AHS: Double Feature Episode 5 Confirms What Fans Suspected All Along About Doris
Contains spoilers for Episode 5 of "American Horror Story: Double Feature — Red Tide"
Alas, poor Doris. We knew her, fans of "American Horror Story: Double Feature," as a woman of infinite worry, worry for her unborn child, worry about the monsters outside her door in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and worry about her husband Harry (Finn Wittrock) and daughter Alma (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) and their new habit of drinking blood.
Okay, in retrospect, most of that is pretty worrisome, especially as the due date for the baby approaches. In the fifth episode of "Double Feature," titled "Gaslighting," baby Eli finally arrives into his twisted family. Father and sister are both taking the drug known as "The Muse," which gives them their vampiric cravings but also makes them incredibly prolific in their chosen creative fields: screenwriting for Harry and music performance for Alma. They're the lucky ones; people without talent who take the Muse are eventually turned into pale, semi-feral monsters, the same ones who threatened Doris (Lily Rabe) when they arrived in Provincetown.
Doris, as the episode shows us, is one of these people. Giving birth to her new son, whose newborn blood is especially potent for those on the Muse, is the final act of creation her family needs from Doris. Alma convinces her mother to take the pill, with disastrous results for Doris, ones that were surprising perhaps only in how quickly they were visited upon her. As u/abbieshark put it on Reddit, "Omg that was a fast transformation Doris must have had negative talent."
Why Doris' transformation was unsurprising
Of course, the show has done little to suggest that taking "The Muse" would have been a good idea for Doris. Say what you will about precocious yet evil children, like Alma, but they tend to be a good judge of character, and all throughout the "Red Tide" portion of this "AHS" season, she's been telling her father that their Muse-augmented talent means they've left her mother far behind and should find a way to leave her or send her away in order to keep her from holding them back.
Alma suddenly changes her tune in this episode, trying to convince both Harry and her mother that Doris should take the pill (Harry maybe would have noticed this red flag if he wasn't battling his own cravings) In the end, her encouragement for her mother is all part of the plan to gaslight her mother. Alma says Ursula encouraged her to get Doris to take the pill, and that she believes transforming Doris was the right thing for them all.
Now that Doris has been transformed into one of the Pale People, she and Harry are finally freed from the anchor of mediocrity weighing them down. What this means for the pair and baby Eli going into the last episode of this half of "Double Feature," fans will have to tune in September 22 to find out.