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American Horror Story Fans Are Split On The Madison Episodes Just Days After FX Renewed The Show

AHS 13 key art from FX showing a hairless sphynx cat hissing at a figure in black lace and patent boots covered in red 13s

FX renewed American Horror Story for Season 14 on Tuesday, and two days later the fans it is counting on could not agree on what they had just watched. Episodes 11 and 12 of AHS: 13, “Madison’s Happy Ending” and “Sisters in Arms,” aired back to back Thursday night, October 22, on FX, and the reaction on X ran from delighted to confused, with a fair amount of “wait, what?” in between.

The timing matters. Season 13 was sold as a reunion, bringing back Jessica Lange, Sarah Paulson, Emma Roberts, Evan Peters, Billie Lourd, Kathy Bates and Angela Bassett for a run that many fans assumed would be the last. Then came the renewal, the show’s first in almost seven years, on the strength of the biggest streaming premiere the series has ever had. So Thursday’s double bill was the first new AHS anyone watched knowing the show is not going anywhere.

The Madison Episodes Left Some Viewers Lost

Episode 11 puts Emma Roberts’ Madison Montgomery at the center, and the first complaints were about how the season got there. One viewer who had been on board all season said the jump from last week’s episodes to this week’s lost them entirely.

The bigger argument was about the character herself. Madison has been a fan favorite since Coven in 2013 and came back in Apocalypse in 2018, and the most-liked fan post of the night, a clip from the episode, flatly refused to accept that this was the same witch.

That post passed 3,600 likes by Friday, and it was not alone. The same complaint kept coming back in different words through the night.

The episode’s title promises Madison a happy ending, and the shape of that ending is what had people doing the Coven family math out loud.

Not everyone was frustrated. The season has leaned hard on winks to the show’s own history, and the Madison episode’s nods to Coven, along with a Julia Roberts reference, read to some fans as Ryan Murphy having a good time at their expense, in a way they seemed to enjoy.

The Renewal Got Jokes More Than Cheers

The Season 14 news itself did not set off the kind of fight FX might have expected from a fanbase that has spent the season arguing about whether this run honors the old ones. Instead, the reactions that stood out were jokes about Murphy’s other revival, the Glee reboot, which the showrunner has said already has a finished script.

The other recurring post was a poll of sorts: with a new season confirmed and no theme announced, which classic should it channel next, Murder House, Coven or Asylum? That question has an answer in the data, if not in FX’s plans. Nielsen’s own breakdown of Hulu viewing since the last season ended found that Coven and Murder House were the two most-watched installments, together accounting for about a third of all AHS streaming, with Asylum a distant third. Season 13 was built around exactly those seasons, which is part of why the Madison episode drew so much scrutiny from people who know Coven by heart.

One Episode Left

The Season 13 finale, “Devil of a Good Time,” airs alone on Thursday, October 29, at 9 p.m. ET/PT on FX, with the episode available on Hulu afterward. It is the last chance for the season to tie its thirteen episodes together for the viewers who felt Thursday’s pair did not connect, and thanks to Tuesday’s news it will play as a bridge to another season rather than a goodbye.

FX has not announced a theme, a cast or a premiere window for Season 14.

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