Ladies doing it for themselves Iris (Kathy Bates) and Liz Taylor (Denis O’Hare) take over the Hotel Cortez and bring it into the 21st century with free wi-fi in every room, Egyptian cotton sheets, complimentary mixers in the minibars, and super sleek, top-of-the-line, ultra-modern self-cleaning Japanese toilets. This provides not only a long-needed facelift to the dreary hotel, it gives us the perfect metaphor for an American Horror Story season. Exotic, fun, presses all the buttons, and no matter how much crap it gets dumped, it still emerges fresh and virginally pure.
The season finale highlights how Iris and Liz run the hotel and manage to get some funds going by inspiring dead William Drake (Cheyenne Jackson) to keep designing. Liz takes over his fashion house, and thinks of a Howard Hughes-esque cover story for Drake’s absence from the real world, while Iris contacts medium to the stars Billie Dean Howard (Sarah Paulson) to showcase the hotel’s ghost potential. But not, however, before they fix some problems. The ghosts are still killing and murdering the hotel guests. The Cortez will never get the prestige it needs without those Internet ratings, so the duo coax their permanent residents to cool it. Hypodermic Sally (Sarah Paulson) refuses to go along with this, as killing and dragging people down is the only way she can feel alive, especially with her abandonment issues. Iris fixes this problem by introducing Sally to the joy of social media. When the whole world’s your audience, no one has to be alone in this modern age; Sally thrives on her emo posts and sycophantic fans.
As Iris points out, killing is only a Band-Aid; a minor fix to a problem. They need a future, and the only way these dead souls can ever really feel fulfilled is by being part of the world again. In the meantime, Liz wonders why Tristan (Finn Wittrock) never shows his face around the place. Enter Bille Dean.
Billie Dean thrives on the spirit energies of the hotel, and reveals that Tristan doesn’t want to talk to Liz, but that she shouldn’t feel guilty about his death; after all, love doesn’t kill. Heartbroken, Liz informs Billie Dean that love kills a lot more than hate, which seals the final theme of the whole series. It might be the need for companionship drives the undead to keep up the body count, but under that loneliness and violence is the simple, intrinsic need to love and be loved in return. So it’s no surprise that when Liz realizes she has cancer and asks to be killed in the hotel so she can be reborn, it’s the Countess (Lady Gaga) that shows up and helps her through this final transition, after which she rises to find Tristan waiting for her.
Billie Dean’s Hotel Cortez specials wear out their welcome after a while, which is when we get to see the last bit of Detective John Lowe (Wes Bentley). On the lam with his family, it’s only when John can no longer provide proper blood nourishment for his wife and son that he realizes they need to return to the Cortez. Funnily enough, it’s his daughter Scarlett (Shree Crooks), who remained forgotten during half the series, that comes up with this plan. They reside there until John is caught by the police and shot right outside the hotel’s doors. He can’t haunt the place as he didn’t die inside but every October 30th, Devil’s Night, he’s now a welcome guest of James Patrick March’s Killer of the Round Table banquet. He invites Billie Dean to this dinner, and after scaring the white light out of her and introducing her to Ramona Royale (Angela Bassett), who will make good on her promise to suck her dry should she mention the hotel ever again, he lets her go.
And so the hotel thrives and we leave this almost historic landmark with one last view of the Countess approaching what we assume is her new boy toy, proving that love is life, love is death, love is blood.