American Horror Story Season 13 Already Has One Major Problem (& It Was Ryan Murphy’s Choice)

With such a long legacy on TV, American Horror Story has pretty much done everything you could expect from it: haunted houses, witches, hotels, cults, apocalypses, and even aliens. So, after 12 seasons, it would be easy to assume there wasn’t much left for the show to do. But Season 13 decided to look back and proudly celebrate everything that made the show one of the biggest of its generation. The idea of bringing together characters and elements from different eras is, at the very least, an interesting way to revisit everything AHS has built over the years. There are plenty of iconic figures we haven’t seen in a long time, storylines that can still be explored, and an almost endless number of possible connections. The problem is that all of this has to fit into a season with a format choice that may not be ideal.

Basically, that choice could end up being exactly what prevents the new episodes from taking full advantage of this reunion. There may be a reason for designing a season this way, but at the same time, we’re talking about a story that inevitably needs room to breathe. You can’t put together a crossover in such a short amount of time and expect fans to easily buy into that strategy. In short, AHS has already returned to TV with an issue that is starting to bother people: its episode runtimes.

American Horror Story: 13‘s Episode Runtime Could Be Its Biggest Problem

The way TV works has changed over time. We used to get shows releasing a new season every year with more than 20 episodes, while today, seasons take much longer to arrive and often have fewer than 10 episodes. However, those episodes can run for an hour or less — which is the case with AHS. Since the beginning, the series has built a history around seasons with episodes running roughly 40 to 60 minutes, but anyone who watched the first ones of Season 13 probably noticed just how quickly the new plot moved. And no, this wasn’t just an exception, because the idea is for all its 13 episodes to really run for around 30 minutes (or closer to 20, depending on the actual runtime). So what does that mean? Less time to develop characters, introduce new information, and make all these pieces come together in the end.

That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but out of all the seasons so far, this might be the worst one to test it on. Even though AHS is telling a new story, it’s not exactly that new either, and is more of a continuation of several others; that’s why you need to have watched certain seasons and specific episodes for everything to fully make sense. So far, things have still felt a little confusing, although that’s nothing new for a show like this (the big reveals have always taken some time to come out). But if you think about the fact that there will only be 13 episodes in total, how is there going to be enough time for proper development?

When a character like Constance (Jessica Lange) returns, for example, there’s much more to explore than just putting her in a scene and letting the audience react. She has a huge history within Murder House (and Apocalypse), and now she’s basically at the center of an entire mystery because of her plans and everything surrounding Mr. Nas (Fedor Steer/Paul Anthony Kelly). Add that to the arcs of all the other characters, and it starts to feel like AHS may not be able to tie everything together neatly. Beyond the new names, the returning ones are extremely important here not just because of fan service, but because of what they actually mean to the story. After all, nobody wants Tate or Kai (Evan Peters), for example, to come back as glorified cameos without much importance to the plot, right? The show previously created the expectation that something more interesting would happen this season than simple nostalgia.

Who actually remembers how Apocalypse worked? Season 8 was the first major attempt at a crossover, and while it had its strengths, the overall result was pretty messy, even for people watching it years after its release. It had a very creative idea, but even with the usual episode runtimes, it was structured around a lot of back-and-forth, disconnected moments, flashbacks within flashbacks, and a story that moved away from its main setting for a large part of the season. So, it’s not hard to imagine Season 13 potentially going down the same path. Right from the start, it’s clear that this was made specifically for fans who love theorizing, since there are already so many elements being introduced at once, but casual viewers could get lost.

And this would be easy enough to ignore if it were only coming from critics, but part of the audience has already looked at everything with some skepticism. On Reddit, fans have been sharing their reactions to a narrative that is being squeezed into such short episodes. “22 minutes?? What is this, a sitcom??” user @jemapellemercy reacted. There are even people who haven’t watched it yet but already don’t feel particularly motivated to do so. “Haven’t gotten a chance to watch yet but sounds like my lack of enthusiasm for this season was justified,” claimed user @p0ck3ts4. But one thing that not many people know is that this decision about the episode length, and its influence on the story, was deliberate — and it came from none other than Ryan Murphy, one of the show’s creators.

The Episode Length Was Ryan Murphy’s Choice

As concerning as it may be, giving the new season such little time was actually a deliberate attempt to create a more packed story. Still, executive producer and writer Ned Martel gave an interview to ScreenRant, explaining that this doesn’t mean the season will lose its ability to be scary or shocking. “You’re going to be satisfied by never knowing what’s coming, even though there’ll be familiar characters on the screen. Ryan thought of the construct of 13 30-minute episodes, so they’re very dense and filled with surprises and scares and humor,” he said.

That’s a pretty understandable logic. After all, AHS hasn’t always known when one of its stories was starting to get dragged out. Some seasons introduced great premises and then added so many subplots that the narrative completely lost focus (including some of the most beloved ones like Coven, Hotel, and Freak Show). So, if 30-minute episodes can help cut out some of that excess, it could actually be a good change. The real question is whether the season was properly planned around that intention, because if everything is just thrown at the audience at maximum speed, 13 could end up feeling like a collection os easter eggs connected by a story that never got enough attention. What people want is twists without unnecessary filler, but those twists still need to make the returning characters and the crossover between seasons feel worthwhile. Those elements need to matter just as much as the plot itself.

At least, one thing you can give credit for is the symbolism, as it seems like the runtime strategy also connects to the season’s theme. Interestingly, if you take the first three episodes, for example, each of them (33, 32, and 22 minutes) adds up to 87, which is Mr. Nas’ age when he was introduced.

In the end, it comes down to trust. A denser format can mean that every minute is being used to its fullest, but it can also mean that there’s so much happening that none of it gets enough time to actually make an impact. And with all the pressure Season 13 is under as a celebration of more than a decade of AHS history, the biggest challenge is making sure all that buildup really leaves an impact.

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