The 2023 Fall TV season is set to suffer dearly when it comes to scripted TV premieres, but FX has a far more enjoyable sense of agony in store for viewers with a double dose of star-studded frights. American Horror Story’s 12th season (subtitled Delicate), and franchise spinoff American Horror Stories are each set to make their highly anticipated debuts, and each is having to change up initial release plans due to the ongoing WGA writers strike and SAG-AFTRA actors strike.
As such, each series in the American Horror Story franchise is being released in a new way that changes up what fans have gotten used to over the years. Whether those changes are good or bad is up to audiences to decide, but they were apparently deemed necessary in order to give this Halloween as much Ryan Murphy flair as it deserves. Here’s what to expect from both AHS shows.
American Horror Story: Delicate Release Details
For 11 years running, American Horror Story aired its seasons in full stretches, with sporadic variations by way of episode counts, premiere windows, and that one year when it aired on Tuesday nights for whatever reason. FX gave AHS: NYC its own pretty major scheduling alteration in 2022 by airing back-to-back episodes for the duration of the season, resulting in an arguably truncated experience for those of us who enjoy this show’s signature batshittery for as many weeks as possible.
This time around, it’s not wholly clear just yet how the ep rollout will go down, but the network confirmed that American Horror Story: Delicate will be split into two separate parts, with the first section premiering on Wednesday, September 20. Which means we might be waiting a while to find out why Kim Kardashian’s twisted pregnancy story features spiders so heavily in its creepy first-look imagery, as seen below.
The concept of a two-part season might not be so horrifying if we had any idea of when Kardashian and co-stars Cara Delevigne, Emma Roberts and more can return to film the remainder of the season once the SAG-AFTRA strike has concluded. Unfortunately, that's not clear just yet, so we'll have to make do with however many episodes were completed before production went on hiatus.
American Horror Stories Season 3 Release Details
American Horror Stories hasn't aired for nearly as long as the flagship series, and thus hasn't quite set up clear expectations for its release methods. For instance, Season 1 kicked off its seven-ep run with a doubled-up premiere, while the second season spread its eight installments out across eight full weeks. Season 3 will reverse course in that sense, however, by dropping everything that was filmed all at once.
As part of this year's Huluween festivities, American Horror Stories Season 3 will debut all four episodes at once for fans with Hulu subscriptions. That premiere was revealed to be happening on Thursday, October 26, which could technically set up a four-night viewing run going into the year's spookiest holiday. There's nothing NOT freaky AF about the first look at the season below.
It's unclear if FX and Hulu will turn the unproduced episodes into a fourth season, or if their fate will be decided once the strikes are over. And we'll have to wait a little longer to see official pics and footage from the new eps.
In the meantime, though, every bit of American Horror Story excellence can be streamed in full on Hulu.
