American Horror Story: 1984 Reveals the Truth About Camp Redwood in "Red Dawn"

Surviving until sunrise is a common horror movie trope and, for the terrorized and terrorizing camp counselors of American Horror Story: 1984's Camp Redwood making it to sunrise seemed to be the golden ticket to making it out of the whole nightmare alive. Tonight's episode, however, saw dawn arrive at the summer camp and revealed the truth about Camp Redwood and those unfortunate enough to be there for the summer.

Spoilers for tonight's episode of American Horror Story: 1984, "Red Dawn", below.

There is a lot to unpack about tonight's episode. It was filled with death, reveals, and some surprising turns for almost all of the characters on the series, but almost all of it begins to come together when Brooke spots Ray outside of one of the cabins. Brooke goes out to find him and is relieved to see that he's okay and is hopeful that he managed to get to the call box and call for help. However, as fans will remember, we saw Ray beheaded at the end of the third episode. This marks the second dead person to resurrect at Camp Redwood (unless you count Richard Ramirez, though Satan brought him back). The first is Jonas, the counselor from the original Camp Redwood slayings.

Now, when Jonas first came back from the dead, fans assumed a lot of things. Popular theories were that the camp was a simulation, that it's a hell mouth like the Murder House from the original season, and several others and it seems like the Murder House hell mouth theory might be the closest one to reality. Once dawn arrives, we're left with Ray, Chet, and Xavier all dead and Montana also ends up dead -- at Brooke's hand. After an epic fight, Brooke ends up murdering Montana in self-defense right in front of a bus load of school children. All of the murders are pinned on Brooke and she's arrested for them. But Ray comes up to the paramedics and just wants to leave and he's put in an ambulance to be rushed to the hospital. Except...when the ambulance crosses the entrance to Camp Redwood? He gets dropped back out on the road again. Montana, who is now back and "alive", later announces that they're in purgatory.

So, it would seem that Camp Redwood is at a minimum an actual purgatory or, and this is potentially more likely, just like Murder House, where the ghosts of the dead are trapped for every. The Murder House similarities may not stop with the dead not being able to leave and move on, either. We don't ever really see Brooke leave Camp Redwood, but we can assume she was taken away by the police. However, during the night before discovering Ray's head in a fridge, Brooke and Ray had sex. It wouldn't be too big of a leap to think that Brooke could end up pregnant from the encounter -- something mirroring the way Vivien Harmon ended up pregnant by Tate Langdon in Murder House. Given Ramirez's obsession with Satan, it seems like a distinctive possibility.

American Horror Story: 1984 airs Wednesdays at 10/9c on FX.