R.I.P. (Rest in Pestilence) Abby Borden

Abby spends the hour hunting a remedy for a life she hates, including a turn toward leaving Andrew. The series does not leave that door open. Lizzie puts the plan in motion, and the episode depicts Abby's death as the first of the two household killings — the show's answer to a question the 1893 jury refused to close.

The hour also opens a second timeline. In 1988, nearly a century later, Aileen Wuornos — played by Sarah Paulson — enters a later-era story that has no documentary link to Fall River. The cut is the season's argument in miniature: the Borden case as a story other women, and other killers, can inherit. History does not connect those lives. The series does it on purpose.