After months of anticipation, American Horror Story finally premiered its new season, subtitled Cult, on Tuesday night, and it already feels like the creepiest season the horror anthology series has ever put out. The first episode was a flurry of Trumpian anxiety, murderous clowns, and a very unnerving blue-haired Evan Peters, and it didn't just give us nightmare fuel for a lifetime, but also a ton of questions about what's actually going on in this mysterious, disturbing new season. Let's break down the biggest questions we have after that AHS: Cult season premiere.
1. Is Winter Good Or Evil?
My biggest question after finishing the premiere is all about Billie Lourd's character, Winter Anderson. Like… what's her deal? At the start, she seems like a normal teenage girl, crying on the phone with her friend after finding out Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election, but she quickly goes into full creep mode after getting hired to nanny for Ally and Ivy's son, Oz. After being initially annoyed by her brother Kai's enthusiasm over Trump's win, she calmly locks pinkies with him and begins revealing intimate truths about herself to him. While watching Oz, she makes the young boy watch videos of brutal murders, and then lies to his parents and says he was imagining things when they both witness the murder of the Changs next door. Clearly, Kai seems to be set up as an antagonist of the new series, but although Winter seems to trust her brother, she also relents against him, particularly in terms of political opinions. So what's really going on with her?
2. Where Is The Cult?
All the teasers for the new season showed a sea of creepy clowns chanting and swaying in a scary-looking cult, but the premiere episode is still keeping us in the dark about this major theme of the season. Instead of giving us details about what the eponymous cult could be, the premiere instead focused on how the presidential election caused Ally's various phobias to resurface and emboldened Kai to act more recklessly. We did see some of the creepy clowns appear to murder the Chang family at the end of the episode, which seems to connect them to Kai, since Tom Chang humiliated Kai at a city council meeting earlier in the episode. What still isn't clear is whether these murdering clowns are part of some cult that Kai is leading. I'm sure we'll be finding out more about that soon enough.
3. Are The Clowns Real Or Imagined?
Throughout the premiere, Sarah Paulson's character of Ally is haunted by gross, terrifying clowns that apparently only she can see. As Ally desperately tries to get her wife Ivy to believe her, Ivy assures her that the clowns are only in her mind, a sign of her returning phobia of clowns. But at the end of the episode, Ally's son Oz also sees the clowns as they murder the Chang family. However, Winter tells Ally and Ivy that Oz only imagined them. Of course, knowing this show, it's most likely that these killer clowns are indeed real and going to wreak havoc on everyone's lives, but at this point, we just don't know.
