Although the show is inspired by the 2016 election, creator Ryan Murphy has maintained that AHS: Cult is not an attack on President Trump. Fellow Scream Queens star Billie Lourd – Carrie Fisher’s daughter – will also appear in this season. My college roommates would get together for every episode, and the series premiere is one of the most terrifying episodes of television I’ve ever seen. “We’re trying to understand how someone who is very charismatic in the culture can rise up and become a leader”. What we see in the credits usually gives us a good sense of what’s going to happen in the season, but sometimes, the credits are much scarier or even more interesting than the episodes themselves.
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Instead of hauling her butt back home, Ally decides to mosey on into the empty AF grocery store. “F- you, Nate Silver!”
For all the explicit (and sort of unhinged) political commentary, there are also glimmers of a more nuanced – though still easy to spot – critique on the outcome of the 2016 election. From there, however, the season quickly reveals itself to be more about the blue and the red – rather than the orange.
It is later revealed, in a shocking twist, that Ally herself voted for Stein, sure that MI would be safe from Trump, but begs Ivy not to tell anyone. While Ally finds herself unable to deal with her fears and inter-turmoil (to the chagrin of her wife, Alison Pill’s Ivy), Kai wages a secret assault on his own neighborhood with the intent of spreading panic and paranoia. “When I got into the booth, I couldn’t do it”. “I want to be able to morph into whatever”. I told you to go vote, but you didn’t listen. One minute he’s terrorizing her for quitting school to work for Hillary’s campaign, and the next they’re pinkie swearing and she’s confessing her love for anal. “She went to Arizona, for God’s sake”.
He said he set the season in MI because it was a battleground state that only became more polarized when Clinton lost the assumed win, a world that he felt he knew. Ally flees the grocery store and phones Ivy from her auto, exclaiming, “They’re trying to kill me”. What is going to be interesting though is to see how Twisty is going to make is reappearance in the American Horror Story connected universe considering he was killed off on the show during the 1950s in Florida and Cult will be taking place in modern day MI. “You felt it leading up to the election with all the liberal news”. Clown imagery abounded in the season’s marketing materials, and Twisty the Clown has already made a comeback: he’s one of Oz’s favorite comic characters, it seems, much to Ally’s dismay.
Kai Anderson (Peters) reacts to Trump’s election night win by blending Cheetos and smearing them across his face as makeup. It was an attitude carried by some Republicans and on-the-line Democrats who, as Ally puts it, simply “couldn’t do it” when it came to voting for Hillary.
The earliest reports for American Horror Story’s seventh installment had it centered around an election.
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Kai, meanwhile, may seem more confident than Ally on the surface, but his actions reflect the insecurities and fears that are now driving many Trump supporters, like the moment when he picks a fight with Mexican workers, telling them, “You wetbacks aren’t welcome here no more”.
