American Horror Story concludes its 11th season with one of its bleakest and most downbeat endings yet. With the Mai Thai Killer finally captured, the various protagonists face a reckoning of an entirely different sort. Season 11, Episodes 9 and 10, “Requiem 1981/1987 Parts One and Two” unmasks who the real monster in the room was the entire time. Big Daddy — the leather hooded figure stalking New York’s LGBTQIA community throughout the season — is revealed to be a personification of HIV.

The final episodes recount how Big Daddy stalks and kills the surviving characters one by one, leaving just a single survivor to bear witness. In the process, it borrows a trope from a much older ghost story. Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol figures heavily in the final episodes, particularly in the case of the season’s resident Scrooge, Sam. This time, however, there’s no eleventh-hour redemption: only regret for the paths not taken.

The AHS Season Finale Reveals the Ghosts of the Past

AHS’s season finale, “Requiem,” reveals the spread HIV in the months and years following the Mai Thai Killer’s demise. That includes copious use of flashbacks, as ex-cop Patrick is shown the mistakes of his life by the spirit of his departed ex-wife, and his lover Gino is forced walk alone among the ghosts until the disease claims him too. But Sam is cut from a different cloth. He’s one of the season’s chief antagonists: a slimy power broker with a taste for sexual sadism who willfully abuses anyone in his orbit. AIDS claims him as well — the disease doesn’t differentiate between saint and sinner — but not before he faces a reckoning for his crimes.

Sam experiences his wake-up call as a vision during the funeral for Theo, the photographer who served as his intermittent lover and target for his abuse. Sam appears to awaken in an abandoned hospital ward, full of dying and forgotten patients. Theo guides him room by room to show him the various men he used and abandoned: forcing him to acknowledge his fundamental selfishness. He also sees himself perishing because of the virus and without a single soul to comfort him.

The sequence then shifts, and Sam finds himself locked in the cage he used to torment his victim in. Henry appears, dressed in biker’s leather, and inviting Sam to watch while his estranged father and former boss are tortured in front of him. When his turn comes on the rack, he rematerializes on a Fire Island beach. Big Daddy is waiting for him, along with the spirits of the Mai Thai Killer’s victims. He transforms to ash which Henry then tosses into the sea.

There’s No Redemption for AHS’s Scrooge

While there’s no direct reference to either Scrooge or A Christmas Carol, Sam’s self-delusions are eerily similar. Henry serves as an adept Ghost of Christmas Past: leading him through the various people in his life who twisted him into who he was. Theo makes a Ghost of Christmas Present, as he reveals where Sam’s lifestyle and emotional abusiveness leads. And Big Daddy makes for a silent Christmas Future, with the same dark promise as Dickens’ version as well as the same destination.

It’s a reminder of how bleak A Christmas Carol can be, and how its message of redemption hides some very dark truths about human nature. American Horror Story uses the same dramatic device in the same manner: stripping away its subject’s justification for his selfish life until nothing but the unvarnished truth remains. Scrooge, at least, got a second chance — something American Horror Story rarely provides its characters. For Sam, however, there’s no escape on this one. The wisdom to change comes far too late.

American Horror Story: NYC is currently streaming in its entirety on Hulu.