Constance is a suspect in the “Boy Dahlia” murder. Violet uncovers a disturbing truth.
**CONTENT WARNING: Violence, death, suicide, rape, disturbing images**
Synopsis
We’re back in 1994, between Larry’s family’s death and Tate’s massacre* (Larry did not get burned in his family’s fire). Constance, Addy, and Tate now live in the Murder House with Larry, and Constance is trying to get the kids to accept Larry into the family. Tate blames Larry for Beau’s death, despite Constance’s insistence that it was natural respiratory failure. The next morning, Tate goes to Larry’s office on the way to the school shooting, dousing him in gas and lighting him on fire.
Ben visits Vivien and tells her he believes her, he’s trying to get her out of the asylum, and that the babies have different fathers. Back home, he’s confronted by a truant officer who explains that Violet has missed 16 consecutive school days and that they will have to go to juvenile court if she misses another. Ben convinces Violet to go the next day, but Tate talks her out of it.
Ben notices lots of flies in the house and hires an exterminator. The exterminator goes through the crawl space and sees something shocking offscreen before getting murdered by Tate.
Detectives look into Travis’ murder, now dubbed the Boy Dahlia. Constance threatens Larry, assuming he killed Travis in a jealous rage. Larry admits he moved the body but claims that one of the ghosts did it. Constance tells Larry she never loved him, as she leaves to visit Travis’ ghost. She doesn’t make it before getting nabbed by the police as a suspect. They’ve noticed her suspicious history—Beau’s death of “natural causes”, Tate’s shooting spree, Addy’s recent death, and her husband’s disappearance along with the maid (Moira). We see in cross-cutting flashbacks that Constance actually buried Moira, as we know, and ground up her husband and fed him to the dogs. Constance manages to get out of the situation when her lawyer shows up.
Larry stops by the murder house to get Travis‘ clothes to use as evidence. While he’s there though, he sees Travis hanging out with Larry’s family and they seem to be happy. Larry tells his wife he’s going to frame Constance and make her pay for what she did to their family, but his wife says that Constance didn’t do anything—he is the one who broke his wedding vows. Constance gets brought back into the police station and thinks she’s going to be charged even though she didn’t have anything to do with this murder, for once. But when she gets there she finds out that Larry is taking the blame for the entire murder, even though he didn’t do it either. Constance later visits Larry and he says he can handle the jail time ahead of him if she just admits that she did love him at one point. Constance refuses and leaves.
Ben plans to send Violet to a boarding school, but Tate overhears and gets angry. Tate tells Violet he won’t let Ben take her away, then dons the rubber suits and attacks Ben. Ben fights back and manages to get the hood off before chloroform kicks in and he sees that Tate is the one who raped his wife. While Ben is passed out, Tate tries to convince Violet to do a suicide pact so that they can both live forever in the house. Violet plays along, but when she gets a chance she runs off and tries to get out of the house. She runs out of the front gate but finds herself back in the kitchen. She keeps running out of the house and winding up back inside over and over again. Finally she stops running and tearfully tells Tate that she doesn’t want to die, to which Tate responds it’s too late for that. Tate takes her down to the crawlspace and shows her what the exterminator saw. Violet has been dead for weeks. The suicide attempt was successful, and Tate was unable to save her back in episode six. Take explains that he has known he’s a ghost this whole time, and he was just pretending to not know so that she wouldn’t be scared. He doesn’t remember how he died, though.
*I was mistaken in a previous review about the timeline. I assumed Beau and Larry’s family’s deaths were after Tate’s shooting spree, which caused some confusion, but now it is clear that those events came first. I still don’t understand what Beau was doing in Larry’s attic, though.
The Ghosts
Violet apparently has been a ghost for about three episodes! That would explain why she has been skipping school for so long, even if she didn’t realize why she was doing it. Maybe something subconscious was keeping her from attempting to leave the house. I wonder if her parents will figure it out, like if they try to take her out of the house, or if she will have to tell them at some point. I like the editing trick they did when Violet was looping through the house during her discovery.
They’ve cleared up Tate’s memory confusion. He does know he’s dead, he just doesn’t remember the shooting. I guess that’s a fair explanation. We got to see Larry’s family finally, and I’m glad that his daughters seem happy even though they’re dead. His wife makes a really good point that it was all his fault. The exterminator should be a ghost now, too.
Family
I already covered Violet. Vivien was only in one scene but it looks like she’ll be getting out of the asylum soon. Ben now knows that Tate is the man in the rubber suit. I don’t know how he’s going to handle that when he wakes up.
Constance and Larry
Larry really should’ve forgotten about Constance a long time ago. She is definitely not worth all of this. At least he’s realized that he is part of the problem, though. I’m kind of sorry that he has to suffer due to his love for her, but he is repaying his own guilt because he is certainly not innocent. Constance is the worst and I hope she gets her just rewards.
Conclusion
I did suspect that Violet maybe hadn’t survived. The fact that she hasn’t left the house since that episode was subtle, but it was distinctly pointed out as well. Vivien should be released from the hospital soon. Ben is not going to be happy about Tate. We’re getting close to wrapping up the story, so I am excited to see where it ends because we are in territory I have never seen before at this point. The next episode it’s called “Birth“, so I am very much looking forward to that one.
Score: 7/10