| “ | The point is, in this whole, wide, wicked world... The only thing you have to be afraid of is me. | „ |
| ~ Fiona Goode to the other witches. |
| “ | Too much? well here's my other offer... You can all just die. | „ |
| ~ Fiona to the Delphi Trust witch hunters. |
| “ | Haven't you heard? I have no soul. I'll just kill them all. | „ |
| ~ Fiona deciding to kill all the other witches. |
Fiona Goode is the main antagonist of American Horror Story: Coven, the third season of the FX television series, American Horror Story.
She was played by Jessica Lange, who previously played Constance Langdon in American Horror Story: Murder House (the show's first season,) Sister Jude in Asylum (the second season,) and Elsa Mars in Freak Show (the fourth season). She was also portrayed by Riley Voelkel and Kate Paige in a few flashbacks.
Story
Background
As Supreme Witch of the Salem Descendants, the glamorous Fiona Goode lives a life of luxury, traveling the world and hobnobbing with celebrities. Now, she returns home to Miss Robichaux's Academy in New Orleans with plans to rule her coven again and repair her relationship with her estranged daughter's.
Fiona is obsessed with eternal youth and despises her aging body. Though her powers allow her to drain the life of her victims, she has yet to achieve her goals. She has a strained relationship with her daughter's, who sees her as an intrusion to her attempt at education at the academy. Fiona, however, disregards Cordelia's wishes and begins to instruct the girls on the true power of witches, while searching for immortality.
Story
Fiona Goode is sitting in a luxurious office, where Dr. Zhong tells her of a new drug that may, possibly, reverse aging. Intrigued by the promising serum, she demands that she be given it immediately. Taken aback by the forceful request, the scientist informs her that the drug must first be put through the proper trials and review before being administered. Disinterested in these bureaucratic obstacles, she reminds him that she holds the purse strings to his research and he eventually submits.
In her room in Los Angeles, Fiona is in a cocaine-fueled rage. The serum isn't working. The scientist visits the witch at her request and is met with her distress that the once-promising serum is not working. Angry himself and fed up with the vain woman, he rebuts that aging is a part of life; that all humans die. He tenders his resignation and is about to leave when Fiona telekinetically bars the doors and throws him against a wall. She then drains him of his life force until he is nothing more than a withered corpse.
Fiona smiles at her now youthful appearance, but the happiness is short-lived as her face quickly returns to its former state. Her magic isn't strong enough to grant her eternal youth.
Fiona returns to New Orleans after learning that the necromancer, Misty Day, was burned at the stake. She confronts her daughter's Cordelia Goode and Jennifer Goode, in the academy she heads, Miss Robichaux's Academy for Exceptional Young Ladies. Her daughter informs her that she is not welcome, but Fiona is indifferent to her daughter's rejection and resolutely informs Cordelia that she isn't leaving and that she will promptly start teaching the students how to defend themselves.
The next day, Fiona decides to take the students out. As they walk about, she lectures the four students of the school, Nan, Zoe, Madison, and Queenie, about the need for witches to stick together and stand strong. After Nan wanders away from a tour of the grounds of Delphine LaLaurie's former residence, Fiona tracks the clairvoyant down and, from there, discovers the location of LaLaurie's grave.
Later that night, she employs two men to disinter the coffin, revealing a very much alive LaLaurie. She unties the woman and sneeringly offers to buy her a drink.
Instead, Fiona brings the confused woman home to bind and gag her, only allowing her to speak when she asks about the secret of LaLaurie's immortality. She hides LaLaurie's presence from Cordelia, who notices a strange, disgusting smell from her mother's room.
Fiona's questioning of Delphine is interrupted by the arrival of detectives, who ask Madison and Zoe about the deaths of the frat boys, especially the one Zoe killed in the hospital. Just as Zoe cracks under the pressure, Fiona steps in, magically forcing the detectives to hand over their evidence and forget about their visit. She telekinetically throws the girls across the room before warning them that the only thing they should be afraid of in this wicked world is her, Fiona.
Fiona learns from Delphine that it was Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen, who cursed her with immortality before burying her alive.
Fiona visits a hair salon downtown, which is run by Marie Laveau, who appears not a day older than she was when she cursed Delphine. The two women square off, exchanging insults, while Marie does Fiona's hair. The Supreme subtly mentions leverage she has against Marie and asks for the secret of immortality, but the Voodoo Queen laughs in her face. As she orders her servants to throw Fiona out, the witch magically sets fire to a shelf of expensive wigs. She taunts Marie over her "shit-hole of a shop" before leaving.
After finding out that Delphine escaped, Fiona tracks her down in front of her former mansion. Delphine is depressed and the two bond, despite the fact that Fiona points out that Delphine deserved her punishment. Delphine hopes that Fiona will kill her and the Supreme says she might at some point, but not yet. The two women return home.
As it turns out, Fiona murdered the former Supreme in 1971, who deemed Fiona unfit to lead the Coven. Spalding was witness to the crime.
She then turns Delphine into the new maid of the school, despite the former socialite's protests. When Delphine refuses to serve Queenie, Fiona orders her to be Queenie's slave from now on, stating she hates nothing more than a racist.
When she tries to consult a plastic surgeon, the results of her blood work come back as disastrous. Fiona becomes increasingly suspicious when Madison Montgomery starts developing pyrokinesis. She takes the young witch in, secretly testing her advances in power. When Madison starts showing potential Concilium, Fiona gets her drunk on a seemingly innocent party tour to a pool bar. She confronts Madison about her future as Supreme among the portraits of former Supremes, telling the young witch that she is dying from cancer and regrets having been a bad leader of the coven.Madison offers help, but Fiona declines, wishing to go out in style. She confesses her crime to the young witch, ordering her to do the same to her now: cutting Fiona's throat with the very same knife she used to kill the former Supreme.
Madison refuses and, in the following struggle, Fiona seemingly accidentally slits the girl's throat. Spalding is yet again witness to the murder, handing Fiona a towel to wipe off the blood. Her smile gives rise to doubt whether the death was an accident. She orders Spalding to bury Madison deep below the lawn, coldly stating that the coven just needs a new rug, as Madison bleeds to death on the old one.
Later, she sits in a chair with a drink, while watching Spalding roll up Madison in the rug. Sensing something is wrong, she goes to Cordelia's greenhouse, where the Minotaur has attacked Queenie. After helping Queenie back to the Academy, she storms into Cordelia's room blaming her for the attack. While she and Cordelia argue, Queenie, now unconscious, is dead. However, Fiona magically breathes life back into the injured student.
Later, while getting ready to go out, she has a brief discussion with LaLaurie.
After Cordelia nervously reveals the attack on Queenie and her visit to Marie Laveau to the Witches Council, Fiona walks in and tells her daughter to stop talking. She insults Myrtle and greets the other two members of the council. Myrtleinforms Fiona that a student has alerted them to the possible death of a student.
After the Council questions Cordelia and the other students, Fiona is again before the Council. Myrtle describes to Fiona all of her failings while she has been Supreme. Fiona seems unaffected and unconcerned by her lack of leadership. After being questioned about Madison's murder by Myrtle she manages to get away with her crimes again, much to Myrtle's dismay.
After Cordelia is blinded by an unknown assailant, Fiona is distraught, looking over Cordelia in her blinded state while in the hospital. She enlisted Queenie's help in framing Myrtle for Cordelia's blindness and had her burned at the stake.
She began chemotherapy in order to try to be alive longer to take care of Cordelia. She began a relationship with The Axeman, who had gotten to know her since she was a child, haunting the academy since his death. She began feeling more of the negative effects of the chemo such as vomiting and hair loss and began to worry about being left alone to die.
Cordelia, having discovered the newly resurrected Madison, discovered Fiona's crimes in her murder and began to orchestrate with the other students as well as the resurrected Myrtle. They almost succeeded in having Fiona commit an overdose, but she was saved by the ghost of Spalding who told her about the plot and Misty Day. She confronts the conspirators and observes Misty's power of resurgence. Cordelia reveals to Fiona that the attack next door was committed by a witch hunter, based on the blessed silver bullet that was discovered at the scene. Fiona receives a package of Delphine's still-living head.
Fiona goes to see Marie Laveau, bringing Delphine's head with her, and offers an allegiance against the witch-hunters, Marie Laveau rejects the offer, confident that the witch hunters are only the Salem witches' problem. Fiona discovers Kyle, and restores much of his mind, saying that the house needs a guard dog with witch-hunters around.
Fiona contacts Papa Legba and asks to be made immortal like Marie Laveau, but is denied because she has no soul. Fiona and Marie team up to kill Nan by drowning her in the tub. Fiona and Marie have a sit down with the witch hunters and everyone is killed, thanks to the Axeman. Fiona admits to the Axeman that she doesn't love him in his apartment and he hacks her to death. Cordelia has a vision, where the entire coven is killed by Fiona, only standing over Cordelia's dead body to rip her mother's necklace from Cordelia's neck. The Axeman fed her body to the alligators in the swamp.
Fiona is last seen in the living room of Miss Robichaux's Academy after Cordelia's ascension. Nearly bald and weary from cancer, she admits her true feelings to her daughter as well as what actually happened with The Axeman. She had slaughtered a goat and doused The Axeman and his axe with its blood to make it appear as if he had killed her. They hug and cry until Fiona falls limp in Cordelia's arms, finally dead.
Fiona is then seen rousing from sleep in an unknown area, appearing as she had before the chemotherapy's effects had set in. She proceeds to put on her shoes; at which point, The Axeman appears, brandishing catfish for breakfast. Fiona refuses to eat it, ridiculing him. She asks how long she has been in the house, and The Axeman says that "You can't put a clock on eternity". They argue about her drinking. After he propositions her, she slaps him, prompting him to slap her in return. He tells her to relax and accept her fate, as she cries on his shoulder. Not far from them at a table sits a gleeful Papa Legba. Thus, Fiona's personal Hell is being made to live in an unfashionable place for eternity, robbed of power and control.
Personality and Appearance
Fiona is a beautiful and graceful woman, though exceedingly vain, particularly when it comes to aging. She is kind and compassionate, but is also ruthless, exhibiting no guilt over murder. As a manipulative and powerful witch, she fears no one and wants to live forever. She also finds amusement in taunting and belittling others, including her own daughter Cordelia, whom she verbally rips to shreds at any given occasion, to the point of verbal abuse.
Fiona favors wearing black, though she is extremely abusive, derisive, sarcastic, disdainful, egotistical, contemptuous, temperamental, vituperative, and opprobrious towards other common stereotypes of witches. Anyone she deems useless she eliminates, whether it is by simple memory wipes, or by inhaling their very life force. Despite her vanity, she does care for her daughter and her pupils in her own strange way, but is not above using them for her own benefit when the opportunity arises. Also, as a positive and empathetic side of her complex personality is the fact that she utterly despises racists and bigots, and makes it very clear to their faces.
Upon learning she has cancer, she becomes depressed and begins to lose the will to live, but upon meeting the Axeman, she return to her normal self. She has shown several sociopathic traits such as deception and manipulation. She manipulates the Axeman into doing her bidding on more than one occasion. She isn't above manipulating anyone else either, she commonly uses other people for her own gain. After finding out that she had no soul, her first idea was to kill all of her fellow witches.
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