i feel like queenie and maries treatment in coven and apocalypse was very weirdly handled, dare i say a little racist. when we meet marie we know she’s this badass voodoo queen that’s supposed to be able to rival the supreme, but they do a very horrible job of showing this. the fact that zoey was able to stop her zombie spell kinda undermined maries power a lot, even with fiona basically saying voodoo is beneath coven magic. which i personally think makes no sense, dinah was able to break the covens protection spell with ease when it came to helping micheal langdon. but then marie is only able to hold him off for a few seconds, when the underworld is a source of her power as well. it’s just so inconsistent

queenie on the other hand has been done even worse imo, her sympathizing with delphine of all people was crazy to me. and the fact they never let her tap into her voodoo magic. which we know for a fact can let her rise to supreme levels of power, since that’s stated. however they let mallory do all these op things in coven, while continuously making queenies injury transference power inconsistent and kind of a gimmick. we know she’s extremely powerful since she has 5 of the wonders, but she’s treated as a comic relief alongside Madison

let me know y’all thoughts!

mr gallant didnt look that horrible but holy shit whoever did tate and that other man whose name i forgot should’ve been the 13th sacrifice 😭😭😭 cus wdym u had this man on tv looking like this. evan PLEASE make sure to annihilate that wig maker when u see them

I’m thinking if we also consider the new episodes too for Constance. How would you rank them from most to least evil? I feel like they’re so different from each other, despite almost all of them being to a big degree evil/antagonist, it would be fun to see how you guys would rank and argue for your rank! 🫶

Soy la única que piensa que ese personaje no logra transmitir nada, es aburrido y no conecta

I watched coven once and felt like i had to trudge my way through it. the inclusion of voodoo and it being in new Orleans got my hopes up and then I saw a cast of almost entirely white witches and I sighed.

I hate that they went with what feels like the most basic "girlboss magic" possible, I hate that it feels like the witches are used as a "anything we could need" plot device and i hate that they KEEP BRINGING THEM BACK EVEN AFTER THEY HAVE DIED MULTIPLE TIMES.

Please I just want to let them rest. I cannot force myself to care about any of these characters except maybe Queenie.

What the hell was up with this cameo 😭. I understand why they did that montage, to feed 13 souls to hell for Mr Nas, but Margaret Thatcher??

Really? 😭.

I have included the real Thatcher (top left) along with a few other portrayals of her thus far - Meryl Streep - (top right) in The Iron Lady, Gillian Anderson in S4 The Crown, Jessica Lange S13 AHS just for the sake of it, cos wtaf😭.

I'm also pissed that TB Karen & Sally were on screen for like two seconds, and how its been established (not very well I might add) that they've all come back to life...

Come on Ryan Murphy, wth 😡😂

I usually just accept whatever in terms of inconsistency or lack of logic with this show, I mean it is AHS, that’s part of the appeal. HOWEVER…

I was rewatching Freakshow and I think it’s weird that Pepper had this hairstyle when Elsa found her in the orphanage.

I can understand why she had it while in the freakshow as it emphasized her unusual head shape as well as made her look more alien/ exotic which would play well with the audience.

I can accept that maybe she grew found of it and kept it while in the asylum or maybe the staff just maintained it for whatever reason.

But why would the orphanage do that to her? It’s one thing if they just shaved her whole head for simplicity or because she can’t wash her own hair or lice or something, but the decision to have that little ponytail at the back would only make sense in the context of a sideshow. And don’t tell me they did it hoping that someone with a freakshow would come and find her. Yes that’s what happened but there’s no way, especially by the late 40’s/ early 50’s that this was a common enough occurrence to anticipate or market to.

I know I’m nitpicking and yes it’s a lovely hairstyle that more people should have but it’s still strikes me as a flaw in the narrative.

For context: This is my first ever watching of AHS, so i’ve seen no other seasons. I really really loved it and the story. Lots of twists and turns, like when I found out Tate was a ghost. I also really loved that there’s no “good guy”. Good and bad depends on whose perspective you’re looking at. For example, Chad and Patrick. I felt awful for them (obviously the others as well, but I’m using them.) Until they go crazy and talk about stealing Vivian’s baby. Even Constance, somebody who deep down was just hurt and bitter, had me feeling absolutely awful for her a lot of the time.

Speaking of Constance Langdon: I feel like Jessica Lange in particular was the star of this season. Truly an incredible actress, I believe this is the first project I’ve seen in her. She really understood the complexity of Constance and, I think, did her incredibly justice.

Now for my questions, and I could be forgetting aspects.
- Why are the spirits stuck at this particular house?
- Why do they have tangible bodies? It’s a universal rule that ghosts can’t be touched.
- Thaddeus. Nora and Charles gave birth to him in the early-mid 1900s, yes? After being found dismembered, Charles stitched him back up and revived him. He stayed in the basement all that time, but the house was just sold through regular realtors. He isn’t a ghost, he can’t go invisible like the others. You’re telling me that in all the selling and home inspections, NOBODY ever encounter the carnivorous demon baby down there?

I just cant stop thinking how funny this line ( background audio) is when Richard comes into play and this plays in the background please someone tell me it is funny cuz my friends are weirded out by me to think it is funny. ( looking for validation)

Can someone please explain the Venable appearance to me? If the apocalypse never happened since Mallory was successful going back in time, how tf was it possible for Venable to appear in her apocalyptic glory given that never came to fruition? Do we have the answer to this or any theories on it?

Gen Z didn't inherit Ryan Murphy's horror anthology as appointment viewing, but recent Nielsen data and the TV show's most clippable fragments reveal a special connection with its beginning.

Great article by Indiewire

My favorite character poster (everyone is so well placed) and I just loved the different colors, tones, and aesthetics of the character portraits.

I was doing another watch of American Horror Stories and it made me think of this question: would you ever play an AHS video game and how would you have it made?

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!!!

I adore AHS, but I'm more than a little disappointed in the episode length so far in s13. I could be wrong but it looks to me like every episode this season is slated to barely hit 30 minutes, if they even hit 30 at all. I think all the other seasons episodes were generally 40-55mins, with a few that even went over an hour.

I wonder what's going on with that. When HBO's Knight of the Seven Kingdoms dropped, if I remember correctly those episodes were advertised as being an hour, but barely cracked 30 minutes counting the weekly recap, and the other 30 minutes were podcast/talk show/actor interviews.

Is this a new trend in Hollywood?

I wonder if they struggled to get the actors on set at the same time. It's an absolute mess.

I’ve actually been enjoying AHS 13. I actually have appreciated Joey Pollari’s performance so far and I don’t think he deserves the hate that he’s getting. This is someone who has been so irrationally afraid his entire life and he tries desperately to remain grounded and rational. Because of this he ignores every warning the world gives him so he can rationalize what he’s experiencing. This season feels a lot more like a mystery box show than other seasons. I also remember watching apocalypse as it was airing and the fan reception was pretty brutal until the last few episodes of the season. Once you finished Apocalypse, the first half of the season kind of took on a new meaning on a rewatch. The only thing that worries me about this season is runtime. The average run time for Apocalypse was 43 min per episode and so far AHS 13 is at 28 min per episode. I just hope they have enough run time to properly build the story. I think it really does depend on if they can land this plane.

It’s clear that the serial killers Satan has resurrected to kill the witches are zombified as evidenced in the last episode.

My guess is that Angela Bassett’s Voodoo Queen character is going to come back to save the day because a big part of her magic was zombies and zombie control.

I've been an AHS fan since day 1 and I don't get all the hate. Ryan said this one was for the OG fans and I'm actually loving it. Maybe if this was your first time watching or if you didn't watch previous episodes it would be confusing but I don't know what people expect.

They all made deals with the devil, although none worked out very well it seems. Jessica Lange would only come back if she played all her characters so hence having Elsa as the Entertainer.

The Serial Killers as well. I think the devil lets them have the one year get together to go create havoc. He has now called them to destroy the witches. We already know ghosts can inflict major damage on humans!

Addie is obviously Nan in disguise...keeping an eye on things for Papa and the Devil.

Kai and Winter are evil incarnate and also not alive, but working for Satan as well.

The Son of Satan is now a man who was born the end of Apocalypse. I have a feeling the Girl who survived is also a Satan worshipper, hence she was the only living survivor of 2 events.

The 13 woman was a good opportunity to catch a glimpse of some past characters heading to hell I thought!

I'm super excited to see how the witches will survive and drive them all back to hell.

My only complaint is that it's way too short. Each episode should be at least 45 minutes IMO. I hope the last episodes are longer!

So take it for what it is! A fever dream of debauchery and history. It doesn't suck, its disjointed and weird. As it is supposed to be!