Death is a constant presence in the “American Horror Story” world, but in “Delicate,” it looms in a way that’s quite dissimilar from “Delicate Condition.” While in the book, Siobhan (Kim Kardashian) and Anna Alcott’s husband, Dex Harding (“Gilmore Girls” co-star Matt Czuchry) both meet their makers, they die in entirely different ways than they do on “American Horror Story: Delicate.”
In the book, Dex dies in a car accident while transporting Anna to the hospital to deliver her child. On the series, he’s put through more of a wringer — first, Anna’s nether parts bite off his hand, and then he’s killed by Ivy (Cara Delevingne, who also played Meg this season) at the hospital.
Siobhan, meanwhile, is an entirely different person in “Delicate Condition” — she’s much kinder, and while she has nothing to do with Anna’s career, she is her best friend. Originally, she’s part of a fertility cult that tries to help the barren conceive. Unfortunately, when Siobhan explicitly intervenes to keep Anna from miscarrying, she breaks one of the coven’s major rules. Per their scriptures, she dies to ensure the continued life of Anna’s baby. In trade, Anna willingly agrees to allow Siobhan’s soul to take over her child’s body as a show of gratefulness. It’s even implied via a time jump that she, too, is a part of the Delicate cult now.
That’s quite different from what happens on the series, where Siobhan is revealed to be the millennia-old head of the Delicate Cult. She’s also Dex’s biological mother and has been tracking Anna since she was a child to use her as the perfect breeding stock. Talk about adaptation dissonance!