Entertainment

Could 'AHS: Roanoke' Feature Aliens?

by Kaitlin Reilly

American Horror Story never fails to shock us, whether it's with crazy scares or surprising reveals. Now in its sixth season, the series isn't pulling back on any of these surprises. Creator Ryan Murphy has already promised a big twist on American Horror Story: Roanoke to Entertainment Weekly, and I'm starting to speculate whether it could make fans look at the events of the season in a totally different light. Unlike previous seasons, this season of AHS uses a documentary format and features talking heads and reenactors as it tells the story of a haunting.

Married couple Matt and Shelby's start experiencing freaky visions and creepy encounters while staying in their new North Carolina home, and it seems all too obvious that ghosts are at work here. However, with this big twist reportedly coming in episode six of the series, perhaps we have whose providing the scares on this show all wrong. Could the real villains on American Horror Story: Roanoke be aliens and not ghosts?

I'm starting to think it's a possibility. First, let's think about the setting: this season of American Horror Story explores the Lost Colony of Roanoke, and it's based on real history. In 1587, colonialist John White led over 100 people to settle on Roanoke Island. 10 days later, White left to go get more supplies from England to support the colony. When he returned three years later, the colony had seemingly vanished, leaving only the word "CROATOAN" carved on a tree and "CRO" on a nearby post. It's this story that American Horror Story: Roanoke is seemingly referencing, as we have seen a group of people dressed in traditional 16th century garb. Has the colony returned to Roanoke after a long absence as ghosts? That's what we're meant to believe, but the twist could imply something very different is going on here.

We know that the colony vanished, but we don't know how or why. Though it seems that the event that caused them to vanish had to do with ghosts or a curse — Billie Dean Howard even references the "Croatoan spell" the colonialists used in Roanoke during American Horror Story: Murder House — maybe that's just what the show wants us to think. Perhaps the truth is that aliens abducted the people in Roanoke, and, years later, returned them to the very same spot unharmed because they had bigger plans. Maybe the reason for the colonialists aggression actually has to do with whatever the aliens did to them years ago — they want to protect their community because they have no idea when the aliens will strike again, or who they might be.

It may sound like a out there twist, but it's similar to something that American Horror Story has done before. Though the aliens were benevolent in Asylum, they did do things that would make sense with what potential aliens in Roanoke would be doing: kidnapping people and returning them in the same or better state than they were when they were picked up. It also doesn't mean that a haunting isn't happening on the new season of AHS: Asylum introduced aliens in addition to demons and other supernatural entities, which means that they don't necessarily have to be mutually exclusive. Maybe the nurses haunting the house really are ghosts, while the colonialists who live in the woods are actually still alive, just returned to Earth by the aliens who kidnapped them for centuries. It would be a pretty mind-blowing twist, but definitely one that the series could pull off.

Should we be worried about aliens in addition to ghosts on AHS? Only time will tell what this crazy twist really is.

Images: FX; ahsgifs/Tumblr