‘American Horror Story: Apocalypse’: Michael Makes His Move in “Fire and Reign” Preview

Last week’s American Horror Story: Apocalypse saw Michael lose all of his allies at the hands of Cordelia Goode only to find a brand new source of backup. Now, the preview for the season’s penultimate episode, “Fire and Reign”, hints that the Antichrist will make his big play towards the end of the world.

In the preview Michael (Cody Fern) is prepared to bring it all crashing down as he makes a huge move against the witches — as well as introduces the final elements fans have had questions about this season, such as The Cooperative and Outpost 3. You can check out the preview in the video above.

It’s worth noting that other than a few particularly ominous moments, most of the preview features clips of scenes we’ve already seen this episode. Given how secretive FX has been about Apocalypse this season, that makes sense. It also makes sense, timeline-wise, as it is very possible that this week’s episode will finally catch the show back up to the “present” — or rather, the moment post-apocalypse where the Coven witches rolled up to declare things coming down to witches and warlocks.

And according to Fern, that showdown will be a “battle royale”, with the possibility that Michael isn’t evil at all.

“We’ve seen Langdon in Outpost 3 [at the beginning of the season] so we can let go of that hope!” Fern said about his character bringing about the apocalypse. “But again, I don’t think Langdon is evil. One thing to think about is that after the eighth episode, we know that he gets to Outpost 3 and we know that Cordelia has arrived at that time and Michael has appeared to stop them. We’re hanging on that moment and seeing how we get there. The last episode illustrated how this isn’t about the apocalypse for Michael Langdon. He wasn’t born with this idea that he has to end the world. He was born with a compulsion and now that compulsion has become personal. That is what we will explore next. And I can tease that there’s going to be a battle royale. You can’t build this many episodes to have it all end happily ever after! There’s going to be a battle and it’s going to be surprising. It’ snot going to go the way we all think it’s going to go — it’s a Ryan Murphy battle royale.”

American Horror Story: Apocalypse airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. ET on FX.