American Horror Story: 1984 wrapped up its blood-soaked, gloriously campy run with a thoroughly satisfying finale that mostly made up for that lackluster 100th episode. In an unexpectedly touching twist, Brooke (Emma Roberts) and Donna (Angelica Ross) were both the final girl, and lived to tell the strange story of everything that went down at Camp Redwood—as did AHS regular Finn Wittrock, who made his debut in the finale as Mr. Jingles, Jr.
Now, the show has already been renewed for a tenth season on FX, and Ryan Murphy has just announced which cast members will be returning. Here’s everything we know so far about season 10 of American Horror Story.
The season 10 cast is stacked with talent.
Ryan Murphy took to Instagram on February 26 with his official announcement of the season 10 cast. In a video set to Orville Peck’s “Dead of Night,” the names of the cast members flashed against crashing waves. Most notably, Sarah Paulson and Evan Peters will be back for the new season, after both were sorely missed in season 9. Other returning cast members set for season 10 include Kathy Bates, Leslie Grossman, Billie Lourd, Adina Porter, Lily Rabe, Angelica Ross, and Finn Wittrock.
Plus, Macaulay Culkin will make his American Horror Story debut, acting for the first time since appearing in an episode of Dollface in 2019. For the March 2020 cover of Esquire the actor said of his career:
“It’s just—I enjoy acting. I enjoy being on set. I don’t enjoy a lot of the other things that come around it. What’s a good analogy. The Shawshank Redemption. The way he gets out of prison is to crawl through a tube of shit, you know? It feels like to get to that kind of freedom, I’d have to crawl through a tube of shit. And you know what? I’ve built a really nice prison for myself. It’s soft. It’s sweet. It smells nice. You know? It’s plush.”
Murphy previously teased that Season 10 would reunite fan favorites, so perhaps there’s room for more? “We’re working on an idea for season 10 that I think people will love because it’s about reuniting fan-favorite actors to come back…I’ve been quietly reaching out to various people,” Murphy told Deadline in November. “Some people I haven’t reached out to yet because I was like, ‘Do I have a role for them?’ So far, everybody I reached out to said ‘Yes,’ so that’s been great.”
Pressed for more details on who is returning, Murphy teased, “the people who helped build this show into what it is, who believed in it from the beginning, have been contacted and are interested. So if you look at the iconography of the first three seasons, you can figure who I’ve gone to and who might be coming back.” Insert Monocle Emoji here.
No theme has been announced yet, but Ryan Murphy knows what it is.
In recent years, the theme of each season has generally been kept secret for a long time—sometimes right up until the show airs—so it’s not surprising that Murphy isn’t going to get into details this early. “Every season by Halloween, I come up with what the [theme] winner is, and I already came up with an idea for season 10,” he told Deadline. “There’s always the runner-ups, and I’m like ‘Hmm, could this be something?’”
Another intriguing tidbit? Don’t rule out a season of AHS set in space. “We flirted with aliens, we flirted with space, we flirted with some things that were more interesting than others,” Murphy continued. “I think that at the heart of it, it’s always about Americana. It would be hard to do something like [space], not that I wouldn’t. The fans write in what they want, and they’re very excited about the Coven stuff and the aliens in season 2. They’ve always wanted something in space.” I’m just gonna go on record right now as saying I would be extremely here for an AHS take on the moon landing.
At least three more seasons are on the way after Season 10.
Although Murphy is kept busy with various projects at both FX and Netflix, American Horror Story will at least run through Season 13. In January 2020, Deadline confirmed that FX had ordered seasons 11, 12, and 13 of the anthology series. So if your fan-favorites aren’t returning for season 10, they could show up in a spooky future installment.