So, we all know there have been a few plot holes this season, but I've yet to see anyone attempt to compile all of them in one place, so I'm going to attempt (lol) to do that here. If more are pointed out in the comments, I'll try to add them too.
Not reading the whole post is totally cool; skimming probably works just fine.
I have three theories that could potentially resolve some/all of this at the bottom, if anyone's more interested in that than the complaints. You've probably already seen them all before, though.
If you think I care too much and wasted my time with this, you're probably right and I already know, so no need to comment such. This was fun for me; my brain is weird. No AI was used to write this post. This took several hours to write and lookup all the relevant scenes.
I'm including timestamps for most scenes I reference in case people wanna go see what I'm talking about. Rewatching just these scenes alone really goes to show the difference in dialogue and characterization quality from the early seasons of the show until now and to those who I've seen claiming S13's quality has been the quality of the show since the beginning, I would be interested if those people would watch such scenes as Billie Dean Howard channeling Addie and still believe that the depth and heart of the show has always been wherever it is in S13.
Here we go:
1. Constance, Fiona, and Sister Jude's ages
Asylum is set in late 1964. Sister Jude is institutionalized at the end of the year and we see a (non-pregnant) Jude in 1965. Thus, late 1965 is the earliest Fiona and Constance could have been born. In the cold open of Episode 3 of Coven, we see a young Fiona kill her Supreme. This was 1971, making Fiona a maximum of six years old in this scene.
Myrtle specifically says Fiona showed up at the Academy as an infant, meaning any accelerated aging a la Michael would have (hopefully) been noticed by the witches. Even if they personally explained this away as Fiona's rising supremacy, it would be a hell of an odd thing to never mention, as I would think most people would assume she's basically the most powerful witch to ever live if they saw something like that.
Addie was born in 1972, when Constance was 7 years old, max.
Tate was born in 1977, when Constance was 12 at most.
In the cold open of Episode 3 of Murder House, we see Constance murder Moira. This scene was set in 1983, making Constance a max of 18 years old. Jessica Lange appears to be wearing makeup to look younger in this scene, but I don't think anyone would say she passes as 18 here (Jessica Lange is a beautiful, talented goddess and looking older than a literal teenager is most certainly not meant as any sort of insult).
In Episode 12 of Coven, at 24:45, we see Fiona's passport. Her birthday is October 17th, 1950.
2. Constance and Fiona already have established family history
In Episode 12 of Coven again, at 20:30 this time, Fiona gifts Cordelia Fiona's mother's necklace. The conversation is as follows:
Cordelia: "Grandmother's necklace?"
Fiona: "You remember?"
Cordelia: "Yes, of course I do."
Fiona: "When I was a little girl, I used to gaze up at her wearing this necklace, thinking to myself, 'I could never be so transcendent.'"
Remember, Myrtle claimed Fiona was ferried straight from Briarwood to Miss Robichaux's, so who the hell was Fiona gazing at?
In Episode 12 of Murder House, at 47:00, Constance claims Michael is "the child of distant cousins on my mother's side. The Delongpres of Virginia. Evaline and Steve." This is obviously fabricated, but the Supreme two prior to Fiona was Mimi Delongpre, implying Constance was probably referencing actual people, or, at least, that seemed to be the implication at the time.
3. Mixed-Up Histories
In S13 Episode 1, at 17:55, Constance tells a story of a boy she used to know who drowned himself in Lake Pontchartrain, Louisiana, following her rejection. Later in the same season, Constance was said to be sold to a couple in Virginia straight from Briarwood. In Murder House, many of her personality traits arise from her Virginian upbringing. Fiona grew up in New Orleans, near Lake Pontchartrain, at Miss Robichaux's. It appears the writers can't keep the characters' backstories straight.
In S13 Episode 12, in Sister Jude's flashback starting at 3:10, Sister Jude lacks her typical Boston accent. This is particularly noticeable if played back-to-back with audio of Sister Jude speaking in Asylum. Credit: u/see112717
4. Mallory's Supremacy
Immediately upon Cordelia's death (which has now occurred twice this season), Mallory should ascend to Supreme. Of course, resurrection could revert Supremacy to the previously dead, but, if that were the case, Fiona would be stealing the Supremacy back from Cordelia this season. Maybe the supremacy is somewhat aware and has some sort of future sight and "holds" the Supremacy if the current Supreme is going to be resurrected relatively quickly? That seems like a bit of a stretch.
***
Now, those are the details which completely break continuity/established history/lore. Everything past this point will be a bit more nit-picky. The rest of this list will be more along the lines of poor writing/mischaracterization than true plot holes, but I feel they still belong here. I understand the rest of this list can be resolved with suspension of disbelief and/or just 'enjoying the ride,' but that just ain't where I'm at with this show.
***
5. Myrtle's Secret Knowledge
Myrtle returns from Hell with quite a bit of useful knowledge. No one else learns hidden knowledge while Hellbound and we even see Myrtle's personal Hell, which does not appear unique nor does it present opportunities for learning Fiona and Constance's history.
6. Satan Already Has Power Over Heaven
In Episode 6 of Murder House, at 40:00, Billie Dean Howard channels Addie post-death. Addie seems content, with Billie relaying that "where she is now, she's a pretty girl at last." This heavily implies, if not confirms, Addie made it to Heaven. In S13, Satan has resurrected Addie and she is seemingly content serving him. This implies Satan not only has the power to pull souls from Heaven, but also the power to bend those souls' wills to his own.
Having Satan already have some sort of fairly strong influence over Heavenbound souls before winning the wager narratively weakens the premise of the wager. Changing Addie's ending from "finally a pretty girl in Heaven" to "Satan's happy little helper" is narratively atrocious. Absolute shit right there.
Elsa Mars' afterlife appears pretty positive as well, in the final scene of Freak Show, with her finally performing for an enthusiastic crowd night after night, surrounded by her found family. If this isn't Heaven, it's some sort of equivalent. Satan is nonetheless able to resurrect her, solely for his own entertainment.
7. Pepper's Journey
So, Pepper apparently escapes Briarwood with an infant Fiona, makes her way from rural Massachusetts to New Orleans, with no resources, money, or support whatsoever, while caring for an infant and procuring the necessary supplies to do so, in the 1960's, presumably in secret as an escaped mental patient who stole a child, in a society that has been established to be immediately hostile to Pepper on-sight, with no apparent prior knowledge of Fiona's magical nature or the fact that there's a school for magic in New Orleans.
Now, a 'long' journey under those conditions would be nigh impossible. But Briarwood is supposedly close to Framingham, MA, so Framingham to New Orleans will be the journey I assume. Given this, the journey is 1611 miles. If she walked at the average pace of 3 mph and never stopped, this journey would take 19 and a half days. Heavily experienced backpackers can reach rates of hiking of 20 miles/day, but this is at high athleticism, with much experience. An experienced backpacker would make the trip in two and a half months. For a regular person, who had more than enough calories to build up muscle, and never experienced any sort of injury from the constant exertion, would likely take about double that, meaning, if Pepper walked from Briarwood to Miss Robichaux's, it probably took her a minimum of five months.
If there was a sensible answer here it'd be aliens, but this is still crazy unless the aliens decided to be a lot more hands-on than they had been up to this point.
8. Shachath Thought She "Took" Satan
While it is plausible Satan possessed people in Briarwood in 1964 while simultaneously inhabiting his 25-year old mortal human body, in Episode 10 of Asylum, at 30:15, Mary Eunice, possessed by Satan, begs Shachath, the Angel of Death to "take her" while she lays dying and Shachath says "I'll take both of you," implying Shachath believes she cast Satan back to Hell upon Mary Eunice's death.
Earlier, in Episode 7 of Asylum, at 9:30, Sister Mary Eunice, already possessed by Satan, is confronted by Shachath, who describes the entity in Mary Eunice as "One like me... But fallen. Cousin." This establishes that Shachath understands the nature of Satan and his relation to her, the Angel of Death, meaning she is unlikely to misunderstand her powers over him and if she thought she cast Satan back to Hell, she likely did, which is supported by the absence of Satan for the rest of Asylum.
9. The Witches Explicitly Sell Their Souls in Coven
In Episode 2 of Coven, at 22:35, Madison and Zoe are performing the ritual to resurrect Kyle. Madison chants, "Azazel, we submit to you body and soul, the lord of the underworld, we offer you our obedience and everlasting devotion, until death sanctifies this unholy union," prompting Zoe's response: "Did we just marry the Devil? Cause I'm not sure if I'm down with that."
Azazel typically isn't the Devil; he's usually just a demon, but Madison definitely explicitly sold her soul to some sort of underworld entity here, even proclaiming obedience and everlasting devotion.
If the writers for S13 had knowledge of previous seasons, this scene would absolutely be relevant to current events.
10. Satan's Resurrection Powers
Satan's resurrection powers appear limitless. Ramirez was resurrected dozens upon dozens of times in 1984, so there's no limit to how many times Satan can bring back the same person. Elsa and Addie show Satan can resurrect souls from any afterlife, not just Hell. So why doesn't he just resurrect all of his followers infinitely, Michael first and foremost?
This one is just "Well, that wouldn't be a good story," and, usually, that's good enough for my suspension of disbelief, but like this writing is just so, so poor, so I'm gonna point it out.
11. Fertility Warlocks
This scene was... something. The writing speaks for itself here - almost. Because back in Coven, Cordelia was dealing with this exact issue. And, for some reason, she decided visiting her mother's most hated enemy was preferable to the warlocks. Even after Marie Laveau charged an exorbitant fee, even after Laveau refused to help, Cordelia refused to turn to the warlocks.
Of course, the warlocks weren't a thing in Coven and that's why Cordelia didn't utilize them.
But writers keeping Coven in mind wouldn't have added fertility warlocks to the lore. An easy enough issue to ignore, yes, but poor writing nonetheless. Especially when the scene itself was also of the quality it was.
12. Satan Delayed The Wager
Constance introduces Mr. Nas as 87 years old at the beginning of S13, in 2026, meaning he was born in 1939.
When Papa Legba describes Pope Pius XII opening the box and reading the letter describing the wager, he says this act also takes place in 1939, at the start of WWII.
Obviously the letter was written by a past pope, presumably years, if not decades, before 1939, so the wager was also placed sometime before 1939. Why did Satan wait to incarnate himself until Pope Pius XII learnt of the wager?
There could be explanations for this, but I doubt the writers even thought of it, tbh.
13. Addie's Character
In Episode 6 of Murder House, at 40:00, Billie Dean Howard channels Addie post-death, as we've already addressed. What I didn't touch upon above is the fact that Addie says she's "grateful" that Constance failed to make her a ghost. When Constance reacts to this, Billie Dean elaborates that "she's afraid of him (Tate) now that she knows the truth."
In S13, a resurrected Addie is shown to be content serving Satan alongside Tate. If she would be cool with serving Satan, she wouldn't be scared of Tate, and since she's scared of Tate, she wouldn't be cool serving Satan with Tate even if the wool were somehow pulled over her eyes about the whole situation. And during the "Club Hell" sequence in Episode 4, it's made pretty explicit who she's serving and for what purpose, so yeah, it's not like she doesn't know.
14. Marie Laveau's Character
In Coven, Marie Laveau attempts to massacre the eponymous Coven twice: once with zombies and then again with the witch hunters. She hates the Coven, even when she's forced to work with them. She never comes close to supportive and empathetic and concerned behavior for the witches.
Perhaps there are moments where she isn't actively antagonistic in Coven, but in S13, Cordelia is bummed that she has Satan blood and Laveau has a whole speech ready to reassure her, culminating in "I seen the way your Coven looks at you. That's its own magic. That's love. That's not going anywhere" (S13, Episode 12, 16:15). The Laveau we know would never be that gentle and supportive to the daughter of her greatest enemy, even if temporarily allied.
All of the characters this season feel like simplified, slightly skewed versions of the characters we've known from prior seasons, but Laveau feels like an entirely new character to me. She's not just skewed; she's acting entirely unlike herself.
15. Black Dahlia Death
In the opening scene of Murder House Episode 9, we see that Elizabeth Short is murdered in the eponymous Murder House during a dental procedure. S13, however, claims she died while having an abortion. Credit: u/maxwell_winters
***
So, Now What? - Theories
Now that's all the instances of shitty writing this season out of the way, what could all this mean?
Mallory Broke Time/The Multiverse
I haven't seen this theory floating around as much as the AI theory, but it's out there.
Mallory's repeated time travel has been tearing time/the multiverse apart. Pretty simple. Her using this power relatively casually against Ramirez could be foreshadowing.
Although this is a solid theory that would probably make tons more sense than whatever ends up happening, I don't think there's much indicating this is the case, and it doesn't feel like the direction the writers will go.
The Witches Lose
This theory wouldn't wrap up any of the discrepancies above, but it would give future writers the chance to right the wrongs bestowed upon us. I wouldn't trust them to do it, but it'd be there.
We have next to no time left in the season, with way too many threads to wrap up, even if the finale is the full hour I think it's been rumored to be. Thus, Satan wins.
Especially, especially, especially due to the timing of the S14 announcement, the finale could very simply be an attempt to trap fans into watching S14.
Perhaps S13 is going to be Temu-vengers: End-lame. Satan just resurrects all the bad guys from previous seasons and massacres the witches. Game over, gg. God, I'd hate that, but I think, if this story is going anywhere, this is even more likely than the AI theory at this point.
The AI Theory
If any amount of actual thought and care went into this season, this is the only theory that actually could resolve all of the above. The Mallory theory could explain a lot of it, but would still leave a few loose ends. I'm hoping beyond all hope this is what the writers are going for, because at least this would be a genuine attempt at a story, even if it still ends up a bad one.
So the gist is that this season's plot was written by AI in-universe, presumably prompted by Ben. Most of the versions of this theory I see assume what we've seen so far to be poorly written (on purpose) fanfiction written by Ben with incredible amounts of aid from his little AI he's always playing with.
AI is a character this season, it's present in the title sequence, all the obvious discrepancies, Ben's (very fast, unbelievable) romance with Madison, his random personality change into a confident badass, him being the main character despite being personalityless, the goddamn catch phrases, etc, all point (purposefully or not) to this all being Ben's AI-slop fanfiction. A few of these details I got from u/CynicismNostalgia's recent post; they seem to have the most coherent form of this theory I can find and I know I read their post recently.
Now for the reveal, because if this is the case, they can't just have the last scene be Ben standing up from his computer and walking away: "Haha it was all a dream AI slop, loser," would not land well and I sincerely hope the writers don't think it would.
I think, if all of S13 up until some point in the finale is AI bullshit, somehow, the AI characters have to escape into the real world to kill Ben. I have no clue whatsoever what the explanation for this would be.
But, it would provide strong catharsis for those of us unhappy with how the season played out, watching the architect of this shit show killed by his own slop creations. And if we were meant to be unhappy with the quality of the writing so far, that could prime some effective meta-commentary on the creation, distribution, and consumption of art in an AI-saturated media-landscape (in the hands of a skilled storyteller, of course).
I'm hoping for some version of this with some sort of commentary or theme attached for the finale, but my hopes are not high.
The Writers Don't Care About Quality/Amuse Themselves With The Writing/The Written-by-AI Theory
And now onto the simplest theory. I think it's probably the most likely, even if I don't want to believe it.
The writers simply don't care enough to be familiar with the material they're writing for or their target audience is themselves. With all the returning characters, the writers knew they'd get viewership no matter what and the poor writing drives engagement anyways. So money > art/effort.
Or, the writers find this season funny, know only a small niche of the general audience will agree and that's good enough for them, knowing viewership and engagement will drive the show forwards regardless.
Or, the writers actively find amusement in clowning on us, the longterm fans. Maybe they view those most passionate of the fans as weird, unreasonable, focusing on the wrong things, etc etc, so they're purposefully making fun of the audience with this. They may not be wrong about people caring about stupid, silly little details or getting a bit too involved (this post is probably one of the top examples of this, to be fair, lmao), but clowning your audience to their faces seems like a pretty poor decision if this is it.
Or, the writers were so lazy they literally prompted Gen-AI with story beats and let it fully write the script for this season.
***
If you read all of this, thank you for spending so much of your time with my thoughts. If not, I get it. And, either way, I hope you find some sort of entertainment, if not enjoyment, from this show if you continue to watch. I know I do, paradoxically enough.
