The witches participate in the seven wonders to see which of them will become the next supreme.
**CONTENT WARNING: Violence, death**
Synopsis
The coven partakes of one last dinner before the trials of the seven wonders begins. Myrtle somberly reminds them that not they might not all survive. This time the trial will be conducted differently than normal, because it is in the form of a competition. Usually only one person goes through it, the person named by the supreme to be her successor, but Fiona failed to name anyone.
The first test is telekinesis. Misty lacks confidence in her ability to do it, but succeeds, along with the others. Second is concilium, and the girls are paired off to try a shot at mind control. Misty and Queenie each succeed in controlling the other. Madison upsets Zoe when its their turn by also controlling Kyle and forcing him to kiss Madison, then choke Zoe, but Zoe is also able to control Kyle, so all four pass.
The third trial is descensum, though the real trick is for them all to return before dawn. Queenie has done this before, so she is the first to make it back. Madison is next, returning from an afterlife hell of being stuck playing Liesl on a network production of Sound of Music. Next, Zoe returns and says her hell was eternally breaking up with Kyle. Misty doesn’t stir, and we see that her personal hell is being stuck in an elementary school science lab where she resurrects a frog, then the teacher forces her to kill it, over and over. She gets stuck in the loop and can’t break out before dawn, so her body turns to ash.
After a brief pause to mourn her loss, the remaining three girls move on to transmutation. They turn it into a game of tag, having some fun with it until Zoe teleports onto a fence post and dies. Queenie tries to bring her back for the vitalum vitalis trial, but is unable to, knocking her out of the competition. They ask Madison to bring Zoe back, but she refuses. To avoid getting kicked out of the competition as well, she instead swats a fly and returns it to life. As the only remaining witch in play, she seems to be the next supreme.
Cordelia and Myrtle are worried about Madison as the next supreme, especially on the heels of losing Zoe and Misty. Myrtle realizes that there might still be one more option, one under their very noses. Cordelia has always suppressed her powers. Maybe she has what it takes. Cordelia enters the competition, passing pyrokinesis, concilium, telekinesis, descensum, and transmutation with ease. The next step is divination, which is also a breeze for Cordelia, but Madison fails to do. Madison is angry and storms out, intending to leave the coven and expose them to the world. While packing, Kyle strangles her as revenge for letting Zoe die when she could have saved her.
For the final wonder, Cordelia brings Zoe back from the dead. Having completed all of the trials, she is given the power of the supreme, which also restores her eyes. Determined to break the mold of the old ways, Cordelia gives a press conference alerting the whole world to the existence of witches and inviting any young witches to attend the school. They are flooded with new recruits, restoring the population of the coven to its far distant glory. Kyle becomes the new servant of the house, and Zoe and Queenie are designated as the new council.
Myrtle insists that Cordelia must not start her new reign off with a dark secret or favoritism in the ranks, so she must have Myrtle burned at the stake for killing the two council members. Cordelia doesn’t want to, but Myrtle won’t let her take no for an answer.
After Myrtle’s death, Cordelia is surprised to find Fiona in the school, frail now that the supreme power has left her. Fiona reveals that she planted a false memory in the Axeman’s head in order to trick the coven into believing Fiona was dead so that they would enact the seven wonders and discover who the new supreme is. Fiona originally planned to murder whoever was revealed to be the supreme, but now that it is Cordelia, she has accepted her fate. She asks Cordelia to put her out of her misery, but Cordelia refuses, telling her it’s understandable that she would be afraid of death after living like a deity, but Fiona must face it herself. They hug for the first time they can remember, and Fiona passes away. She wakes up in the afterlife, a farmhouse with the Axeman, and is distraught that this provincial life is what her eternity will be.
The Trials
There are some things about the trials that really bug me. First of all, the only one they truly lost to the trials was Misty, who didn’t even want to be there in the first place. She was never a big fan of the coven and only recently even became a part of it. If given the choice, I don’t think she would have gone through with it, but Myrtle was truly convinced she was the next supreme. Now she’s dead. That’s pretty crappy.
When Cordelia entered the running, why wasn’t bringing Zoe back the first thing she tried? There isn’t technically a time limit on bringing someone back after they died, after all Madison was dead for several days, but since this was the most pressing issue, it seemed like the one they should have gone with first, not last. At one point they tell Madison that the trial can’t be done out of order, which could be an explanation, except that it’s not even true. Myrtle says at the start that they are doing the tests in a different order than normal because they are already diverting from tradition. Plus, when it was a matter of Madison or Queenie bringing Zoe back, they jumped straight to it instead of waiting until after divination.
Queenie is unable to bring Zoe back from the dead. However, in the last episode, it seemed as though Misty might have been dead when they freed her from the grave, and Queenie was the one who brought her back, if she was. Now all of a sudden Queenie can’t do a power she has already been shown to do?
Fiona
I thought her death in the last episode felt fishy, but then, so did Laveau’s, so I just thought it was the writing in that episode. At first I almost got mad when she entered the afterlife and got to spend eternity with the one man she had a semblance of true romance with, when she should have been punished for all the awful stuff she’s done. But then it became clear that this is torture for her, being an unknown farm wife after living like a god.
The Supreme
I did wonder a few episodes back if Cordelia might have a chance. Everyone had already ruled her out, and I guess that’s because she’s older and never seemed particularly powerful, but she did gain a new power halfway through so it couldn’t have been too late for her to show new powers. I think Cordelia will make a good supreme, even if she isn’t my top choice for the job. At least she knows the most about the coven, and what a bad supreme looks like to avoid it.
New Witches
So, let me get this straight. This whole time, we were told that witches were a dying breed, their lineages being weeded out by witch hunters or by witches choosing not to reproduce. The once full school has dwindled to only a handful in this generation. But now, suddenly, there are actually dozens of people out there with powers? I thought the school staff and council were supposed to track these types of people down. Maybe they’re just really bad at their jobs.
Conclusion
This is not my favorite season. It picked up some in the middle, but this last episode has several issues, so I feel cheated again.
Score: 5/10