WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for American Gods Season 3, Episode 1, "A Winter's Tale," which aired on Sunday on Starz.
American Gods has proved repeatedly that the impossible is always possible, as seen with Laura Moon's resurrection in Season 1, Episode 3, "Head Full of Snow," thanks to Shadow Moon leaving Mad Sweeney's gold coin on her grave. While this coin has been keeping her alive for the past two seasons, Season 3 sees Laura give it up, dying in the process.
After the events of Season 2, Sweeney's dead, and Laura is determined to bring him back to life and get revenge on Mr. Wednesday for his role in Sweeney's death, as well as the car crash she was in during Season 1. While she goes to Baron Samedi and Maman Brigitte for help, neither of them can bring Sweeney back due to complications, so Laura needs to take a different approach.
Laura takes Sweeney's body to a mausoleum and lays him on a tomb. After writing across his head, "get spear, kill Odin," Laura cuts her stomach open to take out the gold coin, placing it in Sweeney's hand. Once the coin is out of her possession, she dies on site, decomposing rapidly until she's nothing but a pile of ash. Unfortunately for Laura, the coin falls from Sweeney's hand, leaving him dead as well.
This is not the first time Laura has died. As mentioned earlier, she came back to life in "Head Full of Snow." During Shadow's prison sentence, Laura had been cheating on him with his best friend, Robbie. Prior to Shadow's return home, Laura told Robbie this needs to stop while they drive together. Before ending things, Laura gave Robbie a blow job while he drove, and she accidently hit the gearshift as Robbie swerved to miss an oncoming car, leading to both of their deaths.
After Shadow said his goodbyes to Laura, leaving Sweeney's coin on her grave, the coin sunk into the Earth and into the corpse's possession. From there, Laura was resurrected; however, there's an added bonus. Since it's a lucky coin with magic powers, it gave Laura ridiculous strength, with her being able to take on godly beings, like Sweeney, in a fight.
She's also died a second time in Season 1, Episode 7, "A Prayer for Mad Sweeney." After swerving the truck she and Sweeney were in, Laura's hurled through the front window, and the coin flew out of her chest. Without it, she died. While Sweeney could reclaim the coin for himself, he felt guilty over Laura's initial death, as he was the one driving the oncoming car on behalf of Odin. He returned the coin to Laura, bringing her back to life once again.
Unlike the last time, Sweeney is in no position to return the coin to Laura. In fact, there is no body to return the coin to. While Laura's attempt to resurrect Sweeney seemed like a solid plan given the abilities of the coin, it backfired for both of them this episode.
Based on the Neil Gaiman novel of the same name, American Gods stars Ricky Whittle, Emily Browning, Pablo Schreiber, Crispin Glover, Bruce Langley, Yetide Badaki, Ian McShane, Kahyun Kim, Demore Barnes and Chris Obi. The series airs Sundays at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT on Starz.