Warning: Spoilers for American Horror Story season 12, episode 9.
Although American Horror Story season 12’s ending finally explained a lot of unanswered questions, the show’s rushed finale still left a lot unclear. Unlike earlier seasons of American Horror Story, Delicate is adapted from a novel, Delicate Condition by Danielle Valentine. The season tells the story of Anna Alcott, a successful actor who becomes convinced that someone is manipulating her pregnancy. In American Horror Story season 12 episode 8, Anna won her Oscar after promising Siobhan that she would trade anything for professional success. As the finale began, she was whisked away from the Oscars in an ambulance.
Anna’s ambulance was driven by one of American Horror Story: Delicate Part Two’s main villains, Ivy, who killed Anna’s bodyguard. Anna’s baby bit her husband Dex’s hand off before it was fully born and Ivy choked Dex to death with his severed hand. Arriving at an empty car park, Ivy and Anna were suddenly met by the rest of the villainous cult, including Nicolette, Talia, and Sonia. They taunted Anna before their masked leader paralyzed her. Anna woke up unable to move her legs and Siobhan, her ever-present publicist and confidante, finally revealed herself to be the cult’s all-powerful demonic leader.
Anna gave birth to some sort of demonic baby, although its final form was never revealed onscreen, and the being was later turned into a normal infant. It was definitely demonic, judging by the claws. However, its face was never seen, even when it drank Anna’s blood for sustenance in a creepy nursing scene. In the end, after Siobhan was destroyed, what Siobhan referred to as a “Creature” transformed into a seemingly normal baby. American Horror Story season 12 episode 4 teased a similar clawed demon baby earlier in the season, but neither of these episodes revealed the appearances of these monsters.
Dex tried to soothe Anna while he was traveling with her in the ambulance, but he wasn’t able to stop the vehicle or Ivy’s plan. When he tried to help Anna deliver her baby, the demonic baby bit Dex’s hand clean off before it was even born. The blood loss and trauma from this event seemed destined to kill Dex, but Ivy made certain that he was done for when she crammed his severed hand into his mouth and choked him to death. It was unclear why this happened until a little later when Ivy’s mistake came back to haunt her.
After episodes of hinting, American Horror Story: Delicate revealed Kim Kardashian’s Siobhan was the big bad of the season all along. Siobhan was revealed to be the ageless leader of the all-female cult, and she admitted that Dex was her semi-human son, born via a tryst with his amoral father. Bizarrely, Siobhan then killed Ivy for killing Dex, even though Ivy protested that Siobhan ordered her to murder her son. Siobhan said this was a test and slit the supporting villain’s throat, ending a life that began back in around 20 A.D., twenty years before she met Siobhan.
Ivy was a loyal member of Siobhan’s cult until the bitter end, as were Talia, Sonia, Nicolette, Ashley, Ashleigh, and Susan, the superfan that Anna seemingly killed at the Gotham Awards. Although American Horror Story season 12 episode 6 already revealed some of these villains were working for the cult, their mission wasn’t clear until the finale. Siobhan explained to Anna that the cult’s members took advantage of women who wanted to have it all, used them to breed aggressive demonic male offspring, and used these men to bring about an apocalypse so the cult could install a Utopian matriarchy.
Siobhan outwitted Anna at every turn until, desperate to see her newborn child, Anna finally decided to join Siobhan’s cult by feeding her demonic baby. In a deeply disturbing moment, the monstrous baby began drinking Anna’s blood instead of breast milk, horrifying Anna and delighting Siobhan. Siobhan then inexplicably left Anna alone and, in a throwback to American Horror Story: Delicate episode 7, the spirit of Dex’s late wife Adeline returned to help her out. Adeline got Anna to chant a prayer to Hestia, the ancient Greek god of home and hospitality. Surprisingly, this odd ploy proved incredibly effective.
When Siobhan returned with more “B12 shots” for Anna, she shook in horror upon seeing Adeline’s ghostly form. As Anna and Adeline continued to chant a prayer for Hestia, Kim Kardashian’s American Horror Story: Delicate villain Siobhan crumbled into dust in an anticlimactic ending. It was never entirely clear how Adeline’s spirit helped Anna or why praying to Hestia was enough to kill this seemingly immortal demon, but Anna soon found herself alone, able to walk, and free from the cult. Suddenly, in an empty building, Anna walked into a sunny nursery where the episode ended on a strange note.
In the nursery, Anna found her baby transformed into a normal child and picked him up to soothe him. She also saw her Oscar on the shelf and held it while cradling her baby before trying on the headpiece that Siobhan left behind when she disintegrated. This final image made the season’s message tough to parse and proved that, while American Horror Story season 12 improved on the show’s recent outings, the finale failed to make a clear statement about its thorny themes of pregnancy, female ambition, misogyny, patriarchy, feminism, and tradition. This messy denouement was an unfortunate letdown.
On the one hand, Siobhan and her cronies were using motherhood to establish a Satanic matriarchy by falsely promising women they could have it all. On the other hand, Anna did end up having it all thanks to her praise of Hestia, a god of home and family, as evidenced by her clutching both her Oscar and baby. This seemingly implied that the conflicted Anna could take over the cult after leaving the nursery, while the baby magically turning into a normal infant didn’t have any clear significance or purpose. Thus, American Horror Story: Delicate‘s ending was an uneven, confusing conclusion.