ANGELA BASSETT’S VOODOO QUEEN IS THE ONLY REASON TO RETURN TO THE AHS UNIVERSE

Few characters in American Horror Story are as much fun to watch as Angela Bassett's Marie Laveau. The legendary Voodoo Queen of New Orleans has a flair for drama, a talent for holding grudges, and next to no patience for anyone who gets on her nerves. Whether she's trading insults with Jessica Lange's Fiona Goode, tormenting a long-dead enslaver, or negotiating with the gatekeeper of the underworld, Marie makes even the show's most ridiculous moments entertaining. And considering the show we're talking about, that's saying something.

Over the years, American Horror Story has given us murderous clowns, demonic nuns, haunted hotels, and enough resurrected characters to make death feel like a minor inconvenience. But somewhere along the way, the franchise loses a little of the magic that makes its early seasons so much fun. The stories get harder to follow, the scares less surprising, and my enthusiasm for another season a lot harder to muster.

Now, thirteen seasons in, the series is bringing back some of its most beloved characters for a supernatural reunion of truly ridiculous proportions. And while I'm happy to see Gabourey Sidibe and Sarah Paulson back in action, it's Bassett's return as Laveau that has me reconsidering my relationship with the franchise.

Devil of a good time.

Marie first shows up in Coven, the gloriously chaotic third season of American Horror Story, dressed in an elaborate period gown, a deep-red headwrap, and oversized hoop earrings, looking every bit like a woman who means business. She's running a Ninth Ward hair salon called Corn Row City and holding a nearly 200-year grudge against Madame Delphine LaLaurie (Kathy Bates).

The bad blood goes all the way back to 1834, when Delphine, a wealthy enslaver with a disturbing enthusiasm for torture, attacks Marie's lover, Bastien, and transforms him into a minotaur. Marie gets her revenge by tricking Delphine into drinking an immortality potion before burying her alive. Marie Laveau doesn't do forgive and forget. Instead she makes sure you live long enough to regret.

Nearly two centuries later, Fiona Goode (Jessica Lange), the Supreme—basically the most powerful witch of a coven descended from Salem witches—digs Delphine up and discovers that Marie knows the secret to immortality. Naturally, Fiona wants in. Marie has absolutely no interest in sharing, and their first meeting at her salon ends with Fiona setting some of Marie's wigs on fire. Which, honestly, might be worse than attempted murder.

Their rivalry is one of Coven's greatest pleasures. Neither woman has much interest in being reasonable, and watching Bassett and Lange go at each other is a delight.

Of course, Marie has her own skeletons in the closet. Her immortality comes from a deal with Papa Legba, the gatekeeper of the underworld, who demands the soul of an innocent person every year as payment. Meanwhile, her feud with Fiona gets ugly. Marie hires a witch hunter to wipe out the coven, only for him to turn his gun on her own salon, killing several of her followers. With both sides now in danger, Marie and Fiona put their differences aside to take down the witch hunters. Together, they sacrifice one of the coven's young witches to Papa Legba.

The life of Marie in Coven is one far from joy. But her most devastating loss was the sacrifice of her only child, just moments after birth. For immortality, Marie unknowingly bargains the life of her baby to Papa Legba, forever binding her to an unholy agreement.

However, unlike her rival Fiona, Marie's desire for eternal life is not rooted in vanity, but an arrogance that often blinds her to the repercussions of her actions. The audience can only twist and writhe in their seats as Papa Legba appears in the corner of her room, demanding her baby as payment for feeding the desires of her greed. The scene is as sickening as it is metamorphic, as it is the ultimate example of where Marie's selfish ambitions will lead her.

At the same time, it's this arrogance that casts such an otherworldly presence about her character. In her own words, she is invincible, and every decision she makes carries a breadth of her ego. Many times, it gets her what she wants and reinstates why the Voodoo Queen is so remarkable. But as so often exemplified throughout the show, there is not a sin committed without a price.

By the end of Coven, her and Fiona have put the past behind them. Unfortunately, being in the witches' good graces puts Marie back in Delphine's orbit. Delphine drugs her, chops her into pieces, and scatters her remains across the city. Since Marie can no longer deliver Papa Legba his annual sacrifice, Queenie (Gabourey Sidibe), a member of Fiona's coven, convinces him to cancel Marie's immortality deal, sending her straight to hell.

She briefly returns in Apocalypse before the Antichrist kills her (again), only for the timeline to be rewritten. Because on American Horror Story, nobody stays dead.

The baddest witch of them all.

Season 13 finds the witches dealing with a rather serious problem: Satan himself is getting ready to take over the world.

Cordelia Goode (Sarah Paulson), Fiona's daughter and the coven's current leader, gets murdered by James Patrick March (Evan Peters), a ghostly serial killer from Hotel, before her mother brings her back to life. But March isn't acting alone. The witches discover that someone has resurrected an entire gang of serial killers. They realize Satan is behind the attacks, and Fiona suggests reaching out to someone in his inner circle for help. That someone is Papa Legba, and he insists they'll need Marie Laveau as part of their crew to stand a chance against the Devil.

Of course, getting Marie out of hell comes with a catch. Someone has to take her place, and Queenie, who has plenty of history with Marie and Delphine, volunteers. Her personal hell turns out to be an endless shift at a fried-chicken restaurant, with Delphine as an obnoxious customer. At least Queenie gets the satisfaction of giving her old enemy a taste of her own cruelty.

And just like that, Marie Laveau is back.

Her reunion with Fiona goes about as well as you'd expect. Even with the literal end of the world approaching, neither woman is in the mood to let bygones be bygones. Papa Legba eventually steps in to remind them that they'll need to combine their powers if they want to defeat Satan. The two reluctantly agree, and suddenly the season has some of that delicious Coven energy again.

Marie gets right to work. Alongside Papa Legba, she performs a protective ritual that helps the witches figure out Satan's plan. Apparently, God and the Devil have a wager going: If Satan survives 100 years in mortal form, he gets control of Heaven, Hell, and Earth. Disguised as a wealthy old man named Mr. Nas, he's getting dangerously close to winning.

As the witches scramble to stop him, Ben DeSoto, a hospice worker who also happens to be one of Satan's sons, offers to help defeat his father. But Marie has one condition: Before she lifts another finger, Ben needs to bring Queenie back from hell. It's a surprisingly sweet moment from a woman who once sent an army of zombies to attack a school full of teenage witches.

With Queenie back, Marie prepares a potion to drain the life force Satan is collecting and turn him into a helpless baby. Queenie will then use her powers to send his stolen energy to hell, leaving the coven responsible for babysitting the Devil for eternity.

Unfortunately, things go spectacularly wrong. A mysterious figure in a black rubber suit attacks Queenie, while a doctor working for Satan stabs Cordelia. Ben is incapacitated, leaving the witches' carefully laid plan in ruins.

The season wraps up with a massive crossover featuring characters from Murder House, Coven, Hotel, Apocalypse, and other installments, as the witches, led by the Voodoo Queen herself, scramble to pull off one last plan to stop Satan's rise to power.

The devil is in the details.

Two-time Oscar nominee Angela Bassett is almost comically overqualified for American Horror Story, and I mean that with affection. This is a show that regularly asks its actors to deliver the most outrageous lines imaginable with a straight face, and Bassett never flinches. She treats every ridiculous twist like serious business, which only makes Marie that much more fun to watch.

In the words of a poet, "Angela Bassett did the thang".

While it's easy to mistake Bassett's immortal Voodoo Queen for pure fiction, Marie Laveau was a real woman who held considerable influence in nineteenth-century New Orleans. A spiritual leader and prominent figure in the community, the historical Laveau remains one of the city's most fascinating personalities. Ryan Murphy's version, however, has a lot more in common with the myths surrounding her than the actual history.

Still, this version of Laveau is a force to be reckoned with. Breathing life into a historical figure ain't easy, especially one who is so highly revered and has so often been portrayed inaccurately. But Angela Bassett makes it her mission to conquer the task. Every time she's on the screen, she perfects the seductive, yet the dangerous allure of a woman who could snap your neck and condemn a thousand lines of your family to a horrible death without so much as lifting a finger.

Interestingly, she's often painted as a villain. But underneath all the threats, curses, and questionable deals with the underworld, her moral compass ultimately leans toward keeping her community safe. Marie knows exactly how powerful and intelligent she is, and she isn't afraid to use either to get what she believes is already hers. Her “by any means necessary” approach keeps her and her fellow practitioners protected. In the end, she brings hell to her enemies. And it's glorious.