The Evan Peters X-Men Reference You Missed In AHS

While each season of the anthology series "American Horror Story" generally tells an entirely new tale with its own unique characters, Evan Peters is something of a constant from season to season. Peters has appeared in more episodes of "AHS" than any other actor, beating out fellow series mainstay Sarah Paulson by a single episode. As a result, Peters has portrayed a wide variety of characters throughout "AHS" history, including appearances as more than one character within a single season in multiple instances. Season 9, the series' most recent, was the first to be entirely absent of Peters' presence (and likewise was the first to not feature Paulson).

Even though Evan Peters has been busy with the show for almost the entire time it has been on the air, he's managed to balance his "AHS" appearances with a number of roles in other films and TV series. For example, in 2015, the year Season 5 premiered, Peters starred in indie drama "Safelight." From 2014-2019, Peters also notably played a supporting role in the "X-Men" franchise as Peter Maximoff, aka Quicksilver.

The producers of "American Horror Story" may have slipped a reference to Peters' "X-Men" character within its soundtrack during the eighth season. Let's find out how deep this connection goes.

Evan Peters ultimately portrays four distinct characters over the course of "Apocalypse," the eighth season of "American Horror Story." Among those is Mr. Gallant, who, prior to the titular apocalypse at the start of the season, was a noteworthy hair stylist working in Santa Monica, California. As Reddit user u/tegan-louise pointed out in a thread on the "American Horror Story" subreddit, the "Apocalypse" episode "The Morning After" includes a sequence of shots of Mr. Gallant, underscored by the Jim Croce single "Time in a Bottle."

"The Morning After" aired in 2018. In "X-Men: Days of Future Past," released four years prior, Evan Peters' Quicksilver breaks a young version of villain/antihero Magneto (Michael Fassbender) out of prison, set to the very same song. The Mr. Gallant scene in "American Horror Story," then, appears to be drawing attention to the fact that Evan Peters was a part of the "X-Men" universe prior to his "Apocalypse" appearance.

u/telekineticeleven011 jokingly responded that the reference suggests a shared canon, writing, "at this point, I'm convinced the X-Men wiped his memory and sent him to California in hopes of going to Outpost to help the witches defeat the Anti-Christ lol."

Evan Peters' Quicksilver would later end up as the source of an entirely separate instance of blurring two separate canons in "WandaVision." Is it possible, then, that "AHS" and "WandaVision" share a universe? That's likely not the case, but given Peters' acting history, it's a fun thought experiment at the very least.