AHS: Delicate - All Questions We Need Answers For After That Mind-Blowing Mid-Season Finale

The mid-season finale of "American Horror Story: Delicate" definitely managed to explain a few of Anna Alcott's (Emma Roberts) travails. We learn that Io Preecher (Julie White) is, in fact, not an anti-IVF activist, but a woman who has made a deal with the devil in her youth to rid herself of an unwanted pregnancy. She's desperately trying to stop Anna from selling her soul in favor of awards season praise — and they're two in a long line of people who have been through similar ritualistic torture. It also seems that Anna's mother-in-law, Virginia (Debra Monk) might be telling the truth about having experienced cult-related abuse at the hands of Dex's (Matt Czuchry) father. Preecher connects Dex and Anna's travails to their family's cult origins — and suggests Dex's first wife Adeline (Annabelle Dexter-Jones) might have been murdered for breaking away from the organization. Unfortunately, Anna remains clueless about this and only Virginia understands the truth.

The episode ends with Anna telling her agent and best friend Siobhan Corbyn (Kim Kardashian) that she'd do "anything" for an Oscar. She wakes the next morning to discover her younger awards season rival, Babette Eno (Taylor Richardson), has been decapitated in a car accident, suggesting that Preecher might be right. But in spite of how revelatory the mid-season finale was, there are definitely a whole lot of questions left to be answered when "Delicate" picks up after the SAG-AFTRA strike is solved. Here are just a few of the head-scratchers it's posed, which thus far remain indefinitely explained.

Anna's bizarre behavior has been all over the map during her haunting-slash-incubation period. Apart from her physical deterioration — see below for more of that — she's losing heavy chunks of time and blacking out for long stretches, only to come to and realize she's agreed to things she can't remember what she's said or agreed to. She also keeps seeing Ivy (Cara Delevingne), the nurse who attended her apparent miscarriage, wherever she goes, as well as an Adelaide lookalike. And then there was that unfortunate incident where she ate the corpse of a maggot-encrusted, very dead raccoon — an incident that is never brought up again after it happens. 

The ultimate question is — how much of this behavior is controlled by Anna, and how much of it is being caused by her demonic spawn? After all, we're talking possible unsavory magical deals — there's no way the baby itself doesn't have some power over its human host. But the narrative hasn't confirmed these things either way, so we're going to mark this one as an open question.

It's quite possible that Anna's actual human child was aborted by Ivy and replaced by a demon spawn due to her ambitious wishes, but perhaps her behavior may have involved some drugging from outside sources (see below). But if it ends up being the influence of her tiny dark passenger, don't be surprised.

And speaking of drugs — back in Episode 2, Siobhan gifts Anna with B-12 shots, which she swears will keep her healthy. A series of alarming physical symptoms soon set in, from balding to peeling skin. When the fifth part of "Delicate" concludes, we never find out what on earth is in those hypos. Since Anna is soon very busy with awards season, raccoon nibbling, and cradling her miracle baby, it's understandable why such a detail might slip her mind. However, that issue — and the reason behind Anna's continuously poor health — remains unresolved. 

There are, to be frank, three possibilities here. One is that Siobhan is in league with the devil (after all, she did use her wiles to charm the director of Anna's acclaimed film, and he's also on Satan's side), and is helping drug Anna, which is why she's throwing up everywhere among other problems. It's possible that her gift is completely innocuous. It also might be that Siobhan is trying to keep her best friend healthy — if only so she can help Anna deliver on her end of the bargain with her satanic overlords.

And that's another dangling question — if the shots aren't doing it, what's causing Anna to fall apart physically as well as mentally? Has she been infested by spiders, as long-overarching promotional and in-episode imagery suggests? That's one question that "American Horror Story: Delicate" hasn't answered yet.

Throughout the first five episodes of "Delicate," Anna is being stalked by someone who keeps leaving her mutilated Barbie dolls with dire warnings pinned to them. The person happens to resemble Ivy when caught on security cameras. As noted above, Anna continues to see Ivy everywhere and continues to experience horrific incidents, such as someone breaking into her bedroom and destroying it, and someone leaving her that deceased raccoon in the bushes of her borrowed Hamptons house. And there's also the fact that she keeps seeing Ivy on the street everywhere she goes. Since Anna ALSO keeps seeing those black-clad, spindly ladies, it's possible they're all in league with each other — and that Ivy is using whatever power she gleaned from them to follow Anna.

Ivy has remained something of a plot-related bugaboo throughout the entire run of "American Horror Story: Delicate," which has left audiences wondering just where she fits into things. Is she a demon, too? Simply a figment of Anna's imagination? Something much more sinister? The end of the fifth episode did not answer that query.

The fifth part of "American Horror Story: Delicate" cuts off right when Anna's Oscar chase gets interesting — with her Golden Globe loss. Viewers never find out if Anna gets her Oscar.

While it might seem guaranteed that she'll score an award thanks to her bargain with the dark side, it's possible the show might take things in a different direction. After all, when Io Preecher trades her unwanted child's life for her deepest desire, she ends up working with the high-fashion designers she wishes to work with. As an unnoticed grunt with no label to her name, the designers she so admires attach themselves to her work and claim them as their own. It's possible that Anna's wish to win an Oscar will result in her getting that award — but look what's happened to hundreds of other actresses across the years who've attained Oscars and then found themselves out of work and ignored thanks to an indifferent public. Might she plunge into obscurity? It's also possible Babette's death might make her even more sympathetic to Oscar voters. The series will let us in on how everything turns out once it returns.

As established years ago, every season of "American Horror Story" is interconnected. That leaves us with one final question — how does "American Horror Story: Delicate" relate to the rest of the series' universe?

There are several interesting possibilities here. The season's focus on cults throws a lifeline back to "American Horror Story: Cult," though the magical wish fulfillment involved in the main plotline stands counter-corner to the very reality-based central story of "Cult." Its focus on devil worship and demons calls to mind "Murder House," as well as its related seasons "Apocalypse" and "Coven." Its do-anything-for-success-even-kill-others way of looking at the world is well reflected in the "American Horror Story: Double Feature" half-season "Red Tide." 

Perhaps the connections will be far more subtle, but audiences will eventually learn just how closely the season is tied to its anthology mates. "American Horror Story: Delicate" will return sometime in 2024.