Episode Recap: When Hell Freezes Over

McKenzie brings the contestants to the middle of the desert to deliver their latest Spotlight Challenge - to create a demon. Everyone has been talking about how they have to break Anthony’s winning streak, but when Alam gets paired up with him, she figures it might not be so bad for him to win once more. The teams pick names of demons from various cultures, do some sketching in the scorching heat, and then head back to the lab to get to monster-making.

House and Meagan clash over how to make their two-headed snake demon, and Alex is less than confident about her partner, Autumn’s, sculpting skills, but no one’s having a harder time than Jenna, who has a tumor in her hand that makes it by turns numb and full of shooting pain. She and her partner, Katie, press forward as best they can, with Katie attempting what’s called a walker - that is, a device that allows the actor to appear as if their walking on all fours - but Jenna finds sculpting almost impossible.

McKenzie comes in and delivers a twist: All of the demons must dwell in an ice realm. Eric F. and Wayne feel great, since their demon hails from Russia, but iciness was the opposite of Eric Z. and Kris’s aesthetic, so they have a lot of work ahead of them.

On application day, Wayne is stressed because he and Eric have put so much effort into sculpture and animatronics that their paintjob will suffer, a fault he’s been called out on before - and after everything, the electronics fail. Autumn is feeling chipper about her demon, but Alex is less hopeful about their creation.

The judges do, indeed, take issue with Eric F. and Wayne’s paint job, but the three-foot horns and sculptural technique that allows the actor to see out of the mouthpiece more than make up for it. Also lauded is Anthony and Alam’s work, which manages to be beautiful, divine, and demonic all at once. Anthony’s work on the face sculpt includes details that enhance one another and bring a fresh take to the challenge, bringing him his fourth straight win.

Autumn’s confidence, however, was unfounded, since the roughness of her sculpture, among other things, put her and Alex’s demon in the bottom. The judges were also disappointed not only in the result that Jenna and Katie brought forward, but also in their time management, knowing, as they did, that Jenna’s hand would be a heavy weight on their productivity. Their paint job was also flat, but it was the walker arms, which wound up looking totally disconnected from the rest of the makeup. Since Katie designed the walkers, she is the artist to go home.