This week marked the end of another hectic and twist-filled season of American Horror Story, with this year's 1984 storyline concluding in a bloody and shocking fashion. But long before Camp Redwood's endgame was put into motion for Season 9, AHS fans were already hungry for information about the show's future, including Season 10, which will potentially mark its final batch of episodes on FX.
Playing things close to the vest as he always does, Ryan Murphy wasn't very forthcoming in his answers about what Season 10's theme will be. However, Murphy was asked whether American Horror Story's streaming future would be exclusive to Hulu, per that recent deal announcement, or if the anthology would get shared with its current streaming home of Netflix. Bizarrely enough, Murphy's answer hinted that Netflix would be his targeted home for American Horror Story if FX decides to pull the plug after Season 10. In Murphy's words:
It does incredibly well on Netflix, which I love, and I have a lot of my shows on Netflix that aired on FX. I reap the benefits of both. Look, John Landgraf has always been incredibly honorable about American Horror Story and he would obviously like to keep it going, and I’d like to keep it going. We’re in the middle of negotiations about beyond Season 10. We have had conversations about the show going 20 seasons. If John for some reason said, ‘We don’t want to make this anymore’, would I call up Netflix? Yes. But he’s only ever expressed love and enthusiasm and he wants to keep it going. We’re both very proud of it.
As Ryan Murphy implied, FX's head honcho John Landgraf hasn't been waving any white flags indicating that the network is surrendering AHS' chances of continuing on into Season 11 and beyond. After all, American Horror Story helped usher in the current wave of anthologies and limited series, and it remains a noteworthy success for FX in general.
Non-surprisingly, Ryan Murphy talked up the show's success on FX with Deadline and helped to soothe most worries that American Horror Story could be vacating its cable home in the near future, saying:
It’s FX’s most highly rated show in the history of the network, it’s had 96 Emmy nominations. I hope, knock wood, [we] will get past 100. It’s one of the most awarded and lauded shows of that network. I have every good intention of it staying there and I think he does, too. We’re talking about it. We’re trying to figure it out.
In just about any previous year, worrying about American Horror Story's future on FX might have seemed like a needless effort. John Landgraf has been proven to be a patient network head, and he's overseen some of FX's biggest successes, even if they weren't always smash hits right out of the gate. However, 2019 is a whole different TV ballgame for FX after the Disney takeover.
The entertainment world got shaken up recently when Sons of Anarchy creator and FX faithful Kurt Sutter got fired from Mayans M.C., which he co-created with Elgin James, and from FX as a whole. Granted, Sutter and Ryan Murphy don't share a ton common as TV creators, and the former admitted his own actions influenced his ousting. As such, it's hard to use that situation as a springboard for speculation about American Horror Story's future.
Any way it goes, Ryan Murphy and the rest of the AHS creative team clearly aren't ready to stop turning horror tropes on their heads any time soon, and I imagine that the show's diehard fans will follow it wherever it ends up.
As far as Season 10 goes specifically, Ryan Murphy was asked about the long-rumored idea to bring AHS into space, which he branched off from to tease what's coming and who's involved.
I’m keeping mum. It would be hard because it’s called American Horror Story and you’d have to stay within the legal soil limits in order to make that work. 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 — because it might be our last season. It’s the last season we have contracted. So, I’ve been quietly reaching out to various people. 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.
American Horror Story: 1984 was also atypical for the series in that it was missing several of its most prominent cast members, with Sarah Paulson and Evan Peters taking the year off, and other heavy hitters like Kathy Bates and Angela Bassett also absent. Which was fine, since that gave franchise newcomers Angelica Ross and Matthew "Big Personality" Morrison a lot more time to prove themselves worthy of coming back for Season 10.
When CinemaBlend spoke with Angelica Ross about her time as AHS: 1984's personality-swapping psychologist Donna, the actress expressed interest in hoping to return to the show for Season 10, given how happy she was to work again with Ryan Murphy after Pose. In her words:
Being able to play like this with Ryan Murphy, and have him tell the writers to sort of create this wild arc. It's kinda just like a nice affirmation that says – you know, from Pose and Candy's final scenes to something like this with Donna – is that he believes I'm an actor that can carry those types of twists, turns, and deep storylines. And I can't wait to see... I feel like, hopefully, I'll be in the Ryan Murphy universe for a while, and I just can't wait to see what other things that I can do with him. . . . I hope so. I mean, who knows? I'm pretty sure there's another season of American Horror Story, at least. So maybe they'll get creative and find something for me there as well.
If for some reason American Horror Story ends up coming to a close with Season 10 without a future on either Netflix or FX, one would certainly hope Ryan Murphy would bring back every single actor who has ever appeared in any of the past nine seasons. But even if it isn't, let's get Connie Britton back in a lead role, shall we?
American Horror Story: 1984 is now over, and it's not clear a this point when the season will be available to stream on either Netflix or Hulu. But fans can currently watch recent episodes on FX's website.
