The new season of American Horror Story is taking shape.
The upcoming eighth season of Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk’s FX anthology is titled Apocalypse, the networked revealed after a late-night stunt at this this year’s Comic-Con. Once again, the series took advantage of the annual confab to drop the title reveal, revealing the news on social media early Friday morning.
The upcoming cycle, which premieres Sept. 12, is set to feature the highly anticipated crossover of earlier seasons Murder House and Coven.
The Apocalypse title and imagery (below) appear to be a callback to the Antichrist baby of season one’s Murder House — Tate Langdon aka The Rubber Man (Evan Peters) and Vivien Harmon’s (Connie Britton) devil spawn who was left in the care of Jessica Lange’s character, Constance Langdon. Of the three, only Peters has been confirmed as a season eight castmember.
Along with Peters, castmembers who are confirmed for Apocalypse, so far, are Sarah Paulson, Kathy Bates, Emma Roberts, Cheyenne Jackson, Billie Lourd, Billy Eichner, Adina Porter, Leslie Grossman and a new face to the franchise, Joan Collins. Both Paulson and Peters, who is playing a hairdresser, will be making their directorial debuts; Collins will be playing Peters’ grandmother. Paulson and Peters both co-starred in Murder House and Coven, while Bates and Roberts appeared in Coven.
— AmericanHorrorStory (@AHSFX) July 20, 2018
Murphy had promised the return of fan-favorites — Lange would be a big one — and has referred to the season as “heightened”: “It’s not necessarily as real and grounded as the past season. We’re sort of getting back to Asylum and Coven. That’s the tone of it.” Set in the near future, Murphy has placed the date of Apocalypse around October 2019. He later said on Twitter that he has asked all of the Coven witches, who also include Taissa Farmiga and Gabourey Sidibe, to return.
Murphy has also suggested that Lady Gaga, who co-starred in the Hotel and Roanoke seasons, would play a part in the Murder House–Coven crossover after revealing in Roanoke that her character was the original “supreme” witch from Coven. Roanoke also toyed with the concept of the Antichrist baby by uniting her character — named Scathach aka The Witch of the Woods — with the mortal Matt Miller (played by Andre Holland).
Murder House, which launched American Horror Story as a series in 2011, centered around a couple (played by Britton and Dylan McDermott) who moved into a haunted house with their daughter (Farmiga). Paulson’s character, Billie Dean, warned about the Antichrist’s existence during the season — signaling that perhaps an Apocalypse was on the horizon. “A child born of human and spirit will usher in the end of times,” she said. The Murder House season ended with Constance (Lange) discovering that the Antichrist toddler born of human (Vivien) and spirit (Tate), pictured below, had murdered the nanny.
Murphy used Roanoke, the sixth cycle that aired in 2016, to finally confirm that all the seasons of American Horror Story do indeed exist in the same universe. “You’ll see it explode in seasons seven and eight,” he said about each cycle being connected. “This is a show that could be like The Twilight Zone and run for multiple, multiple seasons and have its own inner mythology.”
Apocalypse follows the politically charged seventh cycle, Cult, which tackled the presidential election, identity politics and the cult of personality in Trump’s America.
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