American Horror Story: 13 Keeps Showing Us the Coven. The More Interesting Question Is Why
FX has released another teaser for American Horror Story: 13, and once again, the witches are taking up a suspicious amount of oxygen.
The latest footage puts renewed emphasis on characters connected to Coven, including the returning Cordelia Goode and other familiar faces from the third season, just days before AHS: 13 premieres September 24 on FX and Hulu.
Normally, this is where you would conclude Season 13 is essentially Coven 2.
Except Ryan Murphy has already told us that isn't what this is.
Season 13 is instead being presented as a crossover involving characters from throughout the anthology's history. Returning figures include Cordelia Goode, Constance Langdon, Kai Anderson, Twisty the Clown and others drawn from seasons including Murder House, Coven, Freak Show, Hotel and beyond.
Which turns the newest teaser into something slightly more interesting than another nostalgia hit.
Because FX keeps pointing at the witches.
And promotional campaigns rarely keep pointing at the same thing accidentally.
Sarah Paulson is returning as Cordelia. Jessica Lange is returning to the franchise. Emma Roberts, Angela Bassett, Kathy Bates, Evan Peters, Gabourey Sidibe, Billie Lourd and a frankly ridiculous collection of former AHS players are involved. Several performers are expected to reprise multiple characters.
At this point, American Horror Story has enough continuity to require either a corkboard or complete surrender.
Season 13 appears to have chosen complete surrender.
And that might be exactly what the show needs.
For most of its existence, AHS has operated on a wonderfully loose agreement with its audience. Sometimes seasons connect. Sometimes actors return as completely different people. Sometimes an old character wanders into a new story. Sometimes the mythology matters intensely until everybody apparently decides it doesn't.
Season 13 seems prepared to turn that accumulated weirdness into the premise itself.
FX says the season contains 13 half-hour episodes. It launches with three episodes on September 24, with the remaining episodes rolling out through an appropriately timed finale at the end of October.
The half-hour format may be the under-discussed part of this entire experiment.
Traditional American Horror Story episodes have historically had room to sprawl — sometimes magnificently, sometimes like somebody forgot where the brakes were.
Thirty minutes changes the rhythm.
Combine that shorter runtime with a giant returning cast and an interconnected storyline, and Season 13 could operate less like a normal season and more like a sequence of concentrated collisions between different corners of the franchise.
That is interpretation, not something FX has confirmed.
But the marketing certainly seems built around collision.
The newest Coven-heavy footage also creates another possibility: the witches might be functioning as connective tissue rather than simply one returning faction among many. Coven and Apocalypse have already established characters capable of navigating supernatural events on a scale that makes them unusually convenient when your plot involves dragging an entire horror anthology into one room.
Again: theory.
But a useful one.
Because nostalgia by itself isn't much of a story.
Yes, seeing Jessica Lange again is fun. Seeing Sarah Paulson back as Cordelia is fun. Twisty is back. Various Langdons are apparently refusing to stay contained within their designated seasons.
Great.
The question is whether AHS: 13 can make those returns matter to each other.
That will determine whether this is actually an event season or simply a very expensive haunted class reunion.
The newest teaser isn't giving away that answer yet.
It is, however, continuing to point toward the Coven.
And four days before the premiere, that feels less like decoration and more like a clue.