TV Explainer / Published 2026-10-30

American Horror Story's 13th Season Ends With Satan in a Painting

The FX anthology closed its Coven and Satan season with Ben's sacrifice and a spell borrowed from Dorian Gray. Paul Anthony Kelly, who played the devil, says the ending left him flabbergasted.

A conceptual illustration of an empty gallery with three blank gilt frames on a deep green wall, a warm light pool on a wooden floor.
Conceptual editorial illustration; not a still from the episode or a photograph of the cast.

THE SHORT VERSION

  • The 13th season of American Horror Story ended on Thursday with Satan trapped inside a painting of The Last Supper after Ben, the Antichrist, sacrificed himself.
  • TheWrap reports that Satan had already chosen to keep ruling the underworld rather than take over humanity, and that the witches needed a spell used by Dorian Gray to trap him.
  • Paul Anthony Kelly, who played the devil, told both outlets he did not know the ending in advance and that he would consider returning for the already-renewed 14th season.

The season ended with Satan inside a painting

The 13th season of American Horror Story finished on Thursday with an episode titled "Devil of a Good Time". The Hollywood Reporter describes the finale as closing the season's battle between the Coven and Satan. TheWrap reports that Satan, played by Paul Anthony Kelly, ends the episode trapped inside Da Vinci's The Last Supper, a painting that had been stolen earlier in the season and brought into his New York City penthouse. All episodes of the FX anthology are streaming on Hulu.

The mechanism was a sacrifice. TheWrap reports that Mallory, played by Billie Lourd and now Supreme, travelled back to Salem looking for a spell that could kill Satan forever and found none. What she found was a spell used by the aristocrat Dorian Gray, which traps a soul inside a painting and needed a tremendous sacrifice to work. The sacrifice was Ben, played by Joey Pollari, the Antichrist, who had just become a father.

A birth, a death and a baby brought back

Both reports describe a birth in the middle of the finale. The Hollywood Reporter says Ben and Madison, played by Emma Roberts, have sex, that Madison becomes pregnant immediately and gives birth to their daughter, and that the newborn appears to be dead until young Mr. Nas brings her back to life. TheWrap credits the episode to writers Ned Martel, Charlie Carver and series co-creator Brad Falchuk, with Crystle Roberson Dorsey directing.

Kelly reads that rescue as one of several mercies in the episode. His character also spares one of the men in the opening scene and later a dog. He told The Hollywood Reporter that the devil "decides to call it all off to end the great game" and saves a few people along the way, and that the baby mattered because Sarah Paulson's Cordelia is his character's grandchild. Later in the episode Ben stabs himself in the heart with a sword and turns to ashes, which The Hollywood Reporter describes as defeating Satan.

TheWrap says Satan chose to keep the fight going

TheWrap gives the reversal more room than The Hollywood Reporter does. It reports that the season followed characters from earlier instalments as they fought or conspired with the devil, who was trying to win a bet with God for control of Earth and the human race. In the finale, Satan changes course. He frees Cordelia from hell, tells her that ruling humanity and handling billions of lives did not sound fun, and chooses to keep ruling the underworld so he can go on tempting people into damnation for a few more generations.

The same report says Satan offered Cordelia his penthouse as a satellite office for her coven, and that she accepted reluctantly. The Hollywood Reporter's summary emphasises the witches instead: Fiona, one of Jessica Lange's characters, introduces Constance to the basics of witchcraft, and Mallory and Cordelia work out that Ben has to sacrifice himself. Kelly told The Hollywood Reporter that the last scene with John Waters as Mr. Phibes condemns him to hell while giving him exactly what he wanted, which is to keep making his biker movie for eternity. TheWrap notes that this crossover season was first teased last Halloween with the announcement of Lange's return, and that it used four of her earlier characters, for which she had four Emmy nominations and two wins.

The actor did not know the ending when he signed on

Kelly told The Hollywood Reporter that the writers were working as they went. There were maybe five episodes when he started and 13 in the season, he said, so "things change, things go and just play along". His reaction to Ben's sacrifice was immediate. "Well, I was flabbergasted," he said, then added: "I'm very unimpressed. Very disappointed in his choices."

He has not been watching the season as it airs. He is filming The Housemaid's Secret and looking after a baby at home, and told the paper that his television time "doesn't really exist anymore". TheWrap reports that he agreed immediately when Ryan Murphy called about the part, because it meant acting alongside Lange, Paulson and Waters, and that he calls the show "cuckoo bananas".

A suave devil rather than a snarling one

Kelly's devil does not shout. TheWrap describes him playing a "suave" and "a little debonair" Old Hollywood devil, and quotes his reasoning: "The devil's an individual who already knows everything and knows how to get what he wants, so he doesn't really have to push too hard." He added that it is "almost a little scarier if [he's] not scary".

His favourite scene was a dance. He told both outlets that tangoing with Jessica Lange as Constance was a high point, and told TheWrap the pair learned the routine about an hour before shooting and kept missing steps, with plenty of laughing between takes. He also described the prosthetic work behind the kills, including the black goo that sprayed him during the scene where his character kills the older version of himself. He told TheWrap he would still like to play "a really disgusting human" as a villain one day.

A painting is not a permanent prison

Mr. Nas is not dead in any ordinary sense. He is inside the painting, watched over by the Coven, and Kelly described the arrangement to TheWrap as being guarded by his kin, "essentially his granddaughter and daughter". "He's just stuck in a painting. You can always break out of that at some point," he said, and offered a purgatory reading along with a joke about the show reaching season 18.

Asked whether he knows the character's real fate, he said: "Nope. I don't think anybody knows a true answer on that. It needs to be written." Season 14 has already been renewed, and Kelly said he would seriously consider returning "if I get the call". Neither interview gives ratings, a production start for the new season or confirmation that the character comes back. Related coverage on this site includes The Diplomat's fifth-season renewal, the second and third seasons of Trauma Code and the Netflix date for Ethos season 2.

Sources & reporting limits

  1. American Horror Story 13 Ending Explained: Paul Anthony Kelly on Finale — The Hollywood Reporter
  2. AHS 13: Paul Anthony Kelly Unpacks That Puzzling Ending and His 'Suave' Take on the Devil — TheWrap
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