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Next week, Scream Queens will air its final two episodes back-to-back and we will finally learn if all the shrieking and flailing and feather-covered outfits and anorexia jokes have led to a satisfying conclusion that makes any sense whatsoever. On “Black Friday,” though, we shop!
Spoilers ahead!
Though it seems unlikely that queen of the snobs Chanel would ever go to the mall, period, much less go there on the most hectic shopping day of the year, we’re meant to believe that she loves Black Friday only slightly less than “Chanel-o-Ween.” Therefore, just hours after being served Gigi’s severed head in place of a Thanksgiving turkey, Chanel and her minions make a beeline for the local shopping center—telling a shocked Dean Munsch that since any of them could be the killer, what difference does it make?
Once at the mall, the Red Devil dutifully appears to menace all four Chanels. He/she manages to wound Chanel Number One and kill a uniformed cop that shows up along with the town’s newly-hired police chief: Denise Hemphill, who’s now armed and dangerous, but no better at catching criminals.
The Chanels, along with Grace and Zayday, decide that Dean Munsch has simply got to be the killer, and Chanel Number One and Grace simultaneously decide that they’ve gotta get rid of her before she kills anyone else.
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But Munsch proves irritatingly hard to kill. Like Rasputin, Michael Myers, or Dr. Giggles, as Chanel Number Six/Hester (someone who also proved irritatingly hard to kill, as you’ll recall) points out. Poison (delivered in her favorite drink, apple cider, at a fake “Wallace Feminist Campus Collective” meeting) and freezing (in a cryotherapy chamber) don’t work, and Grace has a change of heart about wanting to kill her, anyway, after Pete talks her out of it.
There’s a lot of Grace and Pete in this episode. Both characters show sides we haven’t really gotten to see, and that will likely affect the events of the finale. At first, Grace goes full-steam with the plan to murder Munsch, determined to protect the Kappa sisterhood—before changing her mind, backing away from the scheme, and being kicked out of Kappa as a result. Oddly, she doesn’t drop this bit of news on Pete and her dad, Wes, when she sees them immediately after. Why wouldn’t she tell them she’d been booted from her beloved sorority?
As for Pete, he’s finally making headway on his investigative report on Kappa’s connection to the serial killer. With Wes’s help, he determines that Gigi’s name was actually Jess Meyer—and she wasn’t there the night of the Bathtub Babies, but her sister was. Her sister was the girl who took the infants that night, but the stress and shame drove her to commit suicide, leaving Jess/Gigi with twins to raise solely for the purpose of revenge.
Pete and Grace almost Do It, but Grace hesitates. Wes warns her about the dangers of having sex before she’s ready (after all, 20 years ago he accidentally fathered twins that grew up to be serial killers ... oops!), but she has a change of heart and basically throws herself at him. (Again, Grace acting out of character there.) But after being the aggressor earlier, Pete turns her down.
Pete’s a weirdo this week, too. We learn that Boone was his secret source on all things Greek on campus, and that he once tried to pledge the Dickie Dollar Scholars. (Though, when Chad offers him a spot in the group, he refuses—then learns he’ll need to duel to the death for refusing. That should be interesting.)
Also, we’ve overheard one side of a phone conversation that suggests Pete’s been up to some funny business on the side—stuff about “we’ve got to get away while we still can,” “the point has been made,” and “don’t ever call me again.” My theory: Pete’s been wearing the Red Devil costume he keeps in his closet, to be a copycat menace—that was probably him at the mall, right?—to further his journalistic crusade against sororities and fraternities.
And yeah—when Grace finally agrees to have sex with him, Pete hesitates. What’s changed from before? Does his confession of “I don’t want your first time to be with a murderer” refer to the crossbow’d cop in the shopping center?
His accomplice is still a mystery, but it’s probably Dean Munsch—think of all the times the Red Devil appeared at convenient/opportune moments but didn’t actually kill anyone, like when Wes and Gigi’s gettin-to-know-ya repartee was interrupted by a jealous chainsaw. (Of course, Dean Munsch is fully capable of being a killer for real, as we saw with her ex-husband’s grim demise.)
But that still doesn’t explain who the second real Red Devil killer is—presumably 20-something and female, and maybe nicknamed Chanel. Or maybe, as part one of next week’s finale suggests, “Dorkus,” for the sister who supposedly died in a spray-tan acid bath a year prior.
Or will next week’s two-hour finale take a last-act twist we should have seen coming, but were too distracted by Scream Queens’ shrillness to notice?
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