We Finally Know Where The Black Pills Came From In AHS: Double Feature
As "American Horror Story: Double Feature" inches closer to its second half, more details are surfacing about the pale, bloodthirsty residents of Provincetown. That includes the secrets surrounding the mysterious black pills known as "The Muse" that are handed out like candy to any oceanside dwellers who are willing to risk their lives for a chance at success.
Until the season's fourth episode, titled "Blood Buffet," the only thing known about the pills was that they either enhanced talent in those naturally gifted or caused people who falsely believed in themselves to become vampiric nobodies. The success stories of people like Belle Noir (Frances Conroy) and Austin Sommers (Evan Peters) prove that the pills work, albeit with a bloody price tag. The failed users, however, suffer a much darker fate.
The most recent episode of "Double Feature" shows the progression of what happens when someone who isn't talented enough takes one of the pills, and it isn't pretty. It also explains more about The Chemist (Angelica Ross), how she began making these oft-deadly pills, and where they even come from.
The Chemist's origin story revealed
After taking Mickey (Macaulay Culkin) back to her new suburban digs, The Chemist declines his seasonal offer in favor of talking. She asks about his dreams, and he mentions that he's a writer but "doesn't know" for sure if he's any good. This proves to be the perfect answer and The Chemist shares why that is.
It's revealed that The Chemist is a biochemical engineer who has been working with the U.S. military for nine years to "[try] to understand and unlock the creative parts of the brain." Mickey dubiously questions this, asking why they'd even want "creative soldiers" in the first place. The Chemist responds that their goal is to create soldiers who cannot think for themselves, but part of the process involves researching what drives creativity in the brain.
The Chemist's research has led her to believe the occipital lobe is the source of a person's creative drive. According to Simply Psychology, this is the lobe that "receives sensory information from the retinas of the eyes, of which, is then encoded into different visual data, such as color, orientation, and motion." The real-life side effects of occipital lobe damage don't include aggression and a craving for blood, though, so it's difficult to know whether any of the science in "Double Feature" is 100% accurate or not.
For the time being, the ingredients of the black pills are still unknown, but "Blood Buffet" did reveal that they began as part of a secretive military operation to suppress free thinking in soldiers and spiraled into something else. Now, fans just have to wait and see where "American Horror Story: Double Feature" goes from here.