‘American Horror Story’ Is Coming Back for Season 14

If you were worried that the reunion season was a farewell tour, you can relax. FX has renewed American Horror Story for a 14th season, giving Ryan Murphy’s anthology a new lease on life before the current season even wraps up. The news broke this week, just days ahead of the AHS 13 finale, which airs Thursday, October 29, two nights before Halloween.

Fifteen years after it first creeped into living rooms, the show that taught a generation of TV fans to love horror is still going. Here’s what we know about season 14, why FX said yes, and what’s left of the current season.

Why FX said yes

The simplest answer is that people are watching. AHS 13 delivered the biggest streaming premiere in the franchise’s history and cracked Nielsen’s streaming top 10. It also became Murphy’s biggest launch ever on Hulu and Disney+.

That’s a remarkable thing to say about a show in its 13th year. Most series are running on fumes by now. Instead, American Horror Story just had one of its strongest seasons on record, and FX has been quick to reward it. The renewal also cements its spot as FX’s longest-running hour-long series, and season 14 should push the show past 150 episodes.

What made season 13 such a hit

Murphy built AHS 13 as a giant reunion, and he’s compared it to The Avengers. The setup is pure AHS : the devil makes a bet with God that he can live inside a human body for 100 years. If he wins, he gets to rule Earth, Heaven and Hell. Standing in his way is a lineup of characters from almost every previous season.

That meant bringing back the faces fans have been begging for. Jessica Lange, Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters, Angela Bassett, Kathy Bates and Emma Roberts all return, along with Billie Lourd, Gabourey Sidibe, Frances Conroy, Jamie Brewer, John Carroll Lynch, Mena Suvari, Mat Fraser and Leslie Grossman. Joey Pollari plays a hospice worker terrified of the number 13 who gets stuck caring for some very familiar figures.

There are new faces too, including Tig Notaro, Madelaine Petsch, Orlando Jones, Avantika, Alex Consani and, in a casting choice that feels very on brand, legendary filmmaker John Waters.

How to finish season 13

If you’re behind, you’ve got a week to catch up. New episodes air Thursdays at 9 p.m. Eastern on FX and stream the next day on Hulu. Episodes 11 and 12 arrive tonight, and the finale lands next Thursday, October 29.

What we know about season 14

Almost nothing, and that’s very normal for this show. FX hasn’t announced a theme, a setting, a cast or a premiere date. American Horror Story has always played its cards close, often keeping even the season title secret until shortly before it airs.

What we do know is that Murphy doesn’t want to stop. He’s said publicly that he hopes to keep making the show for as long as he can, and he’s floated the idea of an international version of AHS. That idea is still early, and nothing has been announced, but it shows how big he thinks this universe can get.

The bigger question is whether season 14 goes back to the classic anthology format, with a fresh story and mostly fresh characters, or keeps building on the shared universe that season 13 just blew wide open. After the reunion pulled record numbers, it’s easy to imagine FX wanting more of the same.

Fifteen years of nightmares

Murphy and co-creator Brad Falchuk launched American Horror Story on FX in 2011 with Murder House , and the show quickly became a phenomenon. Its anthology format, where the same actors play new characters each season, turned performers like Sarah Paulson and Evan Peters into horror icons and helped make prestige horror TV a real category.

Since then it has visited an asylum, a witches’ coven, a freak show, a haunted hotel, a cult and the apocalypse, along with plenty of other dark corners. The series has won 17 Primetime Emmys from more than 100 nominations, and FX says it has driven more than 2 billion hours of viewing. Not bad for a show a lot of people assumed would be a one-season experiment.

The bottom line

American Horror Story isn’t just surviving, it’s having one of the best runs of its life. With a record-setting season about to wrap and season 14 locked in, the anthology that defined modern horror TV looks like it’s nowhere near finished.

So what should season 14 be? Bring back more fan favorites, or start completely fresh with a brand new nightmare?

Photo: Sarah Paulson at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival by John Sears / WikiPortraits, CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped with text added.

Sources: Deadline, TVLine, The Statesman, GV Wire, iHorror