American Horror Story has not featured aliens as an antagonist for its last seven seasons, so what does the return of extraterrestrials in the upcoming season 10 mean for the series? With nine seasons to its name, the anthology horror series American Horror Story has run the gamut of classic genre villains. Everything from demonic possessions zombies to serial killers, to vengeful ghosts, have appeared on the show, and all of those were featured in the second season alone.
Now, though, season 10 of American Horror Story is set to bring back aliens for the first time since season 2, Asylum. The anthology horror has successfully utilized extraterrestrials as unexpected villains before, but the aliens of Asylum were only featured briefly in a very over-stuffed season. As such, many fans are not sure what to make of their presence in season 10’s promotional materials.
American Horror Story’s season 10 teaser heavily features aliens, but what does this say about the theme/tone of the upcoming season? It is important to note that season 10 is already being promoted as a split-season (hence the title “Double Feature”) wherein two worlds will collide in one season’s story. The first side of the season is “Red Tide” which, judging by the trailers, will be a story of mythological sea monsters called “Sirens”, but the teasers thus far have heavily indicated that the two stories could overlap. Many seasons of American Horror Story such as Roanoke and Apocalypse have followed one storyline for their first few episodes, only to reveal that the real story of the season is a related, secondary story. Thus, these rubbery aliens may only be the decoy villains of season 10, and the series could reveal that they are merely minor background antagonists.
This was the case with Asylum’s aliens, who abducted Evan Peters’ Kit and performed some sort of unexplained experiments on him, but were never depicted in detail or explained after this backstory was established. Instead, the majority of the season focused on Sarah Paulson’s American Horror Story heroine, and Kit was relegated to a supporting character. One piece of evidence that reinforces the idea that the extraterrestrials of Double Feature will turn out to be decoy villains is the fact that the classic sci-fi grey men seen in the trailers do not bear a close resemblance to the only canonical aliens of American Horror Story, those encountered by Kit.
However, American Horror Story: Double Feature may take the opposite approach and use aliens as its primary antagonists, with the Sirens being a decoy. This would also explain why the teaser’s aliens do not look like earlier aliens on the series, as American Horror Story rarely reuses villains and will likely want to establish a new form of extraterrestrial if they are to be the season’s main villains. However, it is impossible to predict which of Double Feature’s villains will be the primary antagonist of the season until American Horror Story returns, and this means that the question of whether these aliens are related to those seen in Asylum or are an entirely new species will remain a mystery until then.
