Jessica Lange’s Return to American Horror Story Finally Puts the Franchise Back on Track

Anthology series American Horror Story has been an FX staple since its debut in 2011, telling tales of everything from ghosts and serial killers to witches, aliens, vampires, and more. And while its absence from the 2025 Fall TV schedule meant that Halloween didn’t feel quite as spooky as it has in recent years, fans still ended up getting the ultimate treat in the end. Creator Ryan Murphy not only confirmed that the show would be returning to our screens next year, but that it’s giving us the one thing that pretty much every fan has been clamoring for for the better part of the last decade: Jessica Lange is finally coming back.

A cornerstone of the franchise who won two Emmys during her time on the show, it’s difficult to overstate what a big deal Lange’s return to the universe that introduced her to an entire new generation of fans really is. And it’s something most of us had finally begun to accept would never happen. Lange departed the series after its fourth installment, American Horror Story: Freak Show, and despite appearing in multiple other Murphy-helmed projects in the years since (Feud: Bette and Joan, Feud: Capote vs. the Swans, The Politician), has been fairly adamant that she was done with this franchise. In fact, the Oscar winner rather vehemently insisted as recently as this past February that she’d ever step back into the world of AHS. 

“Oh Christ, no,” Lange said at the time. “I mean, I haven’t done it for more than 10 years, 12 years, so, no, I’m not doing it.” (This is basically Andrew Garfield in Spider-Man: No Way Home levels of misdirection, and you sort of have to respect it.) 

Though it has had its moments here and there—the AIDS crisis metaphor in AHS: NYC was genuinely moving, and the classic slasher vibes of 1984 were fun—the AHS franchise has never really been the same since Lange left. Despite seasons that featured stars ranging from Lady Gaga to Kim Kardashian, the show rarely reached the campy or dramatic heights of its earliest installments. (Okay, fine, eighth outing American Horror Story: Apocalypse was genuinely awesome, but it also technically involved a surprise appearance from Lange, who briefly reprised her Emmy winning Murder House role as Constance Langdon for an episode.) 

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Lange isn’t the only longtime AHS veteran returning for the next season either. The still-unnamed entry will also see Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters, Angela Bassett, Kathy Bates, Emma Roberts, Billie Lourd, Gabourey Sidibe, and Leslie Grossman all take part, along with brand new addition Ariana Grande, presumably fresh off all the awards nominations she’s about to rack up for Wicked: For Good. To say this is an all-star reunion is a vast understatement. But it also begs the question: what on earth is going on here? 

Rumors are already flying that this season will be the show’s grand finale, and the idea of AHS going out with a bang in its 13th season, specifically, makes a certain amount of sense in terms of bringing it back to its roots with many of the faces that started it all. (We basically  just need Lily Rabe and Taissa Farmiga to sign on at this point.) There’s also the possibility that we might be looking at another crossover-style season that mixes characters from across one or more shows together. Third outing Coven remains the show’s most popular season, and it probably wouldn’t take much to find a way to resurrect Lange’s former Supreme witch, Fiona Goode. 

Plus, the video that announced the season’s cast did conclude the iconic quote from Roberts’ Coven character Madison Montgomery: “Surprise, bitch, I bet you thought you’d seen the last of me.” And while you can certainly read that as referring to Lange’s return to a franchise she’d seemingly long disavowed, it could also work as a hint about where the story is headed in season 13. Halloween 2026 suddenly seems very far away, indeed.