So this past Wednesday, the new season of American Horror Story premiered. If you're anything like me, you were dying to watch it. American Horror Story has always been one of my favorites, but in the past few seasons, it was falling short.
Last season, in American Horror Story: Hotel, I just couldn't get through the season. I had a bit of an excuse that I was just moving into college and getting settled, but I also didn't really want to watch it after the first handful of seasons. The male actors all looked too similar to me, there was too much happening between vampires and ghosts and who knows what else (not me because I never finished the season, even a year later).
But this new season looks amazing. And it's not just because the show has been amazing in the past. We all know Ryan Murphy can write horror. We've seen it in Scream Queens and American Crime Story. There's something else that sets this new season apart and I think I might have put my finger on it: historical accuracy and conspiracy theory.
This is the first time that American Horror Story is based on an actual historical event. Roanoke is a true island where people went missing. It's a part of the Outer Banks and now, there are some people who live there as well as some museums and theatre groups that are there to discuss the old town. There were people who lived there that vanished without a trace, historians are still trying to uncover the mystery.
This historical accuracy is something that we have never seen in American Horror Story before. Sure, we've seen racist idealizations in season two which were accurate to the time, but they weren't centered around a main event. In Freak Show, we saw... well... a freak show, and those did exist in history, but again, it wasn't something that was concrete.
The other component that will make this season interesting is seeing which conspiracy theories Murphy plays into. There are several ideas as to how the people vanished from the island. Some people believe that the group was slaughtered by a local Native American tribe. Some people think that the people simply assimilated themselves into another tribe. The more drastic theories imply that the group became cannibalistic (which is what I see Murphy spinning off of in future episodes).
Perhaps Kathy Bates will be playing Eleanor Dare, the first American-born English descendant. She was the one who created the Dare Stone, the only thing that can lead us to any sort of conclusion to the missing people of Roanoke since it tells of the dwindling number of people in the colony.
American Horror Story has always been an edge-of-your-seat kind of show and I know that Ryan Murphy won't let us down this time.
