Spoil alert! The following contains details of the first season of "American Horror Story: Apocalypse".

"American Horror Story" went to the end to find a new beginning.

After some disappointing installations in Ryan Murphy's and Brad Falchuk's luscious horror anthology series, "Apocalypse" made its FX debut on Wednesday night, with a spectacular debut that staged a cross between the first and third seasons of the series "Murder House". "Coven", respectively, and also replayed a franchise that was beginning to collapse under its own nonsense.

Combining two previous stories and rushing to the end of the world is a clever way to find the roots of the show and bring back some of its best characters. This also allows the writers to pull some strings from those early seasons, like a murderous toddler murdering his nanny in the very first season of the show. It also seems like a logical place for the series to end (although nothing has been announced).

But beyond that, the first hour of "Apocalypse" suggests that "AHS" is also back to the creative form. There have been interesting rumors in the first episodes of "Cult" last year, before the season becomes predictable "drama", but the opening scene of "Apocalypse" is a fantastic start. The sequence is an exciting and captivating look at what could happen if the world, and in particular a very American, very Californian slice of this world, were confronted with its immediate disappearance, in all its human and caricatural weaknesses. .

The episode opens on a pleasant afternoon in Beverly Hills for Coco St. Pierre Vanderbilt, a billionaire socialist, who is combed by Mr. Gallant (Evan Peters) with his assistant Mallory (Billie Lourd) by his side. Everything is fun and games and jokes about LA traffic until the bombs of a nuclear holocaust begin to fall, and Coco's parents call to tell her that she has four tickets for a bunker that will keep it safe. Gallant takes his Nana (the delightful Joan Collins) and the foursome takes off in a private unmanned jet, but not until Coco leaves her husband Brock (Billy Eichner).

It is certain that the cynicism "AHS" thrives (or in many cases, collapses under), but the sequence has also been left in moments of sheer emotion – from a teenage snatch from his family to a journalist who says goodbye to his children. which gives a little weight to the campers who come right after. The sequence of panic and gripping turns sharply into something much more claustrophobic.

The refuge of Coco and her friends turns out to be a converted boys' school run by "The Cooperative", and the house's head is Wilhelmina Venable (Sarah Paulson) with the help of Mrs. Miriam Mead (Kathy Bates) . The cooperative also chose to save Timothy Campbell (Kyle Allen) and Emily (Ashley Santos), two young adults chosen, apparently, for their prodigious DNA.

It's like a show that's completely different from the one in which the episode started, with "Willy Wonka and Chocolate" hairstyles, scenes from Edgar Allen Poe's story, and Paulson's superb performances. Shakespearean Theater (in a good way).

Life at the outpost, as we call the refuge, is, shall we say, not great. Although the rich and the selected are "purple", the elite class that wears ceremonial robes of the colonial era and is expected by the "gray", the house is a minefield of psychological horrors ; the food consists only of gelatin cubes infused with vitamins; the radio plays the same song again and again; and Wilhelmina and Miriam are ready at any time to torture and kill a guest who does not follow the rules. This is a kind of scenario "The hell is the others", with a little more emphasis on the literal part "Hell".

In secret, Wilhelmina and Miriam disguise themselves in purple and admit that they deliberately torture the guests, and their sadism reaches its peak when they serve what seems to be a stew made, finally, of a man named Stu. They traumatize the guests and make it clear that this is not the sanctuary they believed. The episode ends 18 months later when the food is even rarer and all the guests are about to have a psychological crisis (except Emily and Timothy, who have fallen on one of them. other) when a visitor comes to the door.

It's Michael Langdon (Cody Fern) who will remember fans of "AHS" as Satanic Baby of Season 1, child of Vivien Harmon (Connie Britton) and Tate Langdon, aka Rubber Man (Peters). Now he has grown up and arrived at the outpost to judge who should accompany him to another shelter, with 10 years of food. I am sure his intentions are really good, he who is the anti-Christ and all.

There seems to be two shows competing for dominance in "AHS: Apocalypse", one from Campy Bunker Hijinx and the other about what it means to survive. In the bunker, as Coco points out, they are all waiting to die. In the brief glimpses we get, humans seem to have been devolved. When two dead horses are left close to them, dirty, dirty hands stretch and drag them into the brush. So, is survival worth it? And if you survive, is it better to fall into the claws of the devil himself or slowly deteriorate through radiation sickness and lose all semblance of humanity?

Just the kind of light and windy questions that "AHS" likes to raise.

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