Warning: This article contains spoilers for American Horror Stories Season 4: The Thing Under the Bed
Although most of the plot of the anthology episode was quite predictable, American Horror Stories 4: the thing under the bed‘s ending proved that his storyline had a few surprises up his sleeve. American Horror Stories Season 4 has been a long time coming. The first two seasons of the series aired in 2021 and 2022 respectively, before the industrial strikes of 2023 caused the creators to delay the release of the last half of season 3 until October 2024. American Horror Stories 4: The Thing Under the Bed Is the ninth episode of season 3, not part of season 4.
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Regardless of the show’s release schedule, The thing under the bed Still feels like a classic American Horror Stories Exit. The episode opens with a little girl telling her dad about something creepy under her bed, only for the thing to attack her minutes later. The heroine of the episode, Debbie Ryan’s Jillian, wakes up next to her husband. Jillian has struggled with living dreams all her life, and they only get worse when an unseen man drags her husband under the bed and kills him in real life. As a suspicious detective pins the death on Jillian, she desperately searches for answers.
Why Mary Kills Jillian in American Horror Stories Season 4: The Thing Under the Bed’s End
Jillian realized Mary was the villain a moment too late
With the help of a nurse who also suffers from similarly vivid dreams, Jillian tracks down the girl of her dream at the beginning of the episode. Now in her twenties, Mary had been in a coma for ten years. Initially, Jillian thinks that Mary’s attack by someone under her bed during her childhood must be related to the string of unexplained deaths that recently claimed her husband’s life. Jillian is technically correct, but she only finds Mary’s real role in the story in The thing under the beds twist ending. First, Jillian slept in Mary’s old home.
Jillian meets Mary in her comatose dream state, an idyllic world where she controls everything. A little girl and boy argue nearby, prompting Mary to fly into a storm. A strange man attacks Jillian in the dream, but she wakes up before they can do any damage. Jillian visits the nurse who introduced her to Mary and suggests she prescribe a drug that stops patients from dreaming. Immediately, the nurse receives a message that Mary is currently experiencing one of her fateful dreams. As he enters the bedroom, the nurse is killed by the thing under the bed.
With no other options left, Jillian decides to kill Mary. She visits the hospital where Mary miraculously woke up from her coma shortly before, and Mary goes back to sleep to confront her. Jillian battles the thing under the bed in Mary’s room, but is shocked when the thing turns into Mary. It turns out that Mary herself is the thing under the bed American Horror StoriesAs her powers in the dream world extend to controlling her memory of the escaped mental health treatment patient who hid under her bed as a child. Now, Mary uses the memory of him to kill others.
What Mary’s last line meant in American Horror Stories Season 4: The Thing Under the Bed
Mary never left her father because she was a presence in the waking world
Mary killed Jillian’s husband since she knew that Jillian was not ready to have a baby with him, and she wanted to free Jillian from what Mary considered an unhappy marriage. Like other episodes of American Horror Stories 4, The thing under the bed Features a nasty twist ending when Jillian and Mary finally fight. Jillian didn’t realize that Mary was controlling the thing under the bed, however Mary’s line about how she “Never left“Her father implies that she was always able to wake up from her coma if she wanted to. Moreover, her spirit was irrevocably fused with her childhood attacker.
How Mary Became the Thing Under the Bed in American Horror Stories Season 4
Mary’s rejection of reality strengthened her dream powers
Mary spent years in her dream reality, creating a perfect world for herself that was only occasionally visited by other characters who shared her ability. Characters like Jillian and the nurse are less accomplished at bending the dream world to their will since they spent less time there. However, Mary’s dream powers seemed to come at a price. When she attacked Jillian in her hospital room, Mary mingled with the thing under the bed, and it became clear that they were the same person. Spending years in her own mind turned Mary into the imagined monster of her childhood.
The thing under the bed was Mary’s monstrous alter ego that she used to commit misdeeds like Jillian’s murder.
Mary became the thing under the bed by rejecting reality and living entirely in her mindMaking your dream world strong and substantial enough to impact reality. like American Horror Stories 4 s CloneThis episode explored questions of identity and self as the line between Mary and the thing under the bed blurred over the years. In her childhood, the thing under the bed was simply an escaped patient from a mental health facility and Mary was an ordinary little girl. Finally, the thing under the bed was Mary’s monstrous alter ego that she used to commit misdeeds like Jillian’s murder.
Why Mary’s face changed at the thing under the bed’s end
Mary became the monster after she woke up from her coma
in The thing under the bedUltimately, viewers could be forgiven for assuming that Mary exorcised her demons by allowing the thing under the bed to kill Jillian. However, the end was even darker than that, as evidenced by Mary’s face changing. After waking up from her coma for the second time, Mary spoke to her father and assured him that she had never left. In her reflection, Mary’s face changed into the grizzled male face of the thing under the bed. This meant that by controlling her dream world, Mary had completely become her own childhood nightmare.
What the thing under the bed’s end really means
This episode of American Horror Story Season 4 was a cautionary tale
The thing under the bedIts ending is really about the dangers of rejecting reality and spending too much time in the imaginary world of the mind. Although Mary loved her dream world and was ready to kill to protect it, his determination came at the cost of her real life. As far as Mary was concerned, her dream life was perfect, and she had every right to kill Jillian and her husband to keep it. However, by spending most of her life in a coma, Mary missed reality in favor of her meticulously constructed dreams within it. American Horror Stories episode.