American Horror Story: 13’s first three episodes are intriguing

American Horror Story: 13 has long been anticipated, since Ryan Murphy has teased wanting to do a larger crossover season after the lukewarm reception of the serie’s eighth season Apocalypse, which saw Murder House and Coven crossover in a series’ first. The latest season of the popular horror anthology drama created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, simply titled 13, is the series’ attempt at an All-Stars season, utilizing characters alive, dead, and somewhere in-between from across the franchise’s lore in a truly satanic new twist. 

AHS: 13 also marks the series venturing into a divisive half-hour format, veering from its past of having perhaps too much episode filler and added shock factor in its traditional hour long slot. While this season promises to give fans a glimpse of their faves, it should be noted how extremely short the season’s release timeline is with around three episodes premiering a week until an Oct. 30 finale.

Reactions of the season have been divisive with many fans expressing confusion, frustration at the format change, and annoyance at Evan Peters’ 40-something-year old head being CGI’d onto a teenager’s body for him to reprise the iconic role of seventeen year old Tate Langdon/Rubber-Man. Additionally, fans seem frustrated at the centering of Ben (Joey Pollari), a hospice aide with a bizarre phobia of the number 13 after nearly dying on a Friday the 13th plane crash, in place of characters from the prior seasons. 

Episodes 1-3 follow Ben as he is recruited to serve as a hospice aide for the mysterious Mr. Nas, a bedridden, demented old man experiencing a series of bizarre body transformations that Ben can’t just excuse as old man activity. However, Ben is placated by fan-favorite Constance Langdon (Jessica Lange) who serves as the daytime hospice aid for Mr. Nas (Fedor Steer), diligently fulfilling all his requests no matter how odd and closely monitoring the biometrics of the old man in the hopes of getting him to live till a hundred while gaslighting Ben with her classic Constance sickly sweet attitude. As Ben becomes adjusted in the NYC penthouse Mr. Nas calls home, he begins to notice oddities in the man’s behavior, be it him strangely walking about the apartment despite being mostly bedridden, strange horn-like protrusions popping out of his skull, or coughing up black bile that Constance attributes to ‘minor ulcers’. Meanwhile, we see that Mr. Nas’ physical transformation seems tied to a series of bizarre happenings where thirteen individuals are killed, be it the plane crash Ben barely survived or a clown school being massacred by Freak Show’s Twisty the Clown (John Carroll Lynch). While this is far from the first time that American Horror Story has engaged with the devil, this seems to be the series’ first attempt at him being the central concept or villain in an American Horror Story season, which is long overdue and frankly exciting as a viewer. I was particularly impressed with the amount of body horror and the strange distortion of old age and the demonic presented in the character-design of Mr. Nas, so I’m definitely looking forward to seeing how this plot line plays out.

Episode 3 ‘Rauhnacht’ gives us the greatest hint at what is going on in-show, as Constance celebrates a German pagan holiday thirteen days after the birth of Christ. We see that she is not alone in having this party, with her long-dead children Tate Langdon (Evan Peters) and Adelaide (Jamie Brewer) seemingly defying the series’ rules regarding death to somehow return as living, breathing individuals. Alongside, AHS: Cult’s Kai (Evan Peters) and Winter Anderson (Billie Lourde), the group welcome the Black Dahlia (Mena Suvari)  to join their satanic Rauhnacht feast, forcing the newly resurrected starlet turned slab of sensationalized meat to consume strange, oddly human-looking dishes before promising her a night on the town. Meanwhile, Ben defies Constance and arrives at the penthouse amidst the events, demanding to know more about Mr. Nas, only for her to spike his punch. The episode ends with Addie and Tate taking the Black Dahlia to the building’s elevator, hitting the basement key, and descending to what they call “Club Hell”, a dark stairwell filled with writhing figures fronted by a cloaked Ms. Wilhemina Venable (Sarah Paulson) who explains they are taking a portal to hell.

As a whole, I quite enjoyed this block of episodes. Like other fans have stated online, the season does struggle a bit with establishing its new setting, which feels like a slight detriment as American Horror Story is known for having strong, memorable concepts and locations. Perhaps, if we were given an hour long episode premiere, this problem could have been avoided, as the premiere episode spends most of its time setting up Ben as our audience stand-in character, while glossing over exactly who Mr. Nas is and why his penthouse is filled with precious art tied to Judas Iscariot. While I thought the half-hour change wasn’t too disruptive in episodes 2 and 3, it gives an extremely quick turnaround for plot points, resulting in little series nods such as Twisty’s clown school massacre slightly confusing audience members. While it’s likely episodes 4-6 will clarify exactly what is going on, popular theories believe that famous spirits or characters from American Horror Story might be sacrificed to attain the Devil’s ultimate goal.

Other highlights from the episode include Jessica Lange who returns in full-force as her character Constance from Murder House. While she somewhat famously guffawed at the prospect of ever going back to the show in 2025, the show’s writers have given her a ton of fun stuff to play with this season with the promise of her reprising her other three roles as well as a mysterious fifth character.  I am also quite intrigued with this version of Constance Langdon, as I am mid-Murder House rewatch, and it’s becoming increasingly clear this isn’t the Constance we know and love. For example, while portrayed a hypocritical devout Christian in season 1, Constance has fully converted to Satanism, with the implication being that serving Mr. Nas has allowed her to be reunited with her dead children. Additionally, Constance’s recollection of events seems muddled and strangely uncharacteristic of her, with a sudden influx of German language and folklore in her knowledge, despite this being a characteristic of her other popular Freak Show character Elsa Mars. 

Many fans believe that perhaps this season will deal with timelines or the multiverse, with this version of Constance somehow overlapping with the other characters that Jessica Lange has played. Others theorize that the characters featured in Episode 3 may be pretending to be other figures in the American Horror Story universe, particularly noting that Jamie Brewer’s Adelaide seems much more murderous and manipulative than her character was previously played, causing fans to believe this might actually be her character Nan from Coven masquerading as Adelaide either for Constance’ benefit or some other purpose. This theory particularly has credence in my opinion since Nan chose a life assisting in Hell with Papa Legba, a Voodoo deity, in Coven and Apocalypse following her death. 

While I remain optimistic and excited for the remainder of the season, we will see if the show falls into the characteristic Ryan Murphy mid-season slump that he is commonly criticized for. However, I am hopeful that the show’s half-hour format and its relatively short run-time will push the creator to nail down a concept, not riddle us with too much fan-service, and deliver a truly terrifying thirteenth season. AHS: 13 airs each Thursday on FX, then next day on Hulu.