The Ending AHS: Death Valley Fans Really Wanted To See
"American Horror Story: Double Feature" is officially over, ending the franchise's first attempt at combining two themes in one season. Six of the ten episodes went to "Red Tide," which followed the Gardner family's experience with talent-enhancing pills in a beachside community filled with vampires.
Then, "Death Valley" had viewers trying on their tinfoil hats as various conspiracy theories were linked to aliens and politicians. From Stanley Kubrick faking the moon landing to the murder of Marilyn Monroe, the four episodes were jam-packed with storylines that left fans wanting more from the politically motivated aliens.
After a half-hearted attempt to save the human race by Mamie Eisenhower (Sarah Paulson) and Calico (Leslie Grossman), their rebellion gets shut down by Theta (Angelica Ross). The finale abruptly ends with Calico helping to deliver one of the human-alien hybrids and then holding the "perfect" creature.
Fans on the "American Horror Story" subreddit lamented the lost potential of the alien theme, offering suggestions for how the season should've ended.
Fans wanted a connection between Death Valley and Red Tide
Many fans took to the subreddit's weekly episode discussion thread to question why "Death Valley" and "Red Tide" weren't connected in the final episode. Several users noted that Harry Gardner (Finn Wittrock) spent most of "Red Tide" writing scripts set to be made into movies and wished that these episodes had been revealed as an early draft of one of those projects.
"Should have ended with a director yelling cut and we find out it was one of the scripts Finn Wittrock wrote in red tide," said u/drews_news. Others replied to their comment, saying that this finale was "written by pales," implying it was beneath Harry. However, u/Ratathosk raised a strong counterpoint.
"It could have been made into a take (about) how Hollywood destroys good scripts and stories and still tied them together, easily," they said. Another Redditor suggested that the desired finale could've been "one of Harry's stupid attempts at writing before he tried the black pills."
Not everyone was on board with this hypothetical link between the "Double Feature" stories, though. u/IntrinsicGamer said that these standalone stories were "testaments to why they should honestly stop trying to connect any AHS seasons at all, and let them each live in their own little universes."