American Horror Story: Roanoke 6×03 – Chapter 3 – Recap

What do lost colonies and psychics have in common? Find out by reading our recap of American Horror Story: Roanoke 6×03, “Chapter 3.”

American Horror Story: Roanoke 6×03 starts where we left off, with Lee, Shelby, and Matt looking for Flora, who disappeared after a drunk Lee brought her back to the farmhouse. Unfortunately, 36 hours have passed since Flora was reported missing. A group of volunteers starts looking for the child in the forest. On camera, Matt and Shelby explain how stressful it was being alone in the middle of an unknown and scary place like that.

In the meantime, Lee finds something scary: The head and legs of a pig forming the shape of a human body, wearing a shirt that belongs to Flora. Close by, the searchers find an abandoned farm, with more pigs’ remains scattered around. Some of the remains form creepy dolls, with actual dolls’ heads. It’s what the searchers find in the adjacent barn that leaves them speechless, though – two kids, sucking milk from a pig. The farm belonged to the Polk family, who seem to have abandoned it in a rush, leaving behind the two kids, who were treated like animals. The police assume the Polk family has taken Flora with them. When a social worker tries to talk to the two kids, they appear to know how to say just one word: Croatoan.

The search for Flora continues with no results. Back at the farmhouse, Lee’s ex-husband Mason accuses Lee of hiding Flora somewhere and staging the kidnapping to keep her away from him.

In the middle of the night, Matt receives a call from the cops saying they have found a body. None of them are prepared for the scene before their eyes: a carbonized body, tied to a wooden wheel. From a piece of clothing – a button – Lee understands that it’s not Flora, it’s Mason.

In the morning, Matt and Shelby take a look at the security cameras’ recordings of the previous night. They see Lee leaving the house after Mason then coming back hours later, alone. Shelby is sure Lee killed Mason so he couldn’t go to the police to report her. Lee hears Shelby speculating, but a fight is interrupted by a strange looking man named Cricket Marlowe (Leslie Jordan) entering the house, saying he’s there to help find Flora. He claims to be a psychic who works a lot with the FBI, helping them find missing kids. Lee, Matt, and Shelby accept his help. And true to his word, he almost immediately finds the wardrobe where Flora was hiding when she was at home with Lee a few days before. Inside the wardrobe, they find a bonnet. Remember how Flora told her mother of her friend Priscilla, who promised her a bonnet? Cricket tells the family that Flora is not dead, and that she is with Priscilla. The psychic describes Priscilla as a child fond of dolls who died in the late 1500s.

The psychic’s next move involves communication with the spirit world inside the farmhouse. He invokes Priscilla, but another spirit answers the call – a woman (with Kathy Bates‘ voice) named The Butcher, who says all those who try to invade her land do her harm. The Butcher then appears to our terrified friends, claiming she doesn’t have Flora or Flora would have been dead by now. She says Priscilla has hidden Flora away from the land of her possession, a land she will never leave because she has to protect it from invaders. At that point, Cricket screams the word Croatoan, and The Butcher disappears.

The psychic claims he can take Lee to Flora, who was indeed taken by a spirit… for $25,000. At this point in American Horror Story: Roanoke 6×03, Matt snaps, accuses Cricket of being a fraud, and sends him away. But Cricket says he’ll be back upon their invitation. Before leaving, he whispers something in Lee’s ear.

Indeed, the next day, Lee goes to see him. What did Cricket whisper to her? Something about Lee’s first daughter, who we didn’t know about until now. Cricket tells her that Emily says hello and wonders why her mother stopped looking for her years before.

In the documentary, Lee admits she had daughter – Emily – at 17. When Emily was 4, she went missing. Lee had left her alone in her car just a few minutes to run an errand.

As American Horror Story: Roanoke 6×03 continues, Lee goes back to Cricket with the money he asked. The psychic tells her that to find Flora, they need to know everything about their enemy: The Butcher. He knows that her name was Thomasin White, and that her husband John was the governor of the colony of Roanoke. While John left for a trip to England, he put Thomasin in charge of the colony, which is known as the Lost Colony because 116 settlers disappeared without a trace. Lee tells Cricket she knows the story, and that Roanoke is not near where they live, so why should it have to do with Flora’s disappearance? But Cricket tells her that although she thinks she knows the story of the Lost Colony, that’s just skimming the surface.

We learn that the settlers, tired of being neglected by Thomasin, had banished her. She was abandoned in the forest for days. Desperate and almost dead, she was saved by Lady Gaga‘s character, a sort of mystical witch who asked Thomasin to surrender to her. Thomasin did, then went back to her colony to kill the fellow settlers who had abandoned her, except for her son. She then decided to move the rest of the colony inland, right where Lee and family live now.

Cricket brings Lee, Shelby, and Matt out in the forest to try to call Priscilla, but The Butcher appears once more. The psychic tells her to make Flora appear to her family, and they will in turn leave the farmhouse and her territory once and for all. Matt has also promised Lee to burn down the farmhouse so nobody else will ever be a threat to The Butcher – without telling Shelby first. Needless to say, Shelby is not at all happy to learn about that detail in American Horror Story: Roanoke 6×03. In fact, she is furious with Matt, as her husband should have consulted her.

In that moment, Shelby realizes Matt is not with them anymore and leaves Lee and Cricket to go look for him. She finds him, all right: He’s naked, in a sort of trance, and “busy” with Lady Gaga’s character, the witch. Lee and Cricket, after getting assurance that The Butcher has agreed to the deal, go looking for Matt and Shelby. They find a confused Matt, and Shelby has gone back to the house on her own.

When Matt arrives back at the farmhouse, he claims he doesn’t remember anything about his encounter with the witch and has no idea what Shelby is talking about. And as if that weren’t enough, police arrive to arrest Lee. Apparently Shelby called them as part of her sweet revenge against Matt.

In American Horror Story: Roanoke 6×03, our heroes start falling apart. Matt hides things from his wife, and she takes her revenge by getting her husband’s sister arrested by the police. We still don’t know where exactly Flora is, but we finally know who is responsible for all those scary pigs. I certainly hope we’ll see more of Cricket. Don’t you?

Did you enjoy American Horror Story: Roanoke 6×03, “Chapter 3”?