The Alma Detail In AHS: Double Feature Episode 5 That Has Fans Scratching Their Heads

This 10th season of "American Horror Story" has been quite the journey, thanks to those little black Muse pills, created by the mysterious Chemist, that inspire users with creative potential while also turning them into blood-sucking vampires. Young prodigy Alma Gardner (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) has been one of the drug's most-affected victims; the pills have turned her into one of the series' biggest villains, giving the series' heaviest hitters a run for their money. 

In Episode 5, "Gaslight," Doris (Lily Rabe) finally takes the pill herself — a development that's been building throughout the previous episodes. As a less artistic person, unlike her husband and daughter, she experiences the dangerous, zombie-like consequences of her consumption rather than the heightened creativity. Alma, naturally, is her supplier. The girl has her own cold-hearted reasons for wanting her kind, trusting mother out of the way: As she tells her father Harry (Finn Wittrock) after Doris finds her feeding on her new little brother, "I still don't understand why you keep her around. We don't need her, especially now ... We're trying to be great at something, Daddy. People like her just want to get through the day, have breakfast, go shopping, check Facebook. We want to live deep." 

In the spirit of going deep, fans have raised a question about a detail that was left out of Episode 5 and has them a bit confused. 

About halfway through Episode 5, Alma is finally able to break through her mother's defenses and get her to down the pill. The girl appears to have an unlimited supply of them, which is especially strange since her father's has been limited — as pointed out by Reddit user u/waywardgirl25. On Reddit's live discussion thread for the episode, viewers of the show are wondering how to explain this problem. User u/cybersigh noted in puzzlement, "Alma has an infinite supply of pills to offer her mom somehow." In response, u/mab812 suggested, "I think Ursula gave them to her," which makes a lot of sense, as she's clearly part of the plot to get Doris onto the pill — and later in the episode Alma tells her father explicitly that Ursula (Leslie Grossman) helped her.

However, part of the continuing storyline of this whole season has been people (and monsters) vying for control of the pill supply, so Alma's unfettered access to the pills is decidedly not a normal state of affairs. For now, the explanation is unknown — and may remain a mystery that's not important enough for the show's producers to clarify. After all, there's just one episode left of the "Red Tide" portion of Season 10's "Double Feature," which means the story is nearing its conclusion in just one more hour. That takes place on September 22 at 10 p.m. ET on FX, with the episode "Winter Kills" available the following day on Hulu.