A horror very much grounded in reality may bring on American Horror Story's end of days.
Once again, a new season of American Horror Story is approaching. Season 8's Apocalypse will premiere on September 12, giving fans mere weeks to uncover clues about the secretive new season.
While we know the latest installment of the anthology series will be a crossover of season 1's Murder House and season 3's Coven (and will star a grown-up version of the Antichrist, played by Cody Fern) we're still in the dark about how the titular apocalypse will begin. Now, a new teaser for AHS season 8 is provides a potential clue.
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American Horror Story is notorious for creating cryptic teasers that evoke the mood of the show, rather than spill on major plot details or show footage from the upcoming season. However, most of these short videos — which usually drop in the weeks leading up to the premiere — do reveal clues about what to expect from the latest addition of the series. The latest teaser is titled "Radioactive Mist," and it suggests that AHS is going nuclear.
The new, 15-second video shows a woman (a witchy woman, perhaps?) reading a book in front of what appears to be a slate of glass. Suddenly, an unidentifiable object smashes up against the window. The woman, fortunately, is not disturbed from her reading.
It's not so much what happens in the teaser as the fact that "radioactive" is in the title. You may remember that fans noticed that the production company behind AHS trademarked American Horror Story: Radioactive prior to the announcement that the new subtitle would be Apocalypse. While some fans thought that maybe this would be the title of a future season, given the title of this teaser, it could really have been just another option for this particular installment.
And what causes radioactivity... and, potentially, the end of days? A nuclear bomb.
My theory is that, while Antichrist Michael Langdon will likely be involved in the forthcoming apocalypse, it will be a nuclear bomb that provides the physical threat to the characters.
This isn't the first teaser to lean into bomb-imagery. The "Hourglass" teaser, released earlier in August, shows a mushroom cloud, and a woman wearing a gas mask before "melting" from what appears to be nuclear fallout. (No one ever claimed the American Horror Story teasers made for pleasant viewing.)
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The good news? The witches returning to the American Horror Story universe could ultimately save the day. Perhaps that's who the unfazed reader in the "Radioactive Mist" teaser represents: A witch who isn't afraid of impending doom, because she knows she can stop it.
And someone needs to stop the apocalypse, right? American Horror Story is renewed through season 10, so we can't exactly end the world right now.