Every season, even when I try to write it off, I’m always all in for American Horror Story. The horror anthology series hasn’t seen season one greatness in quite some time but it does have seasons which are quite fun (Coven), seasons that start out great but end with a whimper (Roanoke) or seasons that use excess to disguise all of its flaws (Hotel). Maybe it’s the Ryan Murphy pedigree or the reliable returning actors that pull me in again but there is something enthralling about the setup of each season and that continues with the latest entry: American Horror Story: Cult.
While last season was shrouded in mystery until its premiere, this season has been teased with announcements for quite awhile. It was revealed that the season would tackle the recent Presidential election which has had a polarizing response from fans. On the one hand, you want to respect their willingness to attack real life situations but on the other we watch shows like this to escape, not to be reminded of the real world problems that plague us day to day. Ryan Murphy isn’t always subtle so this could be extremely heavy handed but in the case of the premiere episode, “Election Night”, it looks like the election will be a bit a terrifying backdrop for a more frightening story.
The premise for this season is, at the moment, a little complicated. For now, the conflict centers around Ally (Sarah Paulson) and Kai, the blue-haired, bigoted villain portrayed by Evan Peters. As Ally grows increasingly paralyzed by fear, Kai seems to gain momentum as he attempts to start some kind of local political movement—with him as the leader. Ally is definitely spiraling—as evidenced by her hallucinations of killer clowns in various places, including the grocery store, where she attempts to do battle against them armed only with bottles of rosé. Her therapist prescribes her a mild anti-anxiety medication to counteract her phobias—which also include blood, confined spaces, the dark, particles in the air, and things with holes—but she avoids taking them for a while until Ivy (Alison Pill) insists. The couple’s restaurant is in dire financial trouble, partially thanks to Ally’s absenteeism, so they hire a new nanny to watch their son, Oz, as Ally returns to work. (The old one stopped coming to work after the election, Ally reveals. “We don’t know if she went back to Guatemala or was rounded up.”) And who shows up for an interview? Winter Anderson (Billie Lourd), whose motives are almost certainly duplicitous.
The opening scene which shows the very different reactions of Ally and Kai to the announcement that Donald Trump is the new President of the United States could easily be entirely cheesy and a bit too on the nose, but it sets up their character trajectory. The events of election night ignite Ally’s paranoia while it intensifies Kai’s growing anger and desires to play on fear. From the start, Murphy has a created an interesting playground for the characters to play in. It also features a few call backs that will have fans wanting to connect the dots even more (Did you catch where Hilary Clinton’s campaign took Billie Lourd’s, Winter Anderson)?
Going into this season, fans have been prepared to see Evan Peters, one of the most prolific members of the Ryan Murphy’s anthology gaggle of actors, once again play a magnetic villain. After all, he does it so well! And based on the premiere, it does seem that Peters is definitely in villain mode. He’s racist and homophobic, and he seems bent on harnessing people’s post-election fears for his own personal gain. He pleads with the city council not to increase police presence in their suburban Michigan town, but to let the violence and chaos run its course—positioning the few who are not afraid to lead the scared, sheep-like masses. Unsurprisingly, the city council shoots him down, but as he exits, he warns, “There is nothing more dangerous in this world than a humiliated man.” Even so, we’re not convinced Peters will be the one doing all the harm this season—especially since it’s hard to imagine Murphy would reveal his hand so early.
Honestly, the one to watch might be Billie Lourd’s Winter Anderson. Why? Admittedly, it’s a tiny, perhaps inconsequential detail—but this season has obvious ties to Season 4, Freak Show, which took place in Jupiter, Florida and introduced us to Twisty the Clown. So it seems significant that Murphy also slipped in the fact that Winter, as hinted at to fans who may read this above, spent a year campaigning for Team Clinton in Florida. “We gave a year of our lives to this,” she says to a friend on the phone after the election results are announced. “I dropped out of Vassar. Why would they send us to Florida when we should have been in Wisconsin?”
It could easily be a throw-away line, but then again, consider how big of a role Twisty the Clown has played in the season already. Clown imagery has been riddled throughout the season’s marketing materials, and Twisty has already made a comeback: he’s one of Oz’s favorite comic characters, it seems, much to Ally’s dismay. (John Carroll Lynch returned in the premiere to act out a scene from Oz’s comic—one that strongly mimics the murder Twisty committed in the Season 4 premiere.) The last time we saw the “real” Twisty, he was ascending to a dream-like freak heaven. Are the murderous clowns Ally sees carrying on his legacy?
It seems very likely that the band of killer clowns is not entirely in Ally’s head: Oz saw them, too, as Winter was babysitting him. According to Oz’s account, she took him outside to prove that there was nothing there—and hoisted him up to look through a window, when he saw a couple of neighbors getting killed by a band of terrifying clowns. Winter claims that he’s being “imaginative,” and that in fact they only went outside after the police had arrived. His mothers reveal that their son often has night terrors, during which he does not realize he is asleep. One of the victims was a city council member who shot down Kai’s police proposal. The detective working the dead-neighbor case says it seemed like a murder-suicide. Perhaps relevant: the two were also at Ally and Ivy’s house on election night and got into a huge fight because one of them didn’t make it to the polls in time to cast a vote. Again, this is another way that election night plays out on the sidelines of a bigger story and we’re only beginning to see where it will be taking us.
But who is leading them? This leads me back to Winter. She has, in some fashion, pledged herself to Kai, engaging in a cult-like ritual in which they link pinkies and he asks her a series of personal questions, which she must answer honestly. Although Winter might have tethered herself to Kai, we have to wonder whether she’s the one pulling the strings behind the clowns—and if, in the end, she might be this season’s true villain. The clowns went after Ally before Winter or Kai met her, but it seems far from coincidental that Winter happened to be watching Oz when they showed up on the family’s street.
In the end, the season premiere of season 7 sets up an intriguing story and hopefully, it can maintain the momentum. Some of the acting is a bit hammy (I love Sarah Paulson but she may have to reign in a bit in future episodes) but a lot of this is what fans love. It’s so over the top and the imagery is way out there but insanely fear inducing that it makes you pay attention. So far Cult has mine and I will definitely be back next week.
