American Horror Story season 7 has yet to begin even filming and the show has already been renewed through 2019. Eager fans (including myself) have started to speculate what the next three seasons of the horror anthology series by FX might look like.
‘American Horror Story: Antichrist’
Ryan Murphy has already stated a future season of AHS will feature a crossover between Murder House and Coven. How that crossover might actually play out is unknown as of now. Although, Murphy has stated that it will not be season 7. In the meantime there are many different ways these two worlds could collide.
As the witches of New Orleans step into the Murder House a world of possible storylines could unfold: ghosts, séances, the afterlife, endless possibilities. However, for me, the final moments of season 1 are what hold the clue to what the crossover season is all about.
Murder House ends with all of the Harmon family dead save for Michael, the third child of Vivian. Three years in the future shows the orphaned child being raised by Constance Langdon, previous owner of the Murder House. Most important of all, however, it is revealed that this toddler has murdered his nanny. Such an act suggests there is more to this child than is of this life.
Meanwhile, the end of Coven showed the existence of witches going public. The supreme witch, Cordelia Goode, opened her academy for young witches all over the country. It seems for now that there is peace with those possessing magical powers. Although, a child born of ghost and human might shake up that peace with powers to match that of the witches. Powers of darkness and a drive to use them for evil that will threaten the safety and security of witchkind. This conflict will ultimately lead up to a head-to-head confrontation between the child of the afterlife and the witches.
‘American Horror Story: Shipwreck’
AHS is no stranger to resorting to the use of supernatural forces as a form of horror. Every season except for Roanoke showed how the dead can walk among the living on Halloween night. Hotel brought us vampires and Coven showed the great and terrible power of voodoo. No season as of yet, however, has shown what horrors natural forces have in store for mankind.
In Shipwreck a luxurious Hawaiian cruise goes full-on Lost when a hurricane rips a passenger ship out of the sea. Crashing onto the shores of an uncharted island, families from all different backgrounds must come together to survive. Washed up with nothing connecting them to the civilized world, things can’t seem to get any worse. That is until trips into the dense jungle for sustenance show what horrors the island has in store.
Carnivorous primates, poisonous plants, flesh-eating bugs, and acid rain are just some of the terrors that passengers meet. Still, as days turn to weeks and time becomes an illusion the vacationers worst enemies become each other. A fight for survival turns into survival of the fittest and seemingly overnight the sandy beaches of this island are stained red. Allies shift into betrayal, families become strangers, and lovers descend into worst enemies. The island is reduced to a battleground with one clear goal: total sovereignty.
Who will become the last man standing, and will help arrive in time to stop complete annihilation of the island inhabitants?
‘American Horror Story: Virus’
Picture Grey’s Anatomy meets Contagion. Every season of AHS so far has been very localized and small scale, taking place in one central location. Roanoke set its roots at a farmhouse in North Carolina. Freak Show never left the small town of Jupiter, Florida. But in a not-so-distant future America, a virus begins taking the lives of unsuspecting citizens.
It starts in a hospital in New York City. A young man comes in presenting unusual symptoms; a fever, bloodshot eyes, a rash spreading quickly across his posterior. Without warning the rash metastasizes inward, eating his flesh from the outside in, killing him slowly and painfully. Across the country another case pops up in a hospital in California. Exact same instance. No warning, no explanation, no idea of where it came from. Soon the virus is nationwide and time is running out as top doctors are trying to find a cure and stop the spread of this viral infection.
Eventually a common denominator between some of the initial victims has shown up. Every single carrier was a survivor of a Hawaii-bound cruise that crashed on an uncharted island months previously. The passengers picked up the virus on the island and carried it to the mainland where it is spreading across the country like wildfire. Finding cure is the only thing left to do. However, with people dying across America by the second, chances of a cure being constructed are becoming sparing.
At the mid-season mark, after loss of hope, weeks of research, and the death of millions a cure is established. The antidote is distributed widely slowing down the spread so research on a preventative agent can begin. There is just one catch:
The dead are coming back to life.
‘American Horror Story: Incarceration’
Roanoke was the bloodiest American Horror Story season yet. Three characters had their innards yanked from their bodies, two hikers were burnt at the stake, and one character’s ear was cut off and pickled for eating. The fandom probably needs a break before the show goes back to using gore tactics as a source of terror.
Once the fans are ready for some more senseless and gruesome entertainment, AHS: Incarceration will be waiting to disturb them. At a penitentiary located in a middle American desert, miles from civilization a dire mistake is made. An innocent man is sent to a prison where the country’s most diabolical criminals are sentenced to live out the rest of their lives.
In this prison, however, there is a secret that few know about and even fewer are willing to share. Every couple weeks a prisoner disappears. Everyone claims to have no clue where they have gone, no one will say if they have escaped or if they are even alive. Those who know the truth are the key to this innocent’s only chance at freedom. Prisoners are selected at random and are given the chance at participating in a series of tasks that if completed will grant them their freedom. Not a soul knows who offers this opportunity, not until they are chosen, until it is too late.
These tasks are gruesome. Inspired by the Saw franchise, the participant must torture themselves in a way similar to that of how they have hurt others in order to gain their liberation. No one has ever succeeded, every prisoner who has attempted the mission has met their demise in the process. Escape, so it seems, is impossible. Even so, the masked tormenter feeds off the human will to attain freedom in order to assemble new victims.
‘American Horror Story: Ghost Stories’
AHS has utilized children in different and interesting ways in the past. Hotel turned children into misunderstood and messy villains using the blood virus. Roanoke centralized them as the heart of the show through Flora and Priscilla. What if, alternatively, the children were the victims?
Not all is right at a happy, sleep-away-camp in sunny and adventurous Colorado. Terrifyingly cheerful camp counselors, a bloodthirsty chef, and a chilling camp song set every child on edge. In the end, not one is surprised to hear something go bump in the night. Meanwhile, ghost stories around the campfire turn into a full-blown nightmare as children’s worst fears come to life.
Something is moving under the waters of the lake where campers swim and canoe. Children who misbehave come back from meetings with counselors acting strangely upbeat and vacant. At night a figure who looks different to each and every child who sees it, skulks in the woods. However, nothing can prepare camp goers for the day that one by one their friends start to go missing.
As events in the camp only become more disturbing the children start to suffer from nightmares that seem too realistic to be just dreams. Employees of the camp begin working even harder and harder to ease the minds of terrified guests. Meanwhile the children discover that there is more at work at camp that meets the eye. They must fight together against supernatural forces that take on the shape of the demons of their mind to save their friends and escape the camp that seeks to take their lives.
AHS: Ghost Stories will have you asking what really lurks in the forest at night?