As promised, American Horror Story: Cult finally unveiled Lena Dunham as Valerie Solanas Tuesday night, in a jam-packed episode that also brought back A.H.S. favorites Frances Conroy and Jamie Brewer. Tuesday’s episode introduced a seismic shift in the cult’s dynamic, but it also folded in one big inconsistency—one that could either be a huge plot hole at the core of the series or might just turn out to be a clue about what’s to come.

A refresher: after Meadow’s staged assassination attempt on Kai and subsequent suicide, Ally—who was found holding the gun Meadow used to commit the mass shooting—was detained by police. Ivy notes that it’s unclear where Ally is now, but the cult has bigger things to deal with anyway.

It seems Kai is reneging on his vow to Beverly Hope (Adina Porter), and Beverly is not happy about it—especially as Kai begins to surround himself with new, very white, very male followers. Coincidentally, Beverly runs into Bebe Babbit (Conroy), an ex-lover of Valerie Solanas—the former Warhol hanger-on who wrote the S.C.U.M. Manifesto asserting that men need to be purged from the Earth. Beverly brings Bebe to meet with the other women in the cult, where Bebe tells them all about her time with Valerie—who, according to Bebe, formed a cult of her own. She says that the women of S.C.U.M. committed several grisly murders—all of which got attributed to the Zodiac Killer. (Solanas and S.C.U.M. are real; the murders, probably, are not.)

This is where the story gets interesting—and potentially problematic for the A.H.S. universe.

According to Bebe’s story, one of two gay men within S.C.U.M.’s ranks was the one who sent letters to the press claiming to be the Zodiac Killer. In Season 5, however, American Horror Story itself showed the “Zodiac Killer” on Devil’s Night, when a group of serial killer spirits gathered at the Hotel Cortez to hang out with James March (Evan Peters)—indicating that in the A.H.S. universe, the Zodiac murders were in fact committed by a lone-wolf Zodiac killer.

Did the show just accidentally paint itself into a corner? Maybe—but maybe not. After Bebe’s story, the women of Kai’s cult are mad as hell and ready to send a message: they won’t be taken for granted any longer. Among the group is Winter, who speaks briefly with Kai in their dead parents’ bedroom. He asks if he can trust her, and asks her about the S.C.U.M. pamphlet he found in her room. She tries to brush it off—but he seems intrigued by the anti-male movement, and is inspired by it to come up with an acronym motto of his own. Kai comes up with “M.L.W.B.”—for “Men Lead, Women Bleed”—and when Winter dismisses it, he claims Harrison came up with the idea. Then, like clockwork, the women kill Harrison for letting Meadow be manipulated by Kai. (A choice line from Ivy: “I just drove my wife crazy; I didn’t get her killed!”)

Then comes the episode’s final twist: Kai and Bebe sit together on the couch, watching Beverly deliver a news report about a grisly murder that she helped commit. From this, it seems pretty clear that Harrison was right when he said “Kai’s the genius; he’s the author of everything.”

Given Bebe’s alliance with Kai, it seems as though her story about the Zodiac Killer was actually a lie—and who knows what else might be made up. Is there any reason to believe that Bebe Babbit actually is who she says she is?

As Kai himself tells Bebe, his followers are “at their best when they’re angry”; maybe, then, her tall tale was designed specifically to whip the women into a fury. It’s clear that Kai wanted to inspire this precise reaction, and that his conversation with Winter as well as Bebe’s appearance were all part of his plan. What’s unclear is what he’s hoping his followers will do next. Perhaps, now that he’s got a new gang of followers, Kai is hoping that the old ones will destroy each other one by one; with Harrison and Meadow gone, that only leaves Ivy, Beverly, Gary, and Winter.

Maybe, then, time will prove that Bebe isn’t a bold radical; she’s just another tool in Kai’s arsenal. But frankly, we wouldn’t mind either way—we’re just hoping to see more of her as the season goes on. American Horror Story just isn’t the same without Frances Conroy.