Theory: What If American Horror Story Season 6 Doesn’t Have a Theme?

John Squires |

Sep 14, 2016

The sixth season of FX’s mega popular series “American Horror Story” premieres tonight, and at the time of writing this post, we still have literally no idea what to expect from it. Sure, the network has released over 20 short teaser videos in the past month or so, but if any of them provided any clues, they damn sure went right over our heads. So what’s the top secret theme, you ask?

Well, what if the secret is that there isn’t one?

If there’s any single aspect of “American Horror Story” that makes it different from all other horror shows it’s that each new season tells a brand new story; making it, for all intents and purposes, an anthology series. But what if, taking that concept to the next level, the show’s sixth season is an anthology season within that anthology series? What if, rather than telling one story across one season, the new season takes a page out of the “Tales From the Crypt” playbook and tells 13 individual stories?

I suppose the only way to test out the theory, at this point in time, is to compare it to what we definitely do know about the new season of “American Horror Story.” We’ve been told that the season will be spread across different time periods, past and present, and FX’s CEO also informed us, if we’re to believe anything the network has been feeding us, that many of the 20+ teasers we’ve recently seen were nothing more than misdirects. I’ll allow him to explain that one, in his own words.

“I think they’re really fun and funny and beautifully, artfully made,” John Landgraf recently said of the teaser videos. “And a lot of them are accurate. The others are all misdirects.”

If “a lot” of those 20+ teaser videos do paint an accurate picture of “Season 6,” and none of them seem to have that much in common with one another, could it be that a select 13 of those teasers represent the 13 episodes of the sixth season? Could some of those video titles, such as “The Mist,” “The Lesson,” “Lullaby,” and “Sunset Stroll” actually be the individual episode titles? You may remember that several outlets, including TV Guide, listed the new season’s first episode as “American Horror Story: The Mist,” which again seems to corroborate what I’m beginning to think isn’t such a crazy theory.

Maybe “The Mist” isn’t the theme, but merely the premiere episode’s title.

What about those set photos that recently leaked? They suggested that the new season draws some level of inspiration from the real-life Roanoke Colony, but the subsequent teasers seemed to bear almost no resemblance to anything we saw on that set; to the point that most people completely forgot all about those photos. Again, it’s very possible that the set we saw was merely the set for one standalone episode of Season 6, rather than an indication of the season’s theme.

If you think about it, an anthology season of “American Horror Story” would allow Ryan Murphy and company to do what they do best. Not being beholden to telling one story throughout the entire season would potentially allow them to sidestep the most common complaint about the series: the oftentimes poor storytelling. Many viewers seem to tune out within the first few episodes, but the anthology approach would encourage everyone to come back each week. If you don’t like the story one week, there’s always a brand new one headed your way the following week.

Now that’s smart television.

What do you think? Just another crazy fan theory? Sound off below!