Connected universes are all the rage these days, and the latest example of this comes from the wild and wacky world of Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk’s American Horror Story: Freak Show. It’s no surprise that the anthology series uses the same central cast from season to season, but they’re bringing back another major player in an awesome way. Lily Rabe will join the series later this season, reprising her role of Sister Mary Eunice, the whip-friendly nun she played in American Horror Story: Asylum. Worlds are colliding, and it’s the best!
Frequent American Horror Story viewers know that Pepper, the pinhead character played by Naomi Grossman, was the first character to cross between these fictional universes, and she’ll be the catalyst for Rabe’s return, according to EW. Sister Mary Eunice will make her way to Elsa Mars’ freak show, which will somehow lead to Pepper’s removal from the carnival and her entry into the Briarcliff asylum that served as the second season’s central hub. That’s so crazy!
If we’re taking these timelines as legit, Asylum takes place twelve years after Freak Show will end, which means Sister Mary Eunice must have started working at Briarcliff right out of high school. When that season started, Mary Eunice was still just a young and naïve nun among the underlings of the strict Sister Jude (Jessica Lange), though she soon became one of my favorite characters on TV once she was possessed by a devilish spirit. Rabe absolutely nailed the impishly evil role throughout that season, at least until she met her untimely fate. It’s rather disappointing that we won’t get to see her in the same iniquitous form, but Rabe is always welcome on my TV no matter who she’s playing. Especially if tools for sadism are hanging around somewhere.
Like Lange and Evan Peters, Rabe will have starred in all four seasons of American Horror Story by the time this one is done. In the first season, she played Nora Montgomery, wife to the Murder House’s original owner and mother of the Infantata. For Coven, she played the free-spirited Misty Day, a modern-day witch obsessed with Stevie Nicks and Fleetwood Mac songs. All I want now is for Nicks to rejoin the show as the wife of James Cromwell’s Nazi mad scientist. Then, and only then, would my life be complete.
Lily Rabe isn’t the only new casting the darkly comedic horror series announced today, as Neil Patrick Harris and hubby David Burtka are also joining the show later this year. Rabe will be filming her spot this weekend, and American Horror Story: Freak Show fans can anticipate her arrival during Episode 10, while Harris will show up in Episode 11. Hallelujah!
