FX’s American Horror Story
12×01 “Multiply Thy Pain”
Directed by Jessica Yu
Written by Halley Feiffer

* For Season 11 recaps & reviews, click here.
* For a recap & review of 12×02, click here.
The premiere episode of Season 12 begins with a quote from Genesis 3:16 about childbirth and pain. We see Anna Victoria Alcott (Emma Roberts) wake up in the middle of the night to a dark, hooded figure above her bed. She chases after the figure but the person escapes. She locks the place up and rushes back to her room to call 911. That’s when she sees blood splatters and a photo of what looks like an embro on the floor torn in two. She holds her stomach and screams.
We skip back to a week prior. Anna gets a call from her husband Dexter Harding Jr. (Matt Czuchry). He says she has to get to the clinic right away. She rushes out of the apartment building, where she sees someone blowing smoke onto something on the ground; it’s a bird nest with a dead baby bird inside. Anna heads off and sees a billboard with her face on it. She stops to take a photo, then goes to the clinic. At the clinic, Anna starts undergoing another IVF procedure. She worries that she’s “broken” but Dexter assures that this kind of thing happens to many couples. The procedure continues, as Anna fades out of consciousness, and Dr. Andrew Hill (Denis O’Hare) above her starts to look less like a doctor and more like the shadowy figure that was lurking over Anna’s bed in the opening sequence.

When Anna wakes up later she’s greeted by Dr. Hill and Dexter. The doc says he retrieved nine eggs; a good thing. This means “an embryo transfer” is next on the menu. Dr. Hill says he’s feeling good about the chances of this procedure working, though he seems to only say that to Dexter, which even Anna notices in her state. Progesterone and more drugs are doled out for Anna. While she’s waiting to leave she sees her face on the cover of magazines being read in the waiting room. She gets a call from Siobhan Corbyn (Kim Kardashian) yet doesn’t answer it. An older woman, Io Preecher (Julie White), comes into the clinic and ominously says “I know you” to Anna; not a celebrity sighting so much as a creepy moment. Everything just feels a bit strange and out of place to Anna. But Dexter does his best to take Anna’s mind off things. They go for a nice lunch. They talk about potential names for their potential child. They daydream about a new family life. Things are less fun later when Anna has to take her progesterone in vaginal suppository form. Such is the quest to get pregnant for her. After she takes her dose, she notices a hair out of place and starts to pull on it, except the hair keeps coming and coming.
Later we see Anna with her publicist Siobhan. She has to sign a toy for a fan; it’s from an old show she starred in as a girl. She has to sign the body of the toy for the fan and says “I feel like I‘m violating myself.” Some good news: Anna’s going to be interviewed by Andy Cohen. At the same time, she can’t even seem to keep reality straight around her. She feels like she’s going a bit crazy. Siobhan thinks it’s just Anna being unable to accept happiness. She says Anna has to focus on good things instead of catastrophising. We find out that Siobhan and Anna met in an “IVF support group.” The publicist evidently had a negative IVF experience. But she’s happy for Anna’s hopeful news. That doesn’t mean Anna’s going to stop worrying. She keeps worrying aloud when she’s with Dexter, too. More revelations: Dexter’s former wife died and left him traumatised. Anna wonders if Dexter and his late wife tried to have kids; he says it “wasn‘t in the cards” for them.

At a restaurant, Dexter and Anna meet Theo and Talia for dinner. They all catch up a little on their latest successes. Anna’s a bit surprised to hear about a new show Dex and Talia are involved in, as well as the fact there’s an artist called Sonia Shawcross (Annabelle Dexter-Jones) who looks just like Dex’s late wife Adeline involved, too. Oh, my. Anna rushes off to the bathroom feeling vulnerable. She calls Siobhan to talk it out. She’s scared that Dexter is still in love with Adeline, that she’ll never measure up to her. Anna also worries that her eggs are old and dusty, but Siobhan says even if Dexter doesn’t stick around she’d help raise the “spider baby.” What a thing to say! And eerie, too, after Dexter earlier picked a spider out of Anna’s hair. Strange coincidence. Before Anna leaves the bathroom she sees someone in a stall that may or may not be following her. Paranoia? Or reality? Then Anna and Dexter receive a call from Dr. Hill. She wants to schedule things around her Andy Cohen appearance. This doesn’t thrill Dexter or Dr. Hill, but Anna insists.
That night, Anna Google searches Adeline’s name. We see that Adeline was a great chef. Then reality seems to bend. Anna sees things that aren’t necessarily there, or are they? She sees her scheduled embryo transfer time change in her phone’s calendar. But she didn’t do it. So she changes her password and gets even more paranoid. The next morning, Anna calls Dr. Hill to change the appointment because she worries about being hacked. At the office, Siobhan says it’s all part of a being a woman “in the public eye,” and that even the cops don’t give a shit unfortunately. Not a lot of comfort, though at least it’s reality; something that Anna’s sorely lacking right now.
Anna gets to sit down with Andy Cohen, who gushes over her latest movie which is a terrifying new horror film. She does well with the banter, as Andy volleys back and forth with her. She’s fine until she notices Ms. Preecher in the audience and zones out a moment. Andy sees this, but it doesn’t affect things too much. After the show, Siobhan says that things went fine. That’s when Anna sees one of the dolls from her old show sitting on a table in the guest room. Siobhan figures it was from eBay and done by Andy, but it strikes Anna as creepy. Nothing gets any better mentally for Anna when she picks up her phone and looks online to see people talking shit about her constantly.

When Anna gets home that night she calls out for Dexter but gets no response. She grabs a knife and thinks she sees somebody in the blade’s reflection. It’s just her own eyes. Anna checks the fridge to see her medication in the appropriate place. She also sees her sticky note on the fridge torn in half. She thinks somebody’s been in the apartment and she calls Dexter, who’s at the opening of his new show; a surprise to his wife. Anna decides to go to the opening and she puts on the lipstick that Talia gave her at dinner.
When Anna arrives at the event she’s photographed by all the paparazzi. She also sees the strange woman with the glasses that she keeps seeing everywhere; a stalker? Inside, Anna looks at one of the paintings and she seems to see a baby crawling through Hell. She runs into the artist herself, Sonia. She sees the same green shoes she saw in the bathroom during dinner. Has Sonia been following her? Anna’s also treated like a problem by Dexter, who’s policing her down to the emotional state from how it looks.

When Friday comes, Dr. Hill shows Anna and Dexter a photograph of her embryo that will grow up to be a little he, or she, or “they, as the kids say.” And so now, Anna’s prepared for her embryo transfer. Dr. Hill readies everything and says it’ll be “relatively painless“—from a man to a woman, hilarious, and something women are generally used to when it comes to healthcare. Anna hallucinates and sees one of the nurses above her looking demonic. The nurse sews Anna’s mouth up, then opens her own mouth out of which blood pours. It all disappears quickly and Anna wakes up at home in her own bed. Dexter says their embryo is “watching over you” while Anna lies under the covers.
This brings us back to the opening scene.
Anna’s stomach pains. She then sees the dark figure lurking over her. She chases the figure but they escape. Moments later, Anna’s got red all over her fingers and the floor. She sees the lipstick there and the photo of the embryo torn in half. A note in the calendar on Anna’s phone advises her to look in the mirror, which reads DON‘T DO IT ANNA in lipstick.