Image Source: FX Networks [1]
American Horror Story: Cult [2] really lives up to its subtitle with the latest episode, "Drink the Kool-Aid." Sure, Kai Anderson has had all the markings of a cult leader up to this point, but in Tuesday's episode it all comes to a head, as the FX drama kicks off the hour with short features on some of the world's most infamous cult leaders: David Koresh [3], Jim Jones [4], and Marshall Applewhite.
In the episode, AHS: Cult takes time to use both real footage and also staged reenactments of all these cults, with Evan Peters showing off some serious mimicry chops as the various cult leaders (and the makeup artists earning their paychecks turning Peters into these notorious men).
Despite Applewhite being the most current cult leader in the timeline, it seems that his name is not as well-known as Koresh or Jones, so here's a little background on Applewhite and the Heaven's Gate cult.
Image Source: Getty / Bettmann [6]
In the early 1970s, Applewhite met Bonnie Nettles, who would go on to found Heaven's Gate with him. She fostered his belief that he was a prophet with a divine mission. They wrote out their belief that Jesus had been reincarnated into Applewhite and that they were the two witnesses mentioned in the Book of Revelation. They eventually moved to wanting to contact extraterrestrials, which is how they began to gain followers.
Their group began traveling the country to recruit new members, living as beggars and proselytizing the divinity of "The UFO Two," aka Applewhite and Nettles. When Nettles died in 1985, Applewhite took over sole leadership of the cult, making it more reclusive and becoming convinced that the Hale-Bopp Comet contained the secret to their ascendance into heaven.
In 1997, Applewhite left video messages proclaiming that his people needed to leave Earth in order to ascend to the next level of existence, and they were going to do so by boarding a spacecraft that was hiding in the tail of the Hale-Bopp Comet. To make that happen, they had to leave their Earthly bodies, and so on March 26, 1997, 38 cult members plus Applewhite committed suicide by eating applesauce laced with high amounts of phenobarbital. They also asphyxiated themselves by placing plastic bags around their heads.
In an odd coincidence, the brother of original Star Trek actress Nichelle Nichols, Thomas Nichols, was among the dead. As shown on AHS: Cult, the members wore patches on their arms that read "Heaven's Gate Away Team," which is a reference to Star Trek: The Next Generation — it's what they called their boarding parties.
On AHS: Cult, Kai has become a freaky hybrid of each of these three cult leaders. He talks about ascending to a higher plane while asking his followers to drink poisoned Kool-Aid (which turns out not to be poisoned), and he also believes he has spiritual sperm. Half the reason Ally is able to convince Kai to trust her is because she acts like she buys into the idea that he is Oz's sperm donor father and together the two of them have created a "messiah baby."
Ally's masterful game will surely be all the sweeter when Kai realizes he's been played so hard, though we'll probably have to wait two weeks for that. Next week is the Charles Manson episode before Cult's season finale on Nov. 14.