History Series / AmericanHorrorStoryCoven

** All witches possess at least one unique ability. Zoe Benson discovers her ability to [[DeathBySex kill people she has sex with]] when [[spoiler:her boyfriend violently hemorrhages to death during their first]]. They call it "Black Widow" if you needed a label for it.

* DeathBySex: [[ExaggeratedTrope Exaggerated]].
** Zoe's boyfriend, whom she accidentally kills with her cursed vagina.
** [[spoiler:All but one of the frat boys who gang rape Madison, one of whom is himself raped by Zoe while in a coma]].
** [[spoiler:Kyle's mother, who gets her head smashed in the day after she molests him by giving him a handjob]].
** [[spoiler:Kaylee, who gets shot in the head shortly after having sex with Hank]].

* OutWithABang: Zoe's death-by-vagina power causes this.

** TheChick: Nan--her PsychicPowers are decidedly non-offensive, and she's definitely TheHeart of the girls, trying her best to mediate conflicts. She also displays a knack for traditionally "feminine" activities like baking.

* NonIndicativeName: The term "transmutation" generally refers to the ability to transform one thing into another, such as [[BalefulPolymorph people into frogs]] or [[MidasTouch lesser elements into gold]], but here, the Wonder of Transmutation seems to refer exclusively to TeleportSpam.

* AlphaBitch: Madison. Taken UpToEleven by Fiona.

* EveryoneHasStandards: In a sign of [[ShownTheirWork historical accuracy]], the tour guide at the [=LaLaurie=] museum tour mentions that even ''other slave owners'', many of whom were marginally kind to their slaves ''at best'', thought Delphine's brutal tortures and cruelties were too much. The "Code Noir," which the guide also brings up, was essentially a "manual" for the proper keeping of slaves, and Delphine's taking it UpToEleven didn't sit right with ''anyone'' in New Orleans.

* SequelHook: Sort of. Originally the plan was to spin this season off into it's own show, but that was eventually decided against (presumably the producers realized they'd basically have to come up with an entirely new cast for the next season of AHS if all the current cast were doing Coven), and they tried to wrap things up. That said, however, this does remain the only season to date in which a sequel would be even theoretically possible [[spoiler: only about half the cast is actually dead, rather than the usual KillEmAll, and the Coven is growing.]] It can be argued that ''Apocalypse'' is a sequel season.

* KillEmAll:
** [[spoiler: Fiona and Marie's solution for the witchhunter problem.]]
** [[spoiler: Everyone's dead by the end of the season except Cordelia, Kyle, Zoe, and Queenie.]]

* GoodOldFisticuffs: How Misty Day pays back [[spoiler: Madison]] for [[spoiler: burying her alive.]]
* [[spoiler: HappilyEverAfter: Zoe and Kyle get their happy ending as she becomes a member of the council and he becomes the Academy's butler.]]

* IAteWhat: [=LaLaurie=] puts [[spoiler:Madison's shit]] into the coven's dinner one night. [[VulgarHumor They all think it's scrumptious]].

* WitchSpecies: The Salem Witches are born with certain magical powers; so far, Telekinesis, Pyrokinesis, Clairvoyance, Injury Transference, Mind Control, Sight, Resurgence, Life Drinking, Teleportation, Illusionism, and a Killer Vagina have been used.

* [[FiveManBand Five Girl Band]]: The five young witches form one:
** TheHero: Zoe--she's the ostensible main character (or, at least, the person who the audience follows early in the season), seems to desire doing the right thing, comes from a humble background, and is rather naive about the whole "witch" thing.
** TheLancer: Madison--she's everything Zoe isn't: haughty, wealthy, unafraid to use her powers freely to get what she wants, and promiscuous (contrast that with Zoe, who ''can't'' have sex because her powers literally kill her partners).
** [[TheBigGuy The Big Girl]]: Queenie--in addition to being the physically largest and strongest member of the group, her power of pain transferal is the most useful in a straight-up fight. Heck, she can even [[spoiler: shoot herself in the head]] and be able to shake it off!
** [[TheSmartGuy The Smart Girl]]: Misty--her ability to [[BackFromTheDead revive the dead]] is the most technically advanced and difficult to perform, and requires a good deal of practice and care, as she can't rush the process.
** TheChick: Nan--her PsychicPowers are decidedly non-offensive, and she's definitely TheHeart of the girls, trying her best to mediate conflicts. She also displays a knack for traditionally "feminine" activities like baking.
** TeamMom: Cordelia.

* RealityEnsues: Because they were sloppy in covering up [[spoiler:Zoe and Madison's revenge]], police came investigating. [[spoiler:If Fiona hadn't interfered, then the body count would have increased.]]

''Series/AmericanHorrorStory: Coven'' is the third season of Ryan Murphy's acclaimed anthology series. It follows a group of girls who are witches, and, as such, have unique supernatural powers. They attend a small school for girls like them in UsefulNotes/NewOrleans, and must deal with the trappings of what inevitably happens when unstable teenagers are given immense destructive power. Things only become more complicated when the Supreme, an incredibly powerful witch with all of their powers and much disdain for the human race, decides to move in and teach them how to defend themselves in the wake of a modern-day witch burning.

** Delphine [=LaLaurie=] admits to [[spoiler: murdering a baby and then telling the mother]], but even she would never [[ForcedToWatch force a mother to watch]] as she tortured her daughters.

** [[spoiler:Myrtle Snow gouges out the eyes of Cecily and Quentin with a melon baller during "Head".]]
** [[spoiler: Cordelia again, stabbing out her eyes with gardening shears in "Protect the Coven".]]

* FirstEpisodeSpoiler: Kyle dies in the bus crash after he interrupts [[spoiler:the frat boys gang raping Madison]].

[[caption-width-right:350: ''Coven'' cast.[[note]]Left wall foreground to background: [[ButtMonkey Cordelia]], [[WhoWantsToLiveForever Delphine]], [[AlphaBitch Madison]], [[TheEmpath Nan]]. Back wall left to right: [[CameBackWrong Kyle]] and [[AudienceSurrogate Zoe]]. Right wall background to foreground: [[VoodooDoll Queenie]], [[TheOphelia Misty]], [[MauveShirt Kaylee]], [[HollywoodVoodoo Marie]]. Floor background to foreground: [[ImmortalitySeeker Fiona]] and the [[BodyHorror Minotaur]].[[/note]] ]]

** Fiona forces Delphine to be Queenie's personal slave because, as she puts it, there's nothing she hates more than a racist. Given Fiona's interactions with Marie and other African-American characters, how much of this is due to her being anti-racist as opposed to her being a member of a society which has been prejudiced against for centuries is in question, though Fiona does mention she voted for Barack Obama in both of his elections.

** Fiona forces Delphine to be Queenie's personal slave because, as she puts it, there's nothing she hates more than a racist. Given Fiona's interactions with Marie and other African-American characters, how much of this is due to her being anti-racist as opposed to her being a member of a society which has been prejudiced against for centuries is in question, though Fiona does mention she voted for Barack Obama in both of his elections.

** [[GenderFlip Gender Flipped]] in Go To Hell. [[spoiler: When The Axe-Man discovers that Fiona never really loved him and was only using him for her own purposes, she gets an axe to the back.]]

* EveryoneHasStandards: In a sign of [[ShownTheirWork historical accuracy]], the tour guide at the [=LaLaurie=] museum tour mentions that even ''other slave owners'' thought Delphine's brutal tortures and cruelties were too much. The "Code Noir," which the guide also brings up, was essentially a "manual" for the proper keeping of slaves, and Delphine's taking it UpToEleven didn't sit right with ''anyone'' in New Orleans.

* JediMindTrick: Fiona uses one to take the tour of Madame Lalaurie's mansion for free.

** Those frat boys in "Bitchcraft" had no idea who they were literally fucking with.

** [[spoiler:All but one of the frat boys who gang rape Madison]].

* ArtisticLicenseBiology: Dead bodies decompose extremely fast in swampy New Orleans soil, making Marie's army of zombies ([[spoiler: especially Delphine's daughters]]) very improbable.

** Kyle's mother Alicia [[spoiler:molests him after Zoe returns him to her, and it's implied she's been sexually absuing him for a while before his death and resurrection.]]

* AllAbusersAreMale: Averted. At least three non-witch women are caught abusing or torturing men. [[spoiler: Delphine gets cursed by Marie for mutilating her lover, Joan is forced to drink bleach for abusing and killing her son, and Alicia gets killed after trying to rape a newly reanimate Kyle.]] Fiona has a history of verbally abusing and neglecting Cordelia.

** Madison takes a pretty brutal beating from Misty Day, and her hair and makeup aren't even so much as scuffled. She pops back up as if nothing happened.

** A young girl, Misty Day, who did not understand her powers as a witch was actually hunted down by religious fundamentalists and burnt alive--''in modern day America.'' This is what motivates Fiona to teach the girls how to defend themselves.

** In ''Asylum'', Creator/SarahPaulson [[spoiler: is raped by Dr. Threadson, and spends the remainder of the season trying unsuccessfully to abort his child, who grows up to be evil.]] In ''Coven'', [[spoiler:she is barren and tries unsuccessfully to cast a fertility spell.]]
** In ''Asylum'', Creator/LilyRabe plays Sister Eunice, [[spoiler:who was possessed by the Devil, and ultimately killed and then cremated.]] In ''Coven'', she plays Misty Day, and her first scene is [[spoiler:her character being accused of demonic possession and being burned alive.]]

** Both of [[Creator/DenisOHare Denis O'Hare]]'s characters are physically deformed (burn scars in ''Murder House'' and no tongue in ''Coven'') and in love with Creator/JessicaLange's character. Who takes advantage of them, using them as her [[TheIgor Igor]].

** [[spoiler: Zoe kills one of the above-mentioned AssholeVictim by [[OutWithABang raping him to death with her succubus vagina.]]]]

** Cordelia's completely unable to gain her mother's approval for anything, as well as having been "bitchslapped" by her a few times, resulting in a completely unstable relationship with her. [[spoiler: At one point, Cordelia even plans to kill her mother to save the Coven.]]
** Misty's grown up on the swamp, away from civilization with strange powers that make it so she has no friends (her parents aren't there, either). Because of that, she is desperate to not be alone and will do absolutely anything to make one friend (she also breaks down when anyone who could even possibly be her friend leaves her.)

** Marie claims Salem witches appropriated their magic from a voodoo practicing slave, who, in turn, learned it from a Shaman in Africa. How exactly gender comes into it is rarely explained.

* HollywoodHomely: In-Universe. Delphine refers to her daughters as "plainfaced" and refers to one of them as having the "face of a hippo," but when we actually see them they're all fairly attractive.

** [[spoiler: Spaulding's ghost interrupted Fiona's suicide attempt. He even gave her ipecac to make her vomit the pills.]]

* ITakeOffenseToThatLastOne: When Delphine visits her own house and hears that there were extravagant parties while she was torturing slaves, she says "Horsehit" then elaborates that "nobody's gonna waste their time with some uppity negro and miss a fabulous party".

** [[spoiler:it is shown in apocalypse, her actual hell is working at a retail outlet with an infinite line of rude and ungrateful customers.]]

* OffingTheOffspring: Joan Ramsey suffocated her son Luke with a pillow, when he was hospitalized and revealed to her that he knew of her involvement in his father's death. Later when Nan found out, she ended up killing Joan.

* OutsideGenreFoe: The police have no trouble at all figuring out what happened to the frat boys. It�s the ''[[MagicAndPowers how]]'' that they didn't even see coming.

* SequelHook: Sort of. Originally the plan was to spin this season off into it's own show, but that was eventually decided against (presumably the producers realized they'd basically have to come up with an entirely new cast for the next season of AHS if all the current cast were doing Coven), and they tried to wrap things up. That said, however, this does remain the only season to date in which a sequel would be even theoretically possible [[spoiler: only about half the cast is actually dead, rather than the usual KillEmAll, and the Coven is growing.]]

** That could be up for debate. Misty's power is inherent to herself, as she's been raising animals since at least middle school, if her personal Hell is anything to go off of; The Seven Wonders ability ''Vitalum Vitalis'' is more like [[LiquidAssets liquid assets]]; the ressurection spell is something specifically designed to emulate people like Misty who were born with the ability.

* WitchSpecies: The Salem Witches are born with certain magical powers; so far, Telekinesis, Pyrokinesis, Clairvoyance, Injury Transferance, Mind Control, Sight, Resurgence, Life Drinking, Teleportation, Illusionism, and a Killer Vagina have been used.