'American Horror Story: 1984' episode 4 reveals Margaret and Jingles' backstory explaining the first round of murders at Camp Redwood
This article contains spoilers for season 9 episode 4.
Fans' second-biggest guess about this season of 'American Horror Story' aka '1984' came true on this week's episode (four), 'True Killers'. The first one was obviously about why Montana and Richard teamed up to target Brooke. And now, the show finally revealed the whole Margaret and Mr. Jingles' backstory, proving correct fan theories suggesting Margaret was the killer the first time around, and that she had just framed Mr Jingles for the murders 14 years ago.
When Jingles finally gets to Margaret in tonight's episode, she asks him lovingly, "Benji, why did you come back?" When Jingles aka Benjamin Richter answers that he came back to finish what he had started, Margaret finally spills it all. Turns out, Margaret being the geeky, rule-adhering kid that she was, got picked on plenty during her time at Camp Redwood. Jingles, who worked as a camp caretaker back in the day, was the only person nice to her, gifting her with wood carvings, thereby also exposing their bond to others who only made fun of them further.
One night, Margaret finally snapped, she put on Jingles' black trenchcoat and used his knife to kill all the other campers. She chopped off their ears and strung them together in the form of a necklace, which she then craftily placed in a box Jingles owned, leading everybody to deduce that he was the camp killer on the loose. Margaret used Jingles' service in Vietnam as a reason to pin it all on him, citing that he killed plenty of people in Vietnam, which could have been a reason behind him resorting to murdering once again.
When the authorities took him in and admitted him to the asylum, they made him undergo electroshock therapy to alter his memories from Vietnam and convince him that he was the one who had murdered the campers too. In the present time, Margaret tells Jingles that she did what she did because he failed to act upon his promises of protecting her, but he eventually lived up to his promise by taking the fall for her. And this is exactly what fans had predicted when the teasers and trailers were released ahead of this season when we were told that Margaret is a camper from the first round of massacre on Camp Redwood.
In the aftermath of coming clean to Jingles, Margaret then tells him that she is going to repeat history and kill once again, but that will be after she manages to take out Jingles. She plans on telling people that she acted in self-defense, and then kill all of them, only to frame the already murdered Jingles in the end of her elaborate payback plan.
'American Horror Story: 1984' airs on Wednesdays at 9 pm only on FX.