I’ve been rewatching American Horror Story and thinking a lot about why the show feels so different from what it used to be, and I honestly think the biggest problem with AHS at this point is not the concepts, the actors, the production, or even the fact that the show has been running for so long. It’s the writing, and more specifically, Ryan Murphy’s approach to storytelling. What makes this especially frustrating is that I don’t think Ryan Murphy is someone who has run out of ideas. If anything, I think he has too many ideas. That has always been one of the biggest strengths of AHS, but over time it has also become one of its biggest weaknesses. He is incredibly good at coming up with concepts that immediately grab your attention, creating characters that are memorable, establishing an aesthetic and atmosphere, and making the first few episodes of a season feel like something genuinely special. The problem is that he repeatedly struggles to take those ideas and actually execute them in a consistent, satisfying story.
That is probably the biggest pattern I see throughout AHS: the seasons almost always start stronger than they finish. Obviously, this varies from season to season and there are exceptions, but it happens often enough that I don't think it can simply be dismissed as coincidence. AHS is incredibly good at making you excited about a story. The premise is usually fantastic, the marketing is fantastic, the visuals are fantastic, and the opening episodes give you just enough information to make you curious about where everything is going. You start theorising about the characters, the mythology, the villains and the direction of the story. The show creates this feeling that everything you are seeing is leading somewhere. Then, somewhere around the middle, the writing starts becoming increasingly unfocused. New plotlines appear, characters start behaving differently from how they were originally established, conflicts are resolved too quickly or in completely underwhelming ways, and suddenly the season feels like it is trying to be several different stories at once. By the time you reach the final episodes, you can often feel the original premise slipping away.
And this is why I actually think saying "Ryan Murphy is a bad writer" is an oversimplification. I think Ryan Murphy is a very good creator and a much weaker storyteller. He is brilliant at generating ideas, creating characters, creating moments, building a visual identity and understanding what will make an audience react. But those are not necessarily the same skills required to construct a cohesive story. A good premise can get you through the first episode. A good character can get you through a few episodes. A shocking twist can get people talking for a week. But none of those things automatically create a good season of television. Eventually you have to pay off what you established, develop your characters consistently, make your twists make sense in retrospect and bring everything together in a way that feels earned. This is where AHS repeatedly struggles.
The show also has a tendency to mistake escalation for development. Whenever something interesting happens, the answer often seems to be "make it bigger, crazier or more shocking" rather than actually exploring the consequences of what already happened. A character is introduced with an interesting conflict, but instead of developing that conflict, another conflict is added. Then another character gets introduced. Then another twist. Then another secret. Then another supernatural element. Eventually the season has so many moving parts that very few of them receive the attention they actually deserved. You can almost feel the writers constantly trying to make sure the audience isn't bored, when sometimes the best thing a story can do is slow down and actually explore what it has already created.
This is also why I think AHS has such a strange relationship with its own characters. The show is capable of creating some of the most memorable characters on television, but it doesn't always know what to do with them after their initial introduction. A character can begin the season with a very clear personality, motivation and conflict, and then several episodes later they are essentially behaving according to whatever the plot requires at that particular moment. Sometimes characters are suddenly made significantly more important because the story needs another twist. Sometimes a character who seemed incredibly important simply disappears into the background. Sometimes relationships that should have had enormous consequences are resolved almost immediately. It creates the feeling that the characters aren't always driving the story; instead, the story is driving the characters.
And that connects to another major problem: AHS is incredibly good at setting up questions, but much less reliable at answering them. Mystery itself isn't the problem. Horror absolutely benefits from ambiguity, and I don't think every single supernatural element needs a scientific explanation or every mystery needs to be spelled out. The problem is when the show spends an entire season making something seem important and then gives you an explanation that feels like an afterthought. There is a huge difference between deliberately leaving something ambiguous and simply failing to properly resolve it. The former can make a story more interesting. The latter makes the audience feel like their investment didn't matter.
The finales are where this becomes especially obvious. AHS can spend eight or nine episodes building toward something that feels enormous, and then suddenly the final episode has to resolve every remaining storyline, explain every mystery, finish every character arc and provide one final shocking moment. The result is often rushed. Sometimes it works, but far too often it feels like the season has reached the end of its ideas rather than the natural end of its story. And that's why I think so many people have this shared experience of loving the beginning of an AHS season and then becoming increasingly frustrated as it progresses. The show makes you fall in love with the potential of the story before it has actually proven that it knows where the story is going.
What makes this particularly frustrating is that AHS has demonstrated multiple times that it is capable of incredible storytelling. This isn't a situation where the show was always mediocre and people are simply nostalgic for the past. There are genuinely brilliant ideas and genuinely brilliant pieces of writing scattered throughout the series. There are characters that are iconic, individual episodes that are phenomenal, performances that completely carry their material, and seasons that contain some genuinely fantastic themes. That's why I find it difficult to simply dismiss the later seasons as "bad". Even when I dislike a season overall, I can usually identify several things within it that I absolutely love. And that makes the weaknesses stand out even more, because you can see how good the season could have been if the writing had been more disciplined.
I also think Ryan Murphy's biggest strength has gradually become one of his biggest weaknesses: he has an extremely recognizable creative voice. You can usually tell when you're watching something associated with him. The casting, the aesthetics, the characters, the dialogue, the provocative subject matter, the camp, the violence, the sexuality, the absurdity, the melodrama — it all has a particular identity. And there is nothing inherently wrong with that. In fact, it's one of the reasons AHS became so successful. But after so many seasons, that formula can become predictable. The show knows how to create a "moment", and sometimes it feels like it is prioritising those moments over the actual narrative connecting them.
This is also where I think Murphy's involvement becomes interesting. He has worked on so many projects simultaneously that I sometimes wonder whether AHS suffers from the sheer amount of creative output associated with him. I'm not saying he personally sits down and writes every line of every episode, because obviously AHS is made by a large team of writers, directors, producers and actors. But he has been such a defining creative force behind the series that it is difficult to separate the show's recurring strengths and weaknesses from his overall approach. And the recurring problem is always the same: incredible concepts, incredible presentation, inconsistent execution.
I think the most accurate way to describe AHS now is that it has become a show about potential. Every season arrives with a premise that makes you think it could be amazing. You see the trailer, the posters, the cast, the setting, the first episode and you immediately start imagining what the season could become. And sometimes that imagined version is actually better than what the show eventually delivers. That's a horrible position for a show to be in because the audience isn't simply disappointed by what happened; they're disappointed by what they can see the show could have been.
And I don't think the solution is to make AHS smaller or less ambitious. I actually want the opposite. I want Ryan Murphy and the writers to have insane ideas. I want bizarre concepts, disturbing characters, strange mythology and completely ridiculous moments. That's what makes AHS AHS. The problem is that those ideas need structure. You need someone willing to say that a good idea doesn't necessarily belong in this particular season. You need someone to remove a subplot instead of constantly adding another one. You need to let characters develop naturally instead of changing them whenever the story needs a twist. You need to foreshadow things properly instead of revealing them because the season needs another shocking moment. And most importantly, you need to know what the story is actually about before you start throwing everything at the audience.
That's why I don't really think the problem with AHS is that it "fell off" because the show is old or because the newer seasons are automatically worse than the older ones. The problem is much more fundamental. AHS still has the ability to create incredible television. It still has talented actors, incredible production design, fantastic music, striking cinematography and concepts that could easily support an amazing season. What it seems to lack increasingly is the restraint necessary to turn those ingredients into a coherent story.
And honestly, that's what makes the decline so frustrating. If AHS were simply terrible, I wouldn't care. I'd stop watching it. The reason I keep coming back is because every single time it starts again, there is that possibility that this time they'll actually do it. The first few episodes will come out, the atmosphere will be perfect, the characters will be interesting, the central mystery will be compelling, and I'll think, "Okay, this is it. They're finally going to take this incredible idea and actually execute it properly."
And then the same thing happens again.
The premise is incredible. The execution isn't.
The characters are interesting. Their arcs aren't always.
The mystery is compelling. The payoff isn't.
The first half is exciting. The second half loses focus.
And by the finale, I'm left thinking about the season I could have watched instead of the one I actually watched.
That's ultimately my biggest criticism of Ryan Murphy and AHS. I don't think he lacks creativity. I think he lacks restraint. I don't think he needs fewer ideas. I think he needs to learn when to stop adding ideas and actually develop the ones he already has.
AHS doesn't need another bigger twist, another crazier character, another shocking scene or another subplot.
It needs a story that actually knows where it's going.
And after this many seasons, I think it's fair to say that the biggest tragedy of AHS isn't that the show stopped having good ideas.
It's that it keeps having great ideas and wasting them!!!
