American Horror Story Star Evan Peters Hasn’t Ruled Out Returning to the Series After Season 9

Earlier this year, fans of American Horror Story got some disappointing news. Evan Peters, one of the constants of the anthology series’ ever-shifting roster of characters and dark, bizarre settings, announced that he would be sitting out the upcoming ninth season, entitled American Horror Story: 1984. Now, it seems that Peters’ break from the series may be just that as he hasn’t ruled out a return after Season 9.

Speaking with Digital Spy about his new film Dark Phoenix, Peters said he hadn’t ruled out coming back to the Ryan Murphy series in the future.

“Yeah, absolutely, never say never,” Peter said. “I just… Yeah, well see what happens.”

Okay, so that’s not exactly a confirmation of a return, but it certainly does make it clear that it’s at least on the table for Peters and for fans that will likely be good news. Peters has previously been pretty direct about the emotional toll that American Horror Story takes, with the actor telling GQ last year that the difficult and frequently sinister roles he plays sometimes even break into moments of his real life.

“It’s just exhausting,” Peters said in that interview. “It’s really mentally draining, and you don’t want to go to those places ever in your life. And so you have to go there for the scenes, and it ends up integrating it somehow into your life. You’re in traffic and you find yourself screaming and you’re like, ‘What the hell? This isn’t who I am.’”

The actor followed that up with a more recent interview with GQ Style, explaining the “burnout” he felt when he spoke with GQ as well as his plans for a break.

“I think it was a full-on burnout,” he said. “I’m going to take a break, regroup, decompress, get back in touch with what I feel like I want to do. Not that I didn’t want to do any of those roles — they’re exactly what I wanted to do. It was just zero to 100 instantaneously. I want to play music.”

At the moment, not much is known about American Horror Story‘s upcoming Season 9. Back in January, Gus Kenworthy and Emma Roberts were officially cast for the season with the actors playing a couple. Thus far, they are the only two official cast members for Season 9. Most fans had assumed that Peters as well as Sarah Paulson — another regular actor on the series — would also be returning, but that is now clearly not the case when it comes to Peters. Murphy has hinted that three actors who have appeared on the series — Cody Fern, Finn Wittrock, and Darren Criss — may appear. It’s also been reported that the new season will start filming in June.

American Horror Story is expected to return to FX this fall.