American Horror Story: Ranking Every Season Finale From Worst To Best
3. Hotel
Title: Be Our Guest
Synopsis: A newly renovated Hotel Cortez attempts to recover from the events of Battle Royale, but struggles to leave its murderous past behind. A melancholy Liz Taylor reflects on her life and makes a bold decision moving forward with the future of the hotel.
Hotel probably goes down as the least well-received season and even glitterati vampires couldn't save it. With the season having no real villains, and too many anti-heroes, it took the horror away from Horror Story - even Evan Peters' James Patrick March became a tragic love story, and Hotel was more like an extended episode of Crossroads. However, whereas some finales let the show down, Be Our Guest stands as a defiant highlight of the season.
Apart from pulling on the nostalgia strings by being named after a Beauty and the Beast song, Be Our Guest was an unusually emotional finale for Horror Story. It was pink hankies at the ready for an ode to Denis O'Hare's great acting skills. With a beautiful swansong for O'Hare's Liz Taylor, any story involving the loveable transvestite was always going to win over the season's critics.
From the original grim opening of Liz having her throat slit, the story was flipped on its head and the tone soon lightened up. The finale became an hour of the hotel shedding its nefarious past and Liz shedding her skin, with a few "old" guests checking in. The appearance of Sarah Paulson's Billie Dean Howard attempted to cash in on the first season of the show, but there was no stealing the limelight away from the fabulous Hotel Cortez characters.
More importantly a flash forward to Devil's Night 2022 saw the real horror of John Wayne Gacy, Aileen Wuornos, and Jeffrey Dammer, reminding us why the show has "horror" in the title. It may have been nowhere near as dark as some of the other season finales, but Hotel had the perfect closure with Lady Gaga's "jawline for days" comment - a season that was as camp as Christmas and still had the Horror Story balls.