WARNING: This article contains spoilers for American Horror Story season 13.
American Horror Story has survived devil babies, murder houses and a clown with a taste for children, but season 13 might be the one that finally does it in.
Ryan Murphy assembled the best reunion cast the anthology has managed in years for its 13th season, with Sarah Paulson, Jessica Lange, Evan Peters, Emma Roberts, Angela Bassett and Kathy Bates all back. Somehow, it still might be the show’s most disappointing season yet.
I went in expecting a comeback. The show has been in decline for years, through Double Feature, New York City and Delicate, and season 13 had everything stacked in its favour: a reunion cast full of AHS legends and a premise built around the number 13 itself. Instead, the story has been a mess.
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The season opens strong, centred on Ben, a hospice worker whose fear of the number 13 collides with his dying client Mr. Nas and Constance Langdon. That was genuinely compelling television. Then the show abandons Ben and Mr. Nas for roughly four episodes to catch up on the Miss Robichaux’s Academy coven storyline, before cutting away to Queenie’s trip to hell, a brief appearance from Madame LaLaurie, and Twisty the Clown going on a fresh murder spree.
None of it connects. Storylines involving Tate Langdon and Kai Anderson have simply vanished for weeks with no explanation, and every new episode feels disconnected from the last.
It is the cast that stings most. Bringing back Paulson, Lange, Peters, Bassett and Bates was meant to be the gift to longtime fans. Instead, the writing has not given them anything worthy of their talent. Lange had not appeared in the franchise since 2018, and her return deserved a story built for her, not a handful of scenes in service of a plot that barely holds together.
Then there is the runtime problem. Early AHS seasons ran 10 to 13 episodes at 40 to 50 minutes each. Season 13’s episodes have run closer to 20 minutes, which has gutted the show’s ability to build the dread that made it worth watching in the first place.
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Ryan Murphy’s plate is famously full. He is also working on Monster, his true crime anthology for Netflix, the JFK love story series American Love Story, and a new season of The Watcher. It is hard not to wonder whether AHS has slipped down the priority list, and whether that is part of why season 13 leans so heavily on nostalgia instead of a fresh story.
Season 13 is not the worst AHS has offered. That title still probably belongs to Delicate. But coming off a cast reunion this stacked, the disappointment lands harder.
The finale airs on Friday, October 30, exclusively on Binge in Australia. Whether it can pull the season’s scattered threads together in its final episodes remains to be seen. I will be watching, mostly out of habit at this point, but my expectations are about as low as they have been in 13 seasons. Previous AHS seasons are available to stream on Disney+.
What did you think of American Horror Story season 13? Let me know in the comments.
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I sat down last Friday to watch the newest episodes of American Horror Story: 13, and before I had properly sunk into the couch, the credits were rolling.