FX Reportedly Kills ‘Grotesquerie’ and ‘The Beauty’ After One Season: The Numbers, the Cliffhangers and What It Means for Ryan Murphy’s Horror Empire
Ryan Murphy’s two newest FX horror shows are reportedly done. According to a Nov. 11 report from The Ankler, picked up by TVLine and others, neither Grotesquerie , the Niecy Nash-Betts serial-killer nightmare from fall 2024, nor The Beauty , the Evan Peters body-horror thriller that premiered this January, will get a second season. Both shows ended with big unanswered questions, and both now look like they will stay unanswered.
It is a strange week for this kind of news. American Horror Story just wrapped a 13th season that brought back half the franchise’s greatest hits, and Murphy’s third recent FX series, The Shards , is still waiting on its own verdict. Below: what has actually been reported (and what hasn’t), the numbers on both shows, the people behind them, and what this means for the most prolific horror producer on television.
Watch: ‘The Beauty’ Official Trailer
This is the trailer FX says became its most-watched ever, with nearly 190 million views in its first week after it dropped on Jan. 5, 2026. Hold onto that number; it matters later.
The Details: What’s Reported, and What Isn’t Official
Here is the confirmed shape of the story. The Ankler, in a Lesley Goldberg piece built around an interview with FX chairman John Landgraf, reported on Nov. 11 that both shows would not return. TVLine’s write-up the same afternoon credited The Ankler and said it had reached out to FX for comment. As of this writing, FX has not issued a public statement, so treat both cancellations as reported, not announced.
One wrinkle: French outlet Comicsblog ran a Nov. 13 headline saying FX had confirmed the news, citing CBR. U.S. trades have not echoed that, and The TV Cave notes the network has not confirmed anything publicly. We’re going with the trades until FX says otherwise.
- Grotesquerie: one season, 10 episodes, premiered Sept. 25, 2024 on FX with two episodes and finished its run that October. It streams on Hulu in the U.S. and Disney+ internationally.
- The Beauty: one season, 11 episodes, premiered Jan. 21, 2026 with three episodes and ended March 4. Also on FX, Hulu and Disney+ abroad.
- The Shards: not canceled. Its nine-episode first season ran Aug. 5 to Sept. 9, 2026, and FX reportedly has not decided on a second.
The writing on the wall for The Beauty came months ago. In July, the cast’s contract options were reported to have lapsed, freeing the actors for other work. That doesn’t automatically kill a show, but it rarely signals a renewal either.
Who’s Behind Them
Photo: Ryan Murphy via Wikimedia Commons ( author and license).
Ryan Murphy needs little introduction for horror fans. He co-created American Horror Story with Brad Falchuk, which premiered on FX on Oct. 5, 2011 and has since spun off American Horror Stories. He made Scream Queens for Fox (two seasons, 2015 to 2016), and in 2018 signed a Netflix deal reported at $300 million over five years, which produced the Monster anthology, most recently Monster: The Ed Gein Story in October 2025. His newer FX shows, including both canceled series, are produced through 20th Television.
Grotesquerie was created by Murphy with Jon Robin Baitz and Joe Baken. Niecy Nash-Betts played Lois Tryon, a detective chasing a killer who stages gruesome tableaux, alongside Courtney B. Vance as her husband Marshall, Micaela Diamond as Sister Megan, Nicholas Alexander Chavez as Father Charlie, Raven Goodwin as daughter Merritt and Lesley Manville as Nurse Redd. Travis Kelce, in his scripted TV debut, played Ed Laclan. Nash-Betts earned a Critics’ Choice Super Award nomination for Best Actress in a Horror Series.
The Beauty came from Murphy and Matthew Hodgson, adapting the Image Comics series by Jeremy Haun and Jason A. Hurley (29 issues from 2015 to 2019, recently relaunched). Evan Peters , Murphy’s most loyal leading man after a decade of AHS and a Golden Globe win for Dahmer , played FBI agent Cooper Madsen. Rebecca Hall played his partner Jordan Bennett, Anthony Ramos played an assassin, Jeremy Pope played Jeremy and Ashton Kutcher played tech billionaire Byron Forst. The guest list was wild even by Murphy standards: Isabella Rossellini, Vincent D’Onofrio, Bella Hadid, Ben Platt, Billy Eichner and Meghan Trainor all turned up. Murphy directed two episodes himself.
Photo: Rebecca Hall via Wikimedia Commons ( author and license).
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The Backstory
Grotesquerie was teased in February 2024 with almost no details, which was very on brand. A full trailer followed in August, and the show launched less than six weeks later. It was pitched as a darker, grimier cousin to AHS , and the finale deliberately left the audience questioning what was real. Nash-Betts later told Deadline she had hoped for a chance to dig into that ending, saying the plan was that “we would have a Season 2 to unpack it.” That season now isn’t coming.
The Beauty moved fast. FX ordered 11 episodes on Sept. 30, 2024, with Peters, Ramos, Pope and Kutcher already attached. Hall joined by the time cameras rolled in New York on Dec. 2, 2024, Rossellini came aboard in February 2025, and the series sat on the shelf for about a year before its January 2026 launch. The premise, a sexually transmitted designer drug that makes people beautiful and then turns deadly, gave Murphy his most outright body-horror concept yet. Kutcher told TVLine that the finale leaves viewers hanging, scratching their heads about what comes next.
Then there is The Shards , adapted from Bret Easton Ellis’ 2023 novel. HBO developed it first, with Luca Guadagnino attached at one point, then dropped it in January 2025. Murphy revived it at FX, which greenlit the series in July 2025. Murphy has talked about at least three seasons.
By the Numbers
Linear ratings never tell the full story for an FX show that lives on Hulu, but they do show the trend lines, and the trend lines here aren’t kind. All figures are FX live audience estimates compiled on Wikipedia from ratings reports.
- Grotesquerie opened with about 343,000 viewers and dipped as low as roughly 108,000 for episode 9. It hit No. 1 on Hulu’s Top 15 the day after its premiere and charted on Reelgood’s most-streamed list for two weeks. Critics: 75% on Rotten Tomatoes (16 reviews), 51 on Metacritic. It earned a Creative Arts Emmy nomination for non-prosthetic makeup and a Saturn nomination.
- The Beauty premiered to about 512,400 viewers, then fell to roughly 297,900 a week later and 170,000 for the finale, a drop of about two-thirds. It also hit No. 1 on Hulu’s Top 15 and stayed on that chart through March 6. Critics: 72% on Rotten Tomatoes (64 reviews), 64 on Metacritic, with several reviewers unfavorably comparing it to The Substance.
- The Shards averaged about 237,000 viewers for its FX airings, sat on Hulu’s Top 15 from Aug. 6 through Sept. 18 and was reportedly Disney+’s most-streamed series worldwide on Aug. 15. Critics were cooler: 56% on Rotten Tomatoes and 55 on Metacritic.
The most telling number in the whole story is the gap between The Beauty ’s 190-million-view trailer and its 170,000-viewer finale. Curiosity was enormous. Staying power was not.
Analysis: What This Really Means
The context that matters most comes from Landgraf himself. In The Ankler interview, he said FX has canceled about 20% of its scripted originals after one season across more than two decades, and he framed the network as a place that has to pick its bets carefully because it can’t afford to whiff as often as bigger rivals. He also argued that “Efficiency is the enemy of insane levels of quality,” which is a great line to hear on the same day two expensive, star-stuffed shows reportedly got the axe. FX renewed the comedy Adults in that same piece, after its second-season viewership reportedly jumped more than 60%. That is the bar: shows that grow.
Neither Murphy show grew. Both opened strong on curiosity and big names, then shed most of their live audience. That pattern has a cost when a cast includes Kutcher, Hall, Peters and a parade of famous guest stars. And it is happening while Disney, FX’s parent, goes through another round of layoffs and a TV reorganization, per The Ankler. Pricey one-and-done horror experiments are an easy line to cut.
The bigger takeaway is that Murphy’s horror brand is still enormously valuable, just not infinitely transferable. American Horror Story returned on Sept. 24 with 13 episodes that brought back Jessica Lange, Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters, Angela Bassett, Kathy Bates and a crowd of fan favorites, and the franchise has logged more than 700 million hours streamed globally, according to coverage of the season’s launch. Audiences show up for the AHS name. They sample new Murphy originals, then drift. Compare that to his Netflix Monster anthology, which keeps renewing because each season resets with a new real-life case, essentially the same anthology trick that made AHS last 15 years.
There is also a pattern worth noticing across the genre this month. Peacock passed on Eli Roth’s Hostel series even with Paul Giamatti attached. Netflix renewed Haunted Hotel , a cheaper animated show with steady numbers. Platforms are getting pickier about premium horror that costs prestige money but performs like a cult show. Both Grotesquerie and The Beauty are cult shows. They just weren’t priced like ones.
The biggest loser here is the audience that did stick around. Both shows built finales around mysteries meant to pay off later. Ending a horror story on purpose is one thing; ending it because the money ran out is another.
What We Still Don’t Know
- An official word from FX. Until the network confirms, there is a sliver of room, though the lapsed options make The Beauty revival talk unlikely.
- The fate of The Shards. It is the strongest streamer of the three by Disney+ chart standards, but it has the weakest reviews. Watch for a decision in the coming weeks.
- Whether either story continues elsewhere. The Beauty still has its source comic, which was recently relaunched. A finished ending on the page may be the only one fans get.
- What’s next for AHS. No season 14 news has been reported yet after the season 13 finale on Oct. 29.
Bottom Line
FX reportedly gave Murphy two big, weird, expensive swings at original horror, and both struck out on retention, not on buzz. That doesn’t mean Murphy is in trouble; AHS and Monster prove his horror brand works. It means a famous cast and a viral trailer are no longer enough to buy a second season. So which one deserved to live: Grotesquerie or The Beauty ? Tell us in the comments.
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Header photo: Evan Peters by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons ( author and license), cropped with text added.
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