Spoilers for American Horror Story: Hotel’s “Room 33” are below. Stay away from the peephole.
We already know that American Horror Story: Hotel has some maniacal shit happening behind the door of Room 64, and tonight’s episode introduced us to what’s hiding inside of Room 33. And if we’re being quite honest, I’m still not quite sure what it is, besides one ugly sumbitch named Bartholomew.
The episode started out right outside of Murder House’s central establishment, as the 1926 version of the Countess was making a pit stop to see Charles Montgomery for an abortion. She said she was only three weeks pregnant, and I couldn’t tell if she was being sheepish about her large belly, or if whatever was growing inside of her was actually only three weeks old. In any case, it was clearly too overgrown to kill off with the Doc’s tools – and it killed a nurse, which upset exactly no one – but something must have happened to it, as it hasn’t managed to grow bigger than a newborn in the past 89 years. Unfortunately, none of this involved the Infantata as we’d hoped, and Lily Rabe’s Nora was also sadly absent. But the name Bartholomew is old-timey like Thaddeus is, so I took that as a spiritual connection.
For most of the episode, the little bugger was kept hidden, first serving as the target of Ramona’s vengeful (and unsuccessful) mission. Liz and Alex were searching for it, but it ended up taking a sweet trip outside the Hotel Cortez via John’s suitcase, as the former detective was regaining his sanity. While at John’s house, Bartholomew caused something of an uproar as John scared the shit out of his daughter and possibly lost all parental rights by shooting the monster inside of his kitchen. But Alex apparently found the injured beast and brought him back to his home, possibly earning herself a major favor from Countess in the future.
And without further ado, here’s the noseless abomination.
It was a good reveal, and made me curse in surprise at my television, but I’m not sure what this will actually mean for the narrative. Not that American Horror Story is unfamiliar with introducing frivolous and random characters just for the hell of it, but it seems like Countess’ son should amount to something huge here. I just can’t imagine anything huge that a dog-sized gap-faced immortal is going to accomplish in the rest of this season. (It’s like I’m challenging Bartholomew to come into my house and kill me.) All I can see is someone killing it – which would be a vague retread of tonight’s events – and then Countess goes completely gaga (yep) and either destroys everything around her or destroys herself. Honestly, I wouldn’t mind seeing both of those things happen.
