'American Horror Story: 1984' Season 9 Episode 7: The real tragedy of Camp Redwood is Lily Rabe's character and Jingles' mommy issues
This article contains spoilers for Season 9 Episode 7
Lily Rabe is back in 'American Horror Story' for episode seven of the ongoing season nine of '1984' and we couldn't be more thrilled.
For a season that got off to a rocky start with fans complaining about the absence of AHS OGs in the cast members this time, Ryan Murphy's anthology horror has been really picking up from the previous and sixth episode of '1984'.
With the most recently aired seventh one titled 'The Lady in White', Rabe made her '1984' debut as the eponymous character explaining just how horribly wrong and messed up a past Camp Redwood has always had.
And of course, at the initiation of it all was the Lady in White herself, who turned out to be none other than Jingles' own mother, played by Rabe.
Tonight's episode saw Jingles going back to the Camp to seek vengeance from Ramirez, but unknown to him, there's a whole army of dead people residing in the purgatorial grounds of the camp premises.
The group of undead ambush him and tie him up before they proceed to engage in a casual chat about what life after death is like. Montana does the most Montana thing ever and explains that there's a "constant feeling of emptiness and longing," that stings in life after death.
However, she quickly also clarifies that its no big deal because she felt that even when she was alive.
But once they are done discussing the painful and pleasurable parts of what life after death contains, the group tells Jingles (Benjamin Richter) about a weird Lady in White who has been lingering on the grounds.
Surprisingly, Jingles knows this woman too well — she happens to be his mother! This takes us back to the camp's deadly past, as Jingles tells us about the hateful woman who unleashed the first-ever round of slasher horror on the camp back in the 40s, after her son — Jingles' younger brother — died in a boat accident.
When Jingles seeks out his mother's spirit, Rabe appears in her majestic, creepy, raging, terrifying glory as the pale lady in white, with bloodlust and the thirst for vengeance fresh in her eyes.
Jingles' mother accuses him of letting his brother die — clearly he was the favorite child, and true enough, after his death, the mother pretty much lost all emotions and sense of empathy other than rage.
The accident was quite tragic too, as Jingles' brother Bobby had just gone for a swim — much against his brother and mother's warnings.
As he spent time underwater, a motorboat sailed right in his direction, the boat's motor slashing through his body as the lake flooded with blood and the mother — hysterical and screaming — accused everyone including the lifeguard and camp counselors for the accident.
This sparked off the hatred that led to the massacres, the first one of them carried out by the mother herself.
In the middle of the night, she goes on a killing spree, murdering all the lifeguards and camp counselors, before she chased Jingles down and he, in an act of self-defense, was able to stab her and kill her instead.
In the present, Jingles' mother is still filled with just as much hate and spite as she was when she died. She still holds Jingles responsible for the death of Bobby that happened when both were little kids.
She curses Jingles to the same life of damnation and comes clean about poisoning Margaret's ears during her time in the camp, which had led to the murder spree at the camp for which Jingles was accused.
Jingles' mother calls him a parasite that just leeched out all the joy and happiness from her life and further condemns him to a life of pain and torture, coming clean that it has always been her spiting people's ears and instigating them the wrong way to worsen things for Jingles.
It's one thing to know that your dead mother hated your guts with a burning passion, but to know that she has been around aligning every tragedy in your life just because even in death she can't let go of that venom, has to be a different kind of tragedy.
Yet somehow Jingles is more normal than the rest of the "innocents". 'American Horror Story: 1984' airs on Wednesdays at 10 pm only on FX.