Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood) may be adamant that he knows how his six children really died — and that he is to blame — but we have yet to see any of those deaths in order to make our own assessment. That is, until the gruesome “The Masque of the Red Death,” in which we take a closer look at youngest Usher son Prospero’s (Sauriyan Sapkota) last few days before meeting his grisly end. Prepare yourself —you’ll be able to smell the melting flesh from your couch.

How does Prospero Usher die?

Let’s get right to it. Still feeling burned from his failed investment pitch to his father and Aunt Madeline (Mary McDonnell), Prospero, or Perry if you prefer, decides to take matters into his own hands. It’s true, he doesn’t need the nest egg promised to all Usher children to start his hedonistic VIP nightclub, but as it turns out, he does need access to some Usher property by way of Fortunato Pharmaceuticals. Thanks to the disaster that is Perry shadowing Frederick (Henry Thomas) at Fortunato, Perry becomes hip to the fact that the company owns a bunch of abandoned testing facilities and warehouses. Sure, they might be leaking toxins into the earth, but they’re also a great location for a secret VIP party. 

Perry finds the perfect location and has his people set up the bar and hook up the water tanks on the roof to the sprinkler system so he can make it rain on his hand-picked guests. He prepares for a sex-fueled night that is actually more about blackmailing the VIPs in attendance with footage than becoming a nightclub entrepreneur. He is pretty awful — it’s a family trait. But Perry is about to get his, a fact heralded by the appearance of a surprise guest. A woman in a red cloak and a skull mask, who was definitely not on the guest list, arrives and Perry can’t help but be drawn to her. He finds her waiting for him in one of the “bedrooms,” and when she removes her mask, she looks curiously like Verna (Carla Gugino), the bartender Roderick and Madeline met in 1979 — except she’s blonde and hasn’t aged a day. She talks to him about consequences — how he’s a consequence of his father’s actions and how his actions leading to tonight have consequences. “We could’ve had fun, you and me,” she whispers before she’s off. 

The red-cloaked Verna roams around the party and whispers something into the ears of anyone who’s on staff. The bartender, security guards, and waitresses file out of the building without saying anything, but no one seems to notice. Certainly not Perry, who is awaiting his big rain moment to kick off the orgy portion of the evening. While what happens after the sprinklers go on is dramatic, it’s certainly not the way Perry imagined it. It turns out that those tanks on the roof of the building aren’t filled with water after all — they’re filled with the toxins Fortunato has been claiming not to know about. The sprinklers open up and rain down acid on everyone inside. Flesh is melting, people are screaming, and the doors are locked. Amongst the pile of bodies and burned flesh, Verna finds Perry and gives him one small kiss on whatever’s left of his lips, before placing her skull mask on him as he dies. 

What happens to Morella Usher?

Ahead of the doomed party, and in an effort to stick it to Freddie, Perry pays a visit to his half-brother’s house and has a tense and highly inappropriate conversation with Freddie’s wife, Morella (Crystal Balint), about feeling alive again and tapping into her sexuality in ways her husband could never imagine. Perry’s plan is to seduce Morella and get it all on video at the party so he can lord it over Freddie. It’s a power play and Morella is just a pawn — but she falls for it. She winds up at the party, ready and willing to explore a few things with her brother-in-law. Before anything happens though, Morella gets a whispered warning from Verna to leave, just as she told the staff members. But when the acid starts pouring down from the ceiling, we still have yet to see if Morella heeded that very good, very smart advice.

Um, what is happening in that house?

As Roderick continues to tell his story to Dupin (Carl Lumbly), he’s visited by the melted-skin version of Perry, just lurking around, flesh out, while his father tells the story of his demise. Is this a ghost or, as Roderick explains to Dupin, is this one of the hallucinations he now suffers from due to his recently diagnosed vascular dementia? Why can’t they be one and the same? Either way, keep your eyes peeled for more dead Usher children roaming the property.

Who is Rufus Griswold?

Back in 1979, when Roderick (played by Zach Gilford in this timeline) works for Fortunato Pharmaceuticals but is not yet running the place, Rufus Griswold (Michael Trucco) is the company’s CEO. He’s the man Roderick first pitches Ligodone to, calling it a “universal, nonaddictive painkiller” with the potential to “change the world.” Of course, thanks to the continuing chat in the present between Roderick and Dupin, we know that Ligodone is a highly addictive drug that has ruined countless lives — due in no small part to Fortunato’s misleading marketing. (Sound familiar?) Back in 1979, Roderick tries to pitch it as a way to help people live pain-free while also spinning an enormous profit. Rufus, however, doesn’t bite and enjoys humiliating his underling. 

Roderick returns home to wife Annabel Lee (Katie Parker) and his sister, Madeline (Willa Fitzgerald), and Annabel wants him to consider moving on from Fortunato — the unrelenting drive to claim the company as his birthright and to “change the world” might not actually be the healthiest thing. However, Madeline — now a tech genius working on algorithms that will eventually lead to artificial intelligence — takes the opposite stance. Rufus Griswold is simply a brick wall they need to bulldoze through to get what they want. They aren’t giving up yet.

What are the other Ushers up to in Episode 2?

Oh, generally terrible stuff. Victorine (T’Nia Miller) is trying and failing to implant her heart mesh device in apes and lying about the results to Roderick, who pushes her to move on to human trials. Roderick believes the device is the only thing that will help his vascular dementia. Camille (Kate Siegel) is obsessed with finding the Usher informant and has set her sights on Victorine, whom she apparently loathes. Oh, Camille also uses her two assistants (Igby Rigney and Aya Furukawa) for sex, so there’s that. Speaking of weird sex stuff, we learn that Tamerlane (Samantha Sloyan) and her husband and exercise influencer, Bill (Matt Biedel), hire sex workers to dress up like Tammy and act out mundane scenarios with Bill before having sex, all while Tammy watches. 

Roderick’s new wife, Juno (Ruth Codd), spends some time getting to know Roderick’s granddaughter, Lenore (Kyliegh Curran) — she tells Lenore the story of how she met Roderick in the hospital while hopped up on Ligodone and offered to give its inventor a… well, a little gift. It’s awkward for everyone. Lenore is also spending time with Great Aunt Madeline who, as it turns out, is still on her artificial intelligence kick, obsessed with immortality, and attempting to make an AI version of Lenore. It’s the Usher way of family bonding.