The One Part Of AHS: Asylum That Has Fans Scratching Their Heads
"American Horror Story: Asylum" remains intensely memorable to fans for multiple reasons, including the incandescent performance of Jessica Lange as Sister Jude and Lily Rabe coming into her own as she walks a fine acting line between portraying an innocent nun and a horrifying demon. This is the year Sarah Paulson stepped out on her own and captured national attention in her role as Lana Winters. It solidified the dark but hopeful tone of the entire series and made fans of many casual viewers, who would go on to follow the show through many new concepts and many narrative twists and turns.
But there's one thing about the season that keeps fans in a state of puzzlement — which really says something about the world-building inherent in the season itself, let alone the upside down mental fun house that comprised the season's storyline.
What's the one part of "American Horror Story: Asylum" that still has fans confused to this day? Keep reading to find out.
Viewers found this plot element out-of-this-world confusing
Perhaps it's not surprising that the alien subplot from this season of the show remains confusing to viewers.
"I mean like.... why were they there for? I just always felt like they served no plot purpose and were just there to add in a supernatural element into the season," posted Reddit user u/telekineticeleven011 to the "American Horror Story" subreddit. "First it was Satan and then suddenly aliens appear out of nowhere."
Some viewers leaned upon the notion that the aliens were there as a plot device to get the ball rolling. "[T]he aliens are why kit was sent to the asylum in the first place. nobody believed his story about the 'little green men.' otherwise he would've been executed," pointed out /u/clownrats. Many others assumed that the aliens might have an influence over the show's events as a whole.
As for series creator Ryan Murphy, he has his own reasons for writing the alien subplot. "For me, [aliens] were always an obvious metaphor for God. It fit very easily into the world of a Catholic sanitarium asylum," he told Entertainment Weekly in 2013. "It was also about science versus faith so it made sense to me. The show is a show that pays tribute to a lot of horror masters. We take that seriously, so I always loved the alien idea of it, I loved what it was, I loved what it was about."