Each season of Asylum, had one of the most dangerous and scary villains of all: Bloody Face, whose crimes became so popular that others continued his work long after the original one died. Created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, American Horror Story debuted on FX in 2011 with the season retroactively titled Murder House, which introduced the audience to the tone, narrative style, and actors that would go on to become regulars in the series. As American Horror Story is an anthology series, each season has a completely different story, theme, and setting, all of them related to the horror genre and taking inspiration from true events and real-life people and places.
The second season, titled Lily Rabe’s Sister Mary Eunice), abuse of power from characters like Sister Jude Martin (Jessica Lange) and Dr. Arthur Arden (James Cromwell), aliens, and a serial killer known as Bloody Face.
At the beginning of Asylum, characters and viewers are led to believe that Lana Winters’ (Sarah Paulson) trust, tricking the former into confessing to the crimes and the latter into trusting him to set her free, which he does, but only to fulfill his plans. After arriving at his house, Lana discovers that Thredson is not what he seemed and he reveals he’s the Bloody Face killer, explaining that he was abandoned by his mother as a child and had been looking for a replacement. Thredson believed Lana was “the one” and kept her locked up in his basement, where he also kept the body of Lana’s girlfriend, Wendy.
Thredson’s need to replace his mother began when, at medical school, he worked with the corpse of a young woman, which his mind projected as his mother, but when he tried to embrace her, he was repulsed by the coldness of her skin. Longing for a maternal presence and embrace, he sought out women who could take his mother’s place and targeted those he felt could have skin that felt like a mother’s, but when they didn’t meet those needs, he killed them and used their skin to make furniture and his “Bloody Face” mask. While she was kept captive in the basement, Thredson raped Lana, who got pregnant and used that to trick Thredson into confessing and killed him at his home after handing his confession to the police. Lana gave her son, Johnny (Dylan McDermott), up for adoption, and he showed signs of violence at a very early age, and once he learned who his parents were, he fully embraced his violent impulses and took on his father’s serial killer persona.
Oliver and his son were not the only Bloody Faces in Asylum – given the popularity of Oliver’s crimes, there were at least three known copycats: Devon, Cooper, and Joey. These were three teenagers who appeared to American Horror Story: Asylum, Johnny confronted his mother, who managed to make him realize that Thredson was a monster, which gave her enough time to redirect Johnny’s gun and shoot him in the head, effectively ending with the legacy of Bloody Face.
