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"The Seven Wonders" is the thirteenth episode of Coven. It premiered January 29, 2014.

Synopsis[]

A new Supreme rises.[1]

Plot[]

In the halls of Miss Robichaux's Academy, Stevie Nicks sings "Seven Wonders" while the individual candidates prepare in their own ways. They descend the staircase, each in a black dress and a shawl, and Stevie wishes them luck.

Myrtle Snow prepares a "last supper" for the candidates. Cordelia explains that it is unprecedented for four candidates to attempt the Seven Wonders without sponsorship by the outgoing Supreme.

They begin with telekinesis. Kyle lights candles. Misty Day, Queenie, Madison, and Zoe move each candle in turn, with Misty displaying difficulty at first and Zoe barely taking a second to move the candle.

Misty Day uses concilium to make Queenie slap herself, and Queenie makes Misty pull her own hair as payback. Madison coerces Kyle to drop wine glasses, kiss her, and then lick her boot while making Zoe slap herself. Kyle goes to kiss Zoe once released, but Madison makes him choke Zoe. Zoe makes Madison burn herself with her cigarette. This ends when Cordelia tosses Kyle across the room through telekinesis, and declares it is enough.

For the next challenge, all four girls perform the descensum wonder with a sun-up deadline. Queenie returns from her hell in a chicken shack first. Madison returns next from a hell that she plays Liesl in a television musical version of The Sound of Music. Zoe's hell was Kyle endlessly breaking up with her. Misty Day is in a school biology lab, forced to dissect a living frog while being ridiculed by her classmates, then resurrecting it, over-and-over again. By the dawn, she has still not emerged. Cordelia tries to rescue her, but Myrtle informs her that Misty needs to return on her own so she could not do anything to help. When her time expires, Misty disintegrates into ash in Cordelia's sobbing arms.

Myrtle leads Cordelia to meet with the others. Unlike everyone else, Madison is unmoved over Misty's demise. A reluctant Zoe agrees that they have to keep going.

While performing transmutation, they lighten the mood with a game of tag. Zoe ends up impaled on the spikes above the gates of the school when she loses concentration and unsuccessfully tries to transmutate somewhere higher. They take her to the greenhouse where Queenie attempts Vitalum Vitalis on Zoe in order to revive her. After failing, she takes a saddened Kyle back to the house. Both Cordelia and Myrtle insist Madison perform Vitalum Vitalis on Zoe next, but Madison proves her ability with a fly instead. The matrons tell her that if she does not try to resurrect Zoe, then she is not worthy of being the Supreme. Madison gets angry and walks away.

The matrons are upset that Madison is their only remaining choice, as they had such high hopes for the other candidates. After realizing that Cordelia has royal blood, Myrtle suggests that Cordelia might be the Supreme after all and that she should perform the Seven Wonders herself.

In the greenhouse, Kyle cries over Zoe, lamenting that she said she would never leave him.

Cordelia performs pyrokinesis, concilium, telekinesis, and descensum. She returns from a hell of trying to get Fiona's approval and transmutates across the room. Madison and Cordelia continue to compete, with Cordelia successfully performing divination to find the location of an item belonging to Mimi DeLongpre. Madison is to do the same with Anna Leigh Leighton's item and initially resists, wanting to resurrect Zoe instead. After two false tries, she fails. Madison curses and leaves, declaring that she is leaving the academy and returning to Hollywood, planning on telling the public about the existence of witches, and ends up crying to herself in her room while packing her bags. Kyle appears, wanting to know why Madison let Zoe die since they both know the darkness beyond death. Mad, he attacks her, and she says she did it for him. Kyle says she is not that good of an actress and strangles her on Zoe's bed. Meanwhile, Cordelia performs Vitalum Vitalis on Zoe and brings her back to life in the greenhouse. Just as Zoe is brought back to life, Madison is choked to death and Cordelia faints.

When Cordelia regains consciousness, her ascension causes her eyesight to be restored and the flowers of the greenhouse to bloom. A pleased Myrtle declares her Supreme.

Spalding appears in the room with Kyle and a dead Madison. He uses a doll's hand to caress Madison's hair as he suggests to Kyle that they should bury her, saying that no one would miss her body anyway. Kyle asks him who is he, and he tells Kyle he is "the help."

Cordelia goes public about the Witches and their powers in a television interview, inviting new witches to the Academy. Files and a map show emerging witches nationwide. Cordelia wants Queenie and Zoe on the new Council. Myrtle describes the future and reminds Cordelia that she herself must pay for killing the other Council members, Quentin Fleming and Cecily Pembroke. Cordelia resists, saying that Myrtle has been like a true mother for her, but Myrtle insists that she once again should be burnt at the stake. Musically accompanied by "Silver Springs", Cordelia pronounces her sentence for Quentin and Cecily's deaths. Myrtle cries out "Balenciaga!" before Cordelia sets her ablaze.

Girls and women surround the Academy, waiting to take their places as students. Cordelia invites Queenie and Zoe to be her Council, and they accept. Downstairs, Fiona awaits her. The old Supreme expounds that the Axeman assisted her and that she implanted a vision into him of killing her. Even though Fiona is quite ill and aged, she is still trying to make good on her plan to kill the new Supreme. Cordelia predicts that Fiona will not last the night. Fiona expounds that when Cordelia was born, the mother knew of her impending mortality and that she must die for her daughter to truly live. Cordelia laments that Fiona was always her villain. Handing Cordelia a knife, Fiona insists that her daughter put her out of her misery, now that she is powerless. Cordelia declares that no one can help her move on to the end and that Fiona must let herself go. As they hug, Fiona dies in Cordelia's arms.

Fiona awakes, young and restored, to a rooster crowing outside a farmhouse, where the Axeman's vision of an idyllic life together is played out. She is repulsed, and he tells her that every morning she awakes unaware of what has transpired. She wants Cordelia back, but while that place and situation are the Axeman's Heaven, she stares at a gloating Papa Legba and noticing that is her own hell.

Kyle, as the new butler, opens the door for the new students. They settle in, and Cordelia declares to the assembled that it is no longer only to survive, but that the witches will thrive. Heavy is Cordelia's crown when asked what a Supreme is by one of the new arrivals, and she smiles.

Featured Characters[]

Quotes[]

  • Zoe: "Can't we just have a little fun?"
  • Kyle: "You're not that good of an actress."
  • Fiona: "You took my power the minute I gave birth to you."
  • Cordelia: "Feel the fear and the pain, let it all in, and then let it all go."
  • Cordelia: "A divine being finally having a human experience."

Notes[]

  • Kathy Bates (Delphine LaLaurie) is credited but does not appear.
  • Myrtle is seated approximately exactly where Jesus is in Leonardo da Vinci's "The Last Supper". Much like Jesus, Myrtle assumes the role of a martyr by allowing herself to be killed in order to "clear away the rot of the past".
  • During the witches' last supper, the camera pans on Cordelia as Myrtle is saying that only one of them will be the Supreme. She goes on to say that any of them might die performing the Seven Wonders, just as the camera focuses on Misty. This would foreshadow the fates of both individuals later in the episode.
  • The Bible verse Cordelia loosely quotes is 1 Corinthians 13:11. Biblehub.
  • The Coven's contact details are (504) 555-0186 and cordelia@robichauxacademy.com.
  • The title of the episode refers to the seven magical abilities which, if mastered, confirm the identity of the Supreme Witch.

Gallery[]

References[]

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