‘American Horror Story’ Season 6: What We Know So Far

This summer, TV land has been chock full of mysteries: Why are so many of the Olympic favorites sporting similar pepperoni-like bruises? Is Barb really dead on Stranger Things? Who stabbed Andrea on The Night Of? What isn’t Better Late Than Never’s Terry Bradshaw afraid of?

And then there’s the biggest head scratcher of them all: American Horror Story Season 6, about which almost nothing is known despite the fact that the next installment of the FX franchise is slated to premiere in a week. Historically, creator Ryan Murphy never plays it this close to the vest.

“The show is in its sixth season, and we’ve always done everything by the book. Come January or February, I announce what the theme is, and then we announce the cast,” Murphy told to The Hollywood Reporterin a late August interview. “We wanted to [create a] different experience for the fans this year.”

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To that end, 25 mini-trailers have been released to date, touching on just about every possible theme you can think of, including scary houses, maniac doctors, supernatural beasts that crawl out from the fog, bloody baby dolls, wicker men, swamp things, red tides, B-movie tropes, mummies, creepy children, creepy crawlies, aliens, even evil farmers. But before you start counting how many times insects show up or how many times sepia tone is put to use, you should know that FX CEO John Landgraf told reporters at last month’s Television Critics Association semiannual press tour, back when only about eight teasers had been released, that the network’s marketing team (with help from Murphy and other AHS producers) “made many more trailers than you’ve actually seen for hypothetical seasons” with “different genres, different places.”

“A lot of them are accurate. The others are all misdirects,” Landgraf proclaimed. “Every year, we’ve basically laid out the themes, the new genre that Ryan’s going to be approaching, and we just thought [this year] it’d be really fun to keep it a mystery. So, we are. The scripts come in, and they’ve got my name emblazoned across them and there’s only one script that comes into the company. Everything’s blacked out that might give away the [setting].”

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There’s still no confirmed subtitle — unless Rotten Tomatoes knows something we don’t. The aggregate review site updated the show’s page on Aug. 29 with The Mist as a subtitle, but quickly changed it back to the more generic American Horror Story: Season 6. (FX did not respond to Yahoo TV’s requests for comment on whether this was a clerical error, hoax, or marketing ploy.)

Most of the anthology’s usual cast members have been unusually silent, with the exception of a few nondescript posts on personal social media pages like this trailer shot from Lady Gaga. And speaking of last year’s AHS: Hotel leading lady (and Golden Globe winner), rumors suggest that her part will be significantly smaller because she’s been busy playing the Democratic National Convention and recording her new album. (Its first single, “Perfect Illusion,” drops five days before the premiere.)

Many other regulars haven’t confirmed their return, although Murphy extended the invite to “every darling” (Sarah Paulson, Cheyenne Jackson, Finn Wittrock, Wes Bentley, Matt Bomer, Kathy Bates, Denis O’Hare, and Angela Bassett) who joined him at the PaleyFest panel last March. Even those who have, like Paulson, Bomer, Evan Peters, and Leslie Jordan, are providing scant details about their characters, although Bassett relayed some Golden Globes night chatter to Entertainment Weekly saying, “[Murphy] did tell me that I would imbibe a little bit too much and yet I was very intuitive also and maybe Sarah was somehow the boss of me.” O’Hare, who has appeared in every season so far, admitted to Yahoo TV in an interview in June that he was due back to set at the end of summer and that he was under strict orders not to speak a peep. “I’m not even sure I am supposed to tell people I have a part next season,” he said. There has also been talk that Cuba Gooding Jr., who made quite the splash in the Murphy-verse’s newest addition, American Crime Story, would join the troupe.

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Murphy hasn’t remained entirely mum. At PaleyFest, he said the team was mulling two possible storylines, a first, and both conceits included “elements of children.” Murphy teased, “If you look at horror tropes, the innocence of children, that sort of wide-eyed entryway into some world is always very dramatic and satisfying.” Many of the trailers feature children, babies, products associated with kids like dolls or mobiles, and youthful, freaky chanting/humming a la Nightmare on Elm Street.

In a different Hollywood Reporter story published last October, after he had confirmed that all of the seasons are connected, he also mentioned, “It’s weird because one idea that I think we’re going to do is an idea that we started talking about in Season 1. So the clue for Season 6 is not just in the material we’re doing now; it’s from way back in Season 1.”

Landgraff also went on record at the last TCA winter press tour saying that it would be “set in the present” with “echoes of the past,” which breaks from the normal pattern of even-numbered seasons like Asylum and Freak Show taking place in the past. He added, “It’s set in two time periods, but principally in the present.”

Of course, none of the red herrings, lack of validated intel, or actor gag orders have stopped diehards from looking for clues and trying to solve the plot puzzle. Here are the prevailing theories so far:

The Lost Colony of Roanoke

This theory seems to be the most popular thanks in no small part to the alleged set photos TMZ posted at the beginning of August along with claims of seeing folks in Pilgrim gear congregating near 16th century farmsteads. The gallery featured photos of log cabins, colonial houses/churches, wood gates, old-timey tools, and the word “Croatoan” craved into the side of the tree. History buffs will instantly recognize that word as the one found at the deserted colony site in 1590. English settlers had successfully set up shop on Roanoke Island off North Carolina three years earlier. Their overnight disappearance remains one of American history’s biggest unsolved mysteries, but Native American curses, aliens, and supernatural foul play have long been on the table as possible explanations, and all have certainly come into play in AHS.

Roanoke was referenced in Season 1. Psychic Billie Dean Howard (Paulson) told Violet Harmon (Taissa Farmiga) that a Native American chief banished the ghosts of the dead Roanoke settlers with a curse. By Billie Dean’s account, he used the word “Croatoan” to seal the deal, which is why it got carved on the fencepost. Violet tried the word on an evil spirit without success.

It also has the children’s angle covered as the colony produced the first English child born on New World soil, Virginia Dare. They would have been a heavily agrarian society, so that could explain the many references to sickles, scythes, pitchforks, harvests, and cornfields in the videos.

Maybe a present-day historian or family has moved to the site and weird things start to happen.

The Anti-Christ

Given that finales are often where Murphy deposits clues for a following season and he mentioned Murder House as containing a hint, many people hypothesize that this year will be all about Satan’s bouncing baby boy. Connie Britton’s Vivien Harmon was knocked up by the Rubber Man and gave birth to a monster in that mansion (as did Lily Rabe and Lady Gaga), which was adopted and named Michael by Constance Langdon (Jessica Lange). She observes that Michael is “a remarkable boy destined for greatness, in need of a remarkable mother, someone forged in the fires of adversity who can guide him with firmness and with love.” This little hellion is then shown smiling with blood on his cheeks after he killed the babysitter.

Murphy may have also fanned the flame of this theory himself. He told THR in the aforementioned 2015 interview, “We’ve talked about [the anti-Christ baby] in the writers’ room. We haven’t committed to it, but he might show up at that hotel.” He could have been hinting at what would become the countess’s bloodsucking bundle or maybe they saved the idea for this year.

A devil/Damien concept would certainly explain a few of the video teasers like Lullaby and the most unsafe mobile in history as well as the creepy toy in Baby Face and the voodoo doll, human tooth wind chimes in another. Even the walking haystacks seem to be commanded by a preteen in The Harvest. It is Season 6, and when you add two more sixes, you’ve got the devil’s calling card.

Bugs are also common signs of possession, haunting, general evil, and a coming apocalypse (i.e. The Bible, The Amityville Horror, Poltergeist, etc.), and the trailers include spiders, beetles, and millipedes.

The Killing Fields

Lots of true-crime tales and scary stories combine bucolic splendor and bloodshed, and the producers have long been inspired by both. Think Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Jeepers Creepers, The Hills Have Eyes, Ed Gein, the Wineville chicken coop murders (which were woven into Hotel’s plot), the scariest X-Files episode ever. After all, it is easier to get away with murder without the prying eyes of passersby and with plenty of land on which to hide what’s left of your victims. Throw in the usual religious fanaticism, sexual dysfunction, and incest and cannibal clichés, and again we are knee-deep in AHS’s happy place. Upon seeing a family with glowing eyes taking a sunset stroll and a desolate farmhouse with chainsaw sounds and a healthy smoke plume in clips, Deadline suggested this chapter could be inspired by the Bender Family, who ran an inn pre-Civil War in Kansas. They murdered nearly a dozen guests, dropping victims into the cellar through a trapdoor in the dining room. Which leads us to the Descent video, which feature stairs going down to the basement and hands reaching desperately at bare feet.

A rural setting, which often features train tracks (The Mist), could also be a great place to practice unsanctioned surgeries (Post Op) or for aliens to deposit crop circles (The Visitors). Even the unhappy camper is being beamed up (Camp Sight) in a location that has similar mountains and fields.

Everything Else

Other possibilities that have been bandied about the Internet include an abandoned summer camp cabin in the woods (could explain Camp Sight and the schlocky swamp creature-ish trailer) and the more modern Slender Man myth. O’Hare shot down the latter in a 97.3 WMEE radio interview.

Of the rest, the guess that holds the most water would be probably be Charles Manson and his murderous cult. Murphy admitted that Season 3 was almost about Manson back in 2013 and was quoted as saying that he “might go back to the Manson thing in some regard one day.” Fans of this idea are trying hard to make it stick, pointing out that the crib and knife in Lullaby could be a reference to Sharon Tate, who was eight months pregnant when the Manson Family followers stabbed her. Some people also believe the weapons in the mobile spell out “pig,” which was smeared in blood at the scene of the Tate murders in 1969, and point out that Chuck created arachnid art. But this seems like a more fitting theme for American Crime Story and way too soon after the failed Aquarius.

American Horror Story: ? premieres Sept. 14 on FX.