The long -awaited return of American Horror Story: Delicate not so great on air, but at least we got Siobhan. I’ve been saying that Kim Kardashian’s Siobhan Corbyn is the only bright spot of AHS Season 12 — often quite literally, as the season is so dimly lit it rivals any Marvel show — since the first half season airs in September. Even when things are inexplicable, tasteless, unfunny, or downright stupid, there’s Kardashian, ready to deliver another virtuoso quote about winning the Oscars is the only thing that matters in life or how young actress Anna Victoria Alcott (Emma Roberts) should beg for attention with a charity reel on Instagram.

But in Episode 7, “Ave Hestia,” we don’t get that. What disappointed me was that Kardashian and Roberts were nowhere to be found. Instead, we get a lot of backstory helping fill in the canyon-sized gaps in plot that let AHS: Delicate down in the first place. While that’s great, it’s still a little late in the game for things to start making sense. After this week, there are only two more episodes left in this season, which means just two more hours to find out why Kim Kardashian has an Irish last name!

Although Kardashian was absent this week, there were at least some hints about her lineage. (These references could be purely coincidental, but if host and writer Halley Feiffer hadn’t taken the opportunity to sit right in front of her, I’d be ready to start smashing vases flowers.) We now know that Siobhan was part of a coven of witches—duh—whose travels took them across the Emerald Isle in the 13th century. Perhaps this is where the coven chose a Siobhan young people to teach her their way of life? Unfortunately, that’s something we won’t know for a while, if ever.

The exposition is dealt to us in a rushed manner, without enough dramatic tension to really impress the viewer. While the episode provided some shocking images, the most disturbing was spending a week of Exquisite without our guiding light, Siobhan. I never thought I’d spend all of Wednesday evening, kneeling in front of the TV as time ticked away, begging Kim Kardashian to show up. But here we are. I can’t decide who looks more pathetic now: me or AHS: Subtle .

Episode 7 opens with another flashback, this time to Western Europe in 42 AD. Ivy (Cara Delevingne) is in labor and plunges a blade into her stomach, plucking out the twins to place on her chest. She spoiled them and gave them names: Sonia and Adeline. These are characters that resemble Annabelle Dexter-Jones in the present day. Adeline is the boyfriend of Max’s late wife Anna (Matt Czuchry), who Anna believes is stalking her and threatening her pregnancy. It turns out Adeline is actually dead. It was Sonia, her evil twin, who followed Anna. You can tell them apart by Sonia’s blunt bob hairstyle .

A jump back in time takes us back to Brooklyn, just a few years before Anna unraveled. It’s 2013, which explains why Adeline has a wildly successful vegan feminist restaurant in the district’s hippest neighborhood, Dumbo. While giving a pep talk to her all-female staff, Adeline tells them: “We must redefine domesticity, both soft and strong. This is matriarchal care with nurturing, elegance and grace.” These sentiments reflect AHS: Delicate’s hollow, disjointed message about motherhood thus far. It’s a gift but also a curse. It is the most beautiful thing a woman can experience and also the most ridiculous. It always means someone needs you and it also means you are willing to accept the greatest loss. Yes, motherhood is all of these things. But if you’re going to make a show called American Horror Story , it’s not enough to smear some corn syrup blood all over some empty scenes and call them monstrous. Don’t pee on my back and tell me it’s raining.

We know that Adeline keeps a secret room in her restaurant where she prays to the Greek goddess Hestia for good luck. When she comes out, Adeline finds Sonia, who has broken into her restaurant and turned on all the gas buttons. (Honestly, this is about as scary as AHS has been all season; do you know how many times I went back home after leaving my apartment to make sure I turned off the gas? ) A little double action is a nice change of pace for this season, and Dexter-Jones both plays beautifully, but this is a lot like Siobhan’s performance, and at this point, I’m getting nervous. The sisters have a small threatening exchange in which Adeline reveals that she has defected from her organization and they want her back.

Another flashback to Galway, Ireland in 1243 takes us into a family dispute between Ivy, Adeline, and Sonia, where Ivy berates Sonia for her insolence. There were repeated mentions of a god-like “She” these witches worshiped and worked for, and I clasped my hands and prayed for an hour that that person would be revealed to be Siobhan at the end of the episode. That’s not the case, or at least not yet. I clutched the smallest pieces of hope so tightly that they cut into my palm, like the sharp teeth that the witch Nicolette (Michaela Jaé Rodriguez) gave to Sonia when the episode returned to 2013. “You have grown up.” raised in his life such handsome little creatures. my own womb,” Nicolette tells her before Sonia flees.

This all leads to a big family reunion at the end of the episode, after Adeline is captured and tied up by Ivy, Nicolette, and Sonia. A fourth woman, veiled, entered the room – come on, come on, Siobhan! —and Adeline demands to know who it is. After several wrong guesses and a lot of screaming, the masked figure reveals herself to be Dex’s business partner, Talia (Juliana Canfield). Damned! Talia was in on it anyway. Now that she and Dex are opening a showroom together, Talia will make sure she guides Dex toward a wife who can carry “the purest product possible.” We know that in a few years, that woman will be Anna.

Before she could free herself, Adeline was killed by her own family. But not before Ivy cut open her belly, reached in to feel the weeks-old fetus inside Adeline’s belly, and rubbed the blood all over her face. “There is nothing more beneficial to the skin than fetal fluid,” she says. Here’s our confirmation that the semi-topical plot point, taken from this season’s three-year-old title is Q-Anon and conspiracy theories. Adrenochrome and baby’s blood to maintain youth and vitality forever. Give me a break.

Thankfully, we can soon expect the return of our dearest Siobhan, who will be joining the promo for next week’s episode. She and Anna will be back, and the Oscar campaign for Anna’s film, The Auteur , will also fail. It’s been a tough week without both of those things, and I pray that we never have to experience such a devastating shock to the system again.