WARNING: The following contains spoilers for American Horror Story: Double Feature Episode 6, "Winter Kills," which aired Wednesday on FX.
American Horror Story packed a lot of symbolism into this season’s black pills. Created by the Chemist as part of a top-secret government program, they have the ability to stimulate the creative parts of the brain to unprecedented heights. If one was sufficiently talented in a chosen field, the pill turned them into a genius. Those without such talents devolve into animalistic “Pales” feeding on the corpses of dead animals. And regardless of talent levels, everyone who takes them becomes subject to an incurable lust for fresh blood.
The ghoulishness of the concept hides a simpler symbolic purpose. It’s literally a magic pill. A creative person who takes it will find themselves succeeding beyond their wildest dreams, provided they keep feeding the bloodlust. Fail to take it and accept mediocrity and anonymity. It’s a shortcut to everything an artist could ever want. But as Double Feature's mid-season finale proves, there are no shortcuts and no magic pills. One way or another, a price will be paid, and it might just be in blood.
Season 10, Episode 6, “Winter Kills,” eviscerates the figures who took the pill, thinking that it would answer all of their problems. It begins almost immediately, with Belle Noir and Austin receiving a curt and none-too-subtle threat from the Provincetown council about cleaning up the rash of murders that have occurred throughout Double Feature. Until that moment, the pair seemed unstoppable masters of the town. As it turns out, the relationship is totally transactional, and they need the town far more than it needs them. Their ghoulishness doesn't impress the locals, and turning on them would lead to their exposure and imprisonment.
That pattern continues in increasingly overt ways. Belle and Austin are killed by the Pales -- torn apart by the very "hacks" they thought they could leave behind -- while Harry is murdered by his own daughter when he proposes weaning them both off of the pill. His half-measures and third paths turned Alma into a fiend, and if she cared nothing for her mother Doris -- transformed into a Pale and abandoned on the streets -- her father didn’t mean much more.
Speaking of Alma, she finds a particularly fitting destiny when she finds out that being the greatest doesn’t necessarily guarantee success. She murders a rival who (correctly) explains that she’s little more than a curiosity and that she will need to learn to be a team player if she wants to be a proper musician. Her ego can't accept it, and she tears his throat out while they're waiting to see who passed the audition.
Even Ursula meets her fitting end, despite the fact that she is far too smart to take the pill herself. She’s happy to capitalize on it, however, and indeed spreads it as far as she can amid the ranks of Hollywood's aspiring screenwriters. The damage it causes and the unwanted attention it brings don’t matter to her as long as it can unearth the next genius for her: one now hopelessly addicted to the black pill. The Chemist seals Ursula's fate by swapping out a batch that she gives to a writing symposium, then drives away as the assemblage promptly turns into blood-crazed rage monsters.
A creative act needn’t make a dime to be fulfilling. Countless such acts take place on the Internet every day, and as Karen proved with her final fate, a masterpiece is no less so just because no one else sees it. Characters like Harry and Alma don’t need it for creative expression. They use it to eliminate the risk and guarantee success without any of the hard work. They want fame and fortune, not a chance to practice their medium. That’s what the pill really offers, and as American Horror Story drives home, it’s a lie. Sooner or later, in one way or another, the bill always comes due.
To see how American Horror Story: Double Feature wraps up its first segment, "Red Tide," new episodes air each Wednesday at 10 p.m. ET on FX.