three days that the Blood Moon was present.

Before we go further there, let’s backtrack somewhat here to focus on the premise: Sidney, a producer / showrunner type played by Cheyenne Jackson, was desperate to replace the success of “My Roanoke Nightmare.” therefore, he wanted to do a “Big Brother” style show where viewers could watch what it was like for both the original people at Roanoke and the actors behind the reenactments to actually be back at this place. He wanted to create a few fake stunts for the sake of scaring everyone further, and he wanted it to be crazy, dramatic, and everything in between.

Did he get what he wanted out of this? Well, not exactly. It was clear fairly early on that something was afoot, given that some crew members started dropping like flies. The actors / original people started to assemble once more at the house, and it quickly was made clear death (and other horrors) would be coming for them. The first character to go? Poor Evan Peters, who got sliced up by the nurses we saw earlier this season.

Grade: B+. While this wasn’t particularly emotional or revolutionary, this twist on the first five episodes was supremely entertaining. The only issue that we had with it was that there was almost no reason whatsoever why people like the real Shelby and Matt would want to revisit this; fixing their marriage is a good argument, but couldn’t they just go to counseling?

What was rather delightful, meanwhile, was seeing the actors interact with the people they played (real Matt and the actor Dominic really went at it), and also seeing that Kathy Bates’ character lost her mind as a result of playing the Butcher, and brought that into her real life. This was all completely bonkers, but it was the fun kind of bonkers that works when this show pulls it off.

Next week – Head over here to get a preview for what’s coming next and more! (Photo: FX.)