The twelfth season of FX’s genre hit, subtitled American Horror Story: Delicate, is oozing vibes harking back to earlier seasons like Coven and Hotel, partially due to all the grrrl power in the full cast, and partially due to non-acting mega-celeb Kim Kardashian in a starring role. The first look at the reality star alongside Emma Roberts and Cara Delevingne was pretty freaky, and we now have an extended teaser from FX with even more clues and footage to scour over and speculate about ahead of the season, which will be split into two parts for the first time in franchise history.
To that end, I already have a handful of theories cooked up after watching the video above, as well as some ideas about how it could tie back into past seasons. Which doesn’t include “FX wants to torture us by not immediately us first looks at Michaela Jaé Rodriguez or Billie Lourd,” but that’s also bouncing around my brain. Now let’s put on our goopiest thinking caps to dive into AHS theories.
After so many years of visually haunting teasers and trailers ahead of yearly seasons, American Horror Story fans know that not everything that pops up in the promos is meant to have a straightforward impact on the season itself. Which is why I think the over-abundant usage of spider imagery here is almost entirely meptahorical and will allude to mythology or other forms of symbology.
In what will forever be mixed-messaging to me, spiders have been used to represent birth and creation, which certainly ties in here, especially the moment in the trailer with all the egg babies pouring out of the broken egg. (Anyone who’s ever unwittingly killed a pregnant spider likely felt the same chills and clenches my body went through.) Kim Kardashian’s character seems like a fitting enough stand-in for the Greek goddess Arachne, details unheard, while Cara Delevingne seems to be imbued with Anansi-esque trickster behavior. And then there’s the Japanese jorōgumo, a folklorish creature that can shapeshift from a spider into a beautiful and seductive woman. Maybe American Horror Story: Delicate will showcase ALL the spider mythology out there.
Most Likely Season Tie-In: Coven‘s Lore-Touting Witches
The Story Will Center On Both Good And Evil Babies
The concept of “good vs. evil” is as old as time, and it’s obviously also a central part of American Horror Story‘s storylines from year to year, even if it sometimes leans more into “evil vs. evil.” But while the live-action Delicate, which is based on Danielle Valentine’s novel Delicate Condition, has been speculated to be a spin on Rosemary’s Baby and other kinds of “mother carrying a monster” narratives, the teaser hints that maybe not everything will be darkness within these characters’ wombs.
The back-and-forth shots of the rocking bassinets seems to pretty directly set up light/dark dichotomy, where the more angelically lit sleeper has a nice mobile dangling above it, while the red-tinted bassinet doesn’t have such luxuries. Plus, there’s the fact that Kim Kardashian is donning a black dress amidst her possible acolytes, while Emma Roberts’ pained character is dressed in white. Dun-dun-dunnnn.
Most Likely Season Tie-Ins: Murder House‘s Infantata, Apocalypse‘s Michael Langdon
Cara Delevingne’s Meg Is Trying To Clone Herself Through Surrogates
Another way American Horror Story: Delicate may be distancing itself from the demonology and religious sentiments of Rosemary’s Baby is by setting its good/evil babies balance wholly in the world of science and technology. The shots of needles and cells do tip things more into medical practices, even if all those women chasing Emma Roberts’ Anna Alcott look like they’re fully down with weird rituals. But like, the teaser is very clear about showing a centrifuge, which doesn’t have nearly as many historical reference points as spiders.
Because Cara Delevingne’s Meg is rocking such a specific white-blonde hairstyle, and because that’s the same hairstyle adorned by all of the women chasing Anna, it makes me think Meg has a plan for tweaking the population. She may not be intent on using her own DNA for the cloning, to be sure, but that character is already giving Victor Frankenstein, just with fetuses instead of corpses as her subjects.
Most Likely Season Tie-Ins: Asylum‘s mutant-creating Dr. Arden, Double Feature‘s Chemist
Aliens Are Also Involved Maybe?
Okay, so this one is the most out-there of this group of theories, both in terms of location and conjecture. Because that idea is largely tied to the image seen above, of the presumed spider-creature ready to burst from the womb. That particular visual instantly brings to mind the facehugging creatures from Ridley Scott’s Alien, even though those were on the outside of the body instead of the inside like these.
But there’s also something alien in the look of the long black fingers and tentacles and spider legs. I could spend a completely different article pontificating about cloning alien spiders, but I don’t necessarily think all those ideas are going to gel together here. If they did, though, hot damn!
Most Likely Season Tie-Ins: Double Feature‘s Calico and Theta
Will any of these theories pan out? Will all of them come true? Did I miss the mark each and every time? How much tithing do I need to get done for Dark Lord Ryan Murphy in order to get the Infantata back on my TV?
American Horror Story: Delicate will debut the first half of its season on FX on Wednesday, September 20, with episodes available to stream the next day with a Hulu subscription. At this point, it’s unknown when production will start up again on the later episodes, as both the WGA writers strike and the SAG-AFTRA strike will need to be resolved in order for filming to resume.