Photo: Elizabeth Fisher/Paramount+
Evil’s never been shy about pointing out a lot of the patriarchal bullshit the Catholic Church spins, but in “How to Dance in Three Easy Steps,” it confronts the issue much more head-on. And that’s because this week we’re dealing with witches. As our head witch Isabella points out to David at one point, “When two or more men are gathered, it’s a church; when two or more women are gathered, it’s a coven,” isn’t that interesting?
While David might only briefly consider what Isabella’s saying here (in David’s defense, he’s dealing with A LOT at that moment), surely he’ll be thinking about what Kristen lays on him in this episode, right? It’s Kristen who, not surprisingly, gets pretty blunt about what’s going on: Has David noticed how many men they’ve assessed over the years versus women? She sure has — 16 versus 63. David digs himself into a bit of a hole when he tries to blame it on the fact that women might just be more sensitive — a great thing, he adds! — and therefore more “susceptible to manipulation.” Kristen has to laugh (or she’ll cry!) because the number of “Q-Anon Dads” suggests otherwise. She has a different theory: “When women go against their accepted roles, the church labels them as possessed or witches.” Evil has something to say, babes, and it’s not mincing words!
This whole conversation about rampant misogyny kicks off thanks to this week’s case in which the team is asked to assess, you guessed it, a possibly possessed woman named Katherine — a woman whose name Father Dominic still cannot be bothered to remember! Katherine is in prison for murdering her children, which is awful, obviously, but that’s not the strangest thing happening here: She’s been dancing in her prison cell for two months straight. You read that right! She only stops once she collapses from exhaustion. Her parents want an exorcism.
But Katherine does eventually stop dancing. When the team begins to interview her, she pauses and she begins speaking like, well, like a demon. She explains she had to kill those kids because they were preventing Katherine from achieving greatness. Katherine then begins to imitate the voices of her children, begging her not to hurt them. It’s about as unsettling and horrifying as it sounds, folks! Whether Katherine is suffering from a bipolar schizophrenia condition or she is actually possessed, that woman is getting an exorcism.
It goes very badly! During the exorcism, David, who is working with Father Dominic to use that super-charged remote viewing power to locate kidnapped Ethiopian clerics, is suddenly transported into the body of one of the missing priests. While there, David notices some sort of spire or monument outside the prison window, and as the priest, he leads the rest of the kidnapped clerics in singing “The Prayer of St. Francis.” When David returns to the exorcism, he sings that song to Katherine … and she goes into cardiac arrest and dies.
While all of this provides some top-notch horror content, all of the Katherine stuff is leading us to one place: back to the demon sigils. When examining her body, the team finds a tattoo on Katherine’s leg that wasn’t there before (also her feet somehow now have gangrene — like, what in the fuck, actually?) and sorry to you, Ben Shakir, but yes, it is a tattoo of a sigil and yes, you do need to pull out the ol’ sigil map. But it’s not just any sigil; it’s a sigil from a house that’s supposedly been vanquished. Ben and Kristen are a little horrified to learn what exactly “vanquished” means here, but David tries to assure them that he wouldn’t be down to clown with church murder. And yet …
We’ll get back to that, I promise.
Their investigation leads them to Katherine’s old dance troupe. While their tyrant of a choreographer does certainly act like he might be a demon, he’s just a red herring. Although he delivers the line “Where would we be without evil?” and I’m taking that as a meta-shout to this series being ripped from our stupid little hands! Evil forever! I mean, Evil forever. You know what I mean!
Instead, the real find is the dance troupe. The clear alpha dancer in the group, Isabella, has a flirty interaction with Kristen, and she winds up inviting her to their performance that evening to see what they’re really about. While this is going on, Ben stumbles upon an ex-dancer from the troupe, Megan. Megan claims that the dance troupe was trying to lead her into Satanism, and when she and Katherine spoke out against it, they put a hex on them. They sent Megan a voodoo doll and told her she’d be dancing in hell with Katherine if she spoke out again.
The troupe’s performance certainly supports some of what Megan is saying. Isabella is now definitely flirting with Kristen — she’ll only answer questions if Kristen shows her her feet, which she does! — and clearly not a fan of Megan. But Isabella claims it was Megan, a real “prude,” who got into Katherine’s head. The troupe’s performance certainly evokes an air of mystery, especially when a woman in white floats across the stage and whispers in his ear to “shed [his] God and know greatness.” She is, apparently, a muse. I know it doesn’t need to be said at this point, but this show is so wild, guys. Bask in it!
David and Father Dominic are more convinced than ever that the women in the dance troupe are the keepers of the sigil and must be vanquished. Dominic explains this specific sigil belongs to a house of powerful necromancers, but it is a house passed down matrilineally, which is odd because, as we know, misogyny doesn’t discriminate between good and evil; it’s very fun that way. Everyone in the room knows he’s talking about witches, but he claims he doesn’t want to use that word because it’s become “politicized.” Isn’t that just so cute? Kristen thinks so, especially since the church has “no concern about keeping women from abortion or birth control, [so] why stop now?” Kristen’s disdain for Father Dominic continues to bring joy!
Kristen remains taken with Isabella and the troupe, so when she’s invited to their little moonlight forest get-together, she jumps at the chance. The boys wind up walking into this dance party, too, but only because Megan shows up at the rectory with the sigil newly branded on her side, informing them that Isabella and the troupe did it and that the dance party they’re throwing in the woods tonight is exactly what they did the night before Katherine’s children died. They need to stop it!
All of this means the guys happen upon Kristen really getting her witch on with Isabella. Will they ever talk about this? Please say yes. For now, though, they have other items to handle on their to-do list. As they’re filling in Kristen on what happened to Megan, Ben notices something off with the sigil — it’s place in a way that looks like Megan must’ve done it to herself, and the soot on Megan’s hand confirms she branded herself. Megan is behind it all. Father Dominic and some very strong-looking men find Megan still at the rectory, and he calls her out for the demon she is. She is the one who killed Katherine’s children! They drag her out to be, well, vanquished, I guess. Isabella and her witches … and maybe Kristen, can live to witch another day.
Okay, speaking of vanquishing, we should get back to that idea of David never supporting the church if it was into straight-up murder. After an encounter in the confessional with Isabella, David is thrown back into the Ethiopian prison cell, but this time, he is once again inhabiting the General with the triangle tattoo. David’s maybe we should call it superpower (?!) is getting stronger, and just as the General is about to kill the priest, David prays to God for help and then is able to take the General’s machete and turn it on himself. David “wakes up” from this vision, but Dominic informs him that this is exactly what happened to the General — he suddenly turned his own machete on himself and is dead. Everyone else is safe now. David clearly feels immense guilt, believing he has murdered this guy, but Dominic tells him he has nothing to confess. Apparently murder isn’t bad “if it prevents a greater sin.” I don’t know about you, but that feels like a super-slippery slope to me. Even if Father Dominic is onboard with this line of thinking, David definitely isn’t. Mike Colter is so good here as David, who, clearly in some real pain, pours out his soul to Dominic. This differing of opinions as to how to use David’s abilities is sure to lead to some real conflict down the road. And if it continues to harm David this way, I know two other people who might also have a problem with it.
• Sheryl is still manipulating her granddaughters into spending time with Timothy. While they’re over at her place, however, she spots that little bag Andy gave Laura the night he was supposed to kill her and Sheryl instantly recognizes it from Leland’s apartment. When Lynn shares some more details about what happened to Andy, Sheryl puts it all together, realizes Leland was going to have Laura killed, and she is livid. She’s almost in tears! She tears into Leland’s apartment, destroys the place, and leaves a nice message for him in her own blood: “You’re dead, mother fucker.” Leland comes home to find the wreckage … and Sheryl waiting for him in the dark. Evil’s really adding some layers to the whole “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” thing.
• I have no clue what the Kings have in store for Kurt Boggs this season, but it can’t be good, right? The Bouchard girls start using his cannibal mom story as a fun little story to tell Timothy and eventually make it an online picture book using AI that they upload to the internet with Kurt’s name attached. It goes viral. Kurt is elated. Finally his muse — the woman in white — returns and he gets back into his writing. Like I said, can’t be good, right?
• Father Dominic hugs David full-out when he delivers a clue that will lead to the Ethiopian clerics’ rescue. Victor LeConte would never!
• May we all have the confidence of Isabella, who when wanting to get out of a conversation simply says, “this conversation is boring” and walks away. I’m sorry but, witches rule!
• Ever notice how many women get possessed compared to men? Evil sure has and it has some thoughts.
