American Horror Story: Roanoke Season Review

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By Matt Fowler

Warning: Full spoilers for American Horror Story: Roanoke below.

The sixth season of American Horror Story came to us under a successful shroud of secrecy. An avalanche of intriguing teasers, with no clear central theme, kept us all guessing as to what these ten episodes would hold. Where did it take place? When did it take place? What kind of characters would our Horror Story roster be playing this year?

Keeping the haunted house story a secret, as well as the meta-reality TV/reenactment structure, was a good idea. It got us all talking about the show again, creating a buzz that a series entering its sixth season usually can"t generate. The introductory gimmick, too, was fun at first. The scares weren"t there because we were essentially watching the terror unfold onto actors playing the roles the "real people" who endured the torment, but, as always, the show gave us the initial, cheap thrill of watching its talented treasure chest of performers inhabit new characters. There were even a few new faces too, like Cuba Gooding Jr., André Holland, and Adina Porter (Porter, in particular, would shine on Roanoke as a side character turned pivotal, central figure).

Yes, Roanoke had more than a few tricks up its sleeve. Not only did it change up the story after the fist four episodes -- as "My Roanoke Nightmare" transformed into five episodes of found footage salvaged from a ill-fated sequel series -- but the finale revealed the final days of Porter"s character, Lee, through three (or four if you count breaking news footage) different fake, somewhat satirical TV shows. Essentially, these gentle breaks in the spine of the season helped extend a story that, honestly, had no business taking up more than a few episodes.

Roanoke also had the distinction of tying together a lot of elements from other Horror Story seasons. Not that we didn"t know it was a shared universe, but this year tied back to Season 1"s Murder House in a big way (even explaining, all these years later, why the "Croatoan" banishment spell didn"t work on Zachary Quinto"s Chad), giving us a new (old) haunted house filled with so many hateful freaks and ghouls that it made the house, and hotel, in Los Angeles feel like poltergeist picnics. Roanoke also connected to Freak Show (through Edward Mott), Coven (through Gaga"s wood witch - apparently the first "Supreme"), and Asylum (Sarah Paulson"s Lana Winters popped up at the end - and lived to tell the tale!).

But when Roanoke dragged, it dragged. The characters of Matt and Shelby, and then later the real versions of them plus the TV actors who played them, basically entered a hell house filled with a cornucopia of creeps that all felt like they were out of different horror movies. This may have been the point, to some extent, since Roanoke looked back quite a bit on past seasons, but the way it all unraveled worked against the tension.

Because first we watched actors get assaulted by ghosts and cannibals, with no real investment on our part because they were only performers on the show-within-a-show. Then though, when the "real people" went back to the house, along with the stars of the first series, they basically just fell into the same traps, succumbing to the same maniacs we already saw lead the carnage parade in the first four episodes. All it was, this time around, were people dying for real. The stakes, ostensibly, were raised but nothing new was being offered. Then, Matt and Shelby -- the characters we were expected to empathize with during the first half of the season -- dissolved into madness and murder, leaving nothing left to possibly tether us to anything emotionally.

It was around this time that, fortunately, Adina Porter"s Lee became a primary focus and a top contender for "surviving the day." Losing Matt and Shelby as the gooey heartstring center of the show wasn"t ideal, but Porter was excellent as Matt"s damaged and daring sister. By the time the finale rolled around, she was a strong enough character to care about despite the season"s tendency to go to the well once too often with bloody, ghostly massacres. By the final two episodes, the story literally had to bring in new characters -- idiots, the lot of them -- to kill. Super fans and ghost hunters, like lambs to the slaughter, would arrive just so more folks could get impaled and/or dismememberd.

It will be interesting to see, going forward, just what the events right at the end of the finale signify for the larger Horror Story-verse. It was ridiculous to learn that after all the "real" deaths in the sequel show, Three Days in Hell, people still thought it was a hoax somehow. If anything, this type of TV coverage would, essentially, expose the realm of the supernatural to the entire world. Well, it didn"t. But perhaps the implied Butcher-led bloodletting at the end of the season, with news cameras rolling everywhere, holds the key to a band new era for the series.

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