Archie Brener

"I was destined to be the greatest actor of all time. Monty Clift? If I had been in A Place in the Sun George Stevens would have had me do the walk to the electric chair shirtless. I mailed away for one of those Charles Atlas exercise routines that they advertised in the back of the Superman comics, and I’d practice acting faces in front of the mirror. Sad. Happy. Moody. But Mother wouldn’t let me. I HATE HER. She can’t keep my greatness in the slips. One door closes, another opens. And this body is America. Strong, violent, and full of limitless potential. My arms will hold them down when they struggle. My legs will run them down when they flee. I will be the US steel of murder. My body holds a heart that cannot love. When Dora died she looked right into my eyes and I felt nothing. The clown was put on Earth to show me the way. To introduce me to the sweet language of murder. But I am no clown. I am perfection. I am greatness. I am the future, and the future starts tonight."

- Dandy Mott finding his purpose

Daniel "Dandy" Mott is the son of Gloria Mott and the true main antagonist in American Horror Story: Freak Show. He has a unique role in the show as we see him slowly develop into a serial killer.

He was portrayed by Finn Wittrock.

Personality
Unlike many of the freaks at the freak show, Dandy was physically beautiful, but this was not reflected by his personality. After having every whim catered by his mother, Dandy became a spoiled man-child. He enjoyed children's toys and playing dress up but should his desires not be met, Dandy tended toward tantrums and harming small animals. He still plays pretend in his luxurious play room and had no aspirations to fall in love and start a family as he finds the women presented to him as "cows" and babies as "boring", which Dandy tends to hate the most. His psychopathic traits mostly surface when he becomes bored and impatient. Dandy believes that he is superior to the rest of the people in his Jupiter community and fancies himself as a living "God" who is above the law and above society in general. He uses his families reputation, money and wealth to manipulate the authorities to get away with his atrocious behavior and vile actions.

Background
Dandy is a descendant of the similarly-tempered Edward Philippe Mott, and Gloria Mott's only child, and was spoiled throughout his life. He lives in a mansion with his mother and their maid, Dora. While Gloria gave him everything he wanted, she raised him the way her own parents raised her, and thus became an absent mother who was never there when he needed her most. He was known to be a rather mentally troubled child, as he killed the family pet and implicatively murdered the gardener's child.

1952
Dandy at first murders several animals to appease his boredom, but befriending a mentally ill psychopath (Twisty the Clown) allows him to work up to torturing people. Twisty's captives escaping (freed by Jimmy Darling) "ruins his Halloween", which finally provokes him into murdering Dora. His mother immediately catches on as she finds her the next day in the same spot. She helps him hide her corpse in the garden. Dandy attempt murder again as he stabs and mutilates a male prostitute, but is easily horrified at the fact that he was still alive after most of his disposing of evidence was finished.

The only person (or rather, persons) that Dandy is attached to are siamese twins, Bette and Dot Tattler. While Bette adored Dandy, Dot could see that he was not well in the head and had wrote down disrespectful thoughts of him in her diary. Dandy has a mental breakdown when he reads Dot's diary and they leave him to return to the freakshow. Gloria then tries to get him help and send him to therapy, as Regina, the daughter of Dora (whom was Dandy's first murder victim), begins to grow suspicious and threaten to go to the police. Dandy tells his mother that he'll continue the therapy sessions if she kills Regina, which she doesn't. Dandy confronts his mother of her origins with his child molesting father, who was also the cousin of his mother. From seeing his mother depressed, he holds a gun to his own head to try and kill himself to help his mother, but she says that she wouldn't be able to live if he had done so. He then murders his mother and proceeds to bathe in her blood.

Dandy proceeds to kill a door-to-door saleswoman, and ties her severed head to his deceased mother to re-enact the two as a puppet representing Bette and Dot. Out of fear for his mother not being able to cover up his murder, he goes to see fortune teller, Maggie Esmeralda. Having satisfied with his fortune, he pays her 100 dollars. Dandy encounters a drunken Jimmy, talking about how he recalls Dandy as the second clown who had assisted Twisty with his murders. Dandy then taunts Jimmy by saying that he is his God, and that he will destroy him and everything he loves.

Dandy allegedly follows Jimmy to the Tupperware womens party, and after he leaves, Dandy approaches and knocks on the door saying his car is broken down. Dandy is then let inside to use their phone, and while unseen, later on, all the women in the household are later found violently murdered in a large pool of blood. Regina later confronts Dandy about her going to the police, and Dandy delightfully confesses everything to her, then willingly invites her into his bath of blood, to which she protests. Dandy allows her to leave, while screaming out loud that he is a God. Regina brings a policeman, Det. Jack Colquitt, to Dandy's house. Dandy confesses to Det. Colquitt as well, just before offering him one million dollars to kill and bury Regina, to which he accepts immediately by shooting her in the head. After this, Dandy truly is "above the law."

He reappears working with the detective to manipulate Chester Creb, a new addition to the freak show. He does a psychological background and learns that he murdered his wife and her lover under the influence of his puppet/alternate personality, Marjorie. He steals Marjorie, and convinces Chester that she ran away and was going to tell the law about his murders. He tells Chester that she is in the big tent in the Freak Show, where "Marjorie" tells him to saw Bette & Dot in half.

Dandy appears once again to Bette and Dot some time afterwards. He attempts to warn them about Chester's mental illness, but they ignore his warning. This lead to the twins living and Maggie Esmerelda dying in their place instead. Before escaping the wrath of her defected employees, Elsa Mars sells the Freak Show to Dandy. Dandy arrives at the Freak Show later as the new owner. He proclaims that his dream has come true.

However, Dandy proved himself to be an even worse owner than Elsa. The freaks, having had enough of his abuse, stand up to him with Paul insulting him before announcing that they are all quitting. The next day, Dandy shoots Paul in the head with a gun and then kills Penny, Toulouse, Legless Suzi, Barbara and Amazon Eve while making his rounds, leaving only three freaks remaining alive (Desiree, The Tatler sisters and Jimmy). Bette and Dot agree to marry him and while at the dinner table, he begins to feel woozy after drinking some champagne. It's then revealed that Bette and Dot (along with Jimmy and Desiree) had been setting him up the entire time in order to avenge their fallen brothers and sisters. At the freak show, they chain Dandy up inside of a Harry Houdini escape box and turn on a water hose, telling him that, regardless of how handsome he is, he is an even bigger freak than them. They eat popcorn and watch in amusement as Dandy drowns inside of the box.

Quotes
"Do you think it's possible to take someone's power by eating their flesh?"

- Dandy to his psychologist.

"I am the law!"

"Because they're freaks? So am I, mother! When I'm with them I feel normal."

- Dandy to his mother.

"I wish you could be inside my body for one minute to know what it feels like to be me. It’s like when I had Tuberculosis and you took me out to the Utah desert, and there was nothing but dry, open space for hundreds of miles around us - that is what is inside of me. Those girls were a cool stream of Glacier Water; my heart bloomed as they nourished it. And now it’s all gone. There is nothing left but the dust and the scorpions inside of me. I was never destined to feel love. The desert knows no mercy. Anything you try to plant out there dies. I must accept this emptiness as a blessing, not a curse. I know why I was put here, Mother. My purpose is to bring death."

- Dandy to his mother.

Trivia

 * Dandy Mott's ancestor appears in Roanoke.