American Horror Story returned for its 10th season last week with a new terrifying tale that has made it to air pretty much spoiler-free. Titled Double Feature, this season is split into two parts, one set by the sea and one set by the sand. The season began with part one, subtitled Red Tide, which follows a young family that relocates to Cape Cod to help husband and father Harry (Finn Wittrock) get over his writer's block. Very little has been shared so far about the show's second part, but the return of AHS superstars Evan Peters and Sarah Paulson has us ready to follow every minute of Season 10's twisted tales.
Double Feature's two-part premiere was packed with pop culture and true crime references, and even had a very-meta reference to the franchise itself. This milestone 10th season has plenty of American Horror Story history to pull references from, and a devoted fanbase eager to look through every frame for easter eggs. Here's a roundup of key references and nods to past seasons in the show so far.
Cape Cod, Massachusetts
There are multiple AHS connections to the Massachusetts setting of Part I: Red Tide. In the show's first season, Murder House, the Harmons relocated from Boston to Los Angeles. Coven has also ties to Massachusetts through the Salem Witch Trials, as highlighted by Stevie Nicks.
Also, the Cape Cod region itself has a history of notorious serial killers and creepy events, including some that have hugely described the series (mentioned below). There is the Lady of the Dunes, the still-unidentified murder victim found in the Race Point Dunes of Provincetown, Massachusetts in 1974. There's also Bridgewater Triangle, an area in southeastern Massachusetts that's has allegedly been the site of UFO, Big Foot, giant snake, and poltergeist sightings.
One less spooky detail about Provincetown that's highlighted in the series is its LGBTQ+ community. The beach town has been a popular queer summer destination for decades, and camp filmmaker John Waters has a summer home there. Waters previously appeared in another show by Murphy, Feud: Bette and Joan.
The Shining
Fans noticed the show's connections to the Stephen King novel as soon as the trailer dropped, since Red Tide follows a young family who relocates to a tourist town in the off-season to help husband and father Harry (Finn Wittrock) fight his writer's block. The initial set-up is where the connection mostly ends though, though Harry's wife Doris (Lily Rabe) does frequently shift between being supportive and exasperated as she spends more time in the house.
The Tony Costa Murders
The season's first episode, "Cape Fear," starts off with a true-crime reference in the first few minutes. While the Gardners tour their new home in Provincetown, Harry (Wittrock) mentions that he's heard of mysterious deaths in the area, specifically a family of five who was found dead in their beds.
The line is a nod to one of New England's most famous serial killers, Antone Charles "Tony" Costa. Costa was a cannabis farmer and handyman who killed eight women around the town of Truro, Massachusetts, in the late '60s. He was said to have bitten chunks out of his victims, and was often referred in the press as the Cape Cod Vampire. Beyond the obvious vampire inspiration, Costa was also a frequent user of pills and LSD, who wrote about taking LSD with two of his victims and killing them in his unpublished novel. It's safe to say that Costa was a major inspiration for the season.
The New England Vampire Panic
Another likely inspiration for the season happened 200 years after the Salem Witch Trials, when New England had another supernatural panic. In the 19th century, a tuberculosis outbreak rocked Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont and other parts of the region. At the time, residents believed that early victims of the disease had "fed" on their family members who subsequently fell sick. To stop the "vampires," the bodies were exhumed and placed facedown in their graves, with some opting to burn the corpses' heart and inhale the smoke as a supposed cure. This is probably where Double Feature got the inspiration for "Tuberculosis Karen" (Sarah Paulson).
The Cult-like grocery store sequence
Harry receives a disturbing welcome to town in an early scene in episode one. While shopping at the grocery store, he comes face to face with "Tuberculosis Karen" (Paulson), a local who warns him to get out of town with expletive-filled shouting.
The disturbing trip to the grocery store mirrored one such shopping trip in Cult, where Paulson's character Ally was attacked by killer clowns as heavy metal music played over the intercom. The lead up to the two confrontations were even filmed similarly, as one fan noticed on Twitter.
"Islands in the Stream"
AHS alums Evan Peters and Frances Conroy's Double Feature characters–three-time Tony Award winning playwright Austin Sommers (Peters) and prolific romance novelist Belle Noir (Conroy)–made a grand entrance in episode one. The campy and vampy writer duo serenades Harry and the other patrons at the local bar with a duet of "Islands in the Stream." The iconic duet by Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers doesn't have any horror genre connections that we know of, but the lovely performance continued the Ryan Murphy tradition of having his characters sing at some point in his shows.
The Prolific Writer
When Sommers (Evan Peters) tries to sell Harry on taking the black inspiration pills at his beach house, the playwright mentions the writer friend who got him on the pills.
“He writes for television. You know the name. Disgustingly prolific, silly rich, couldn’t write a thank-you note without somebody handing him a trophy of some kind. And I thought to myself, ‘How is he doing it?’ And all I knew was that he spent his winters here, and when he returned to the city he had a stack of material as long as my Johnson. He invited me out here one winter, and when I arrived he handed me one of those. Tragic magic little black pills. Within an hour, I was banging away at the keyboard like Amadeus at his harpsichord.”
The prolific writer who's swimming in cash and awards sounds a lot like the AHS' creator himself. It wouldn't be the first time AHS went meta; the finale of the spinoff American Horror Stories feature a group of fans talking about AHS as an in-universe show. Considering how amazing it is that Murphy has time for all his different projects, the idea that he could've fell victim to The Chemist's black pills makes sense.
Jaws (1975)
A very on-the-nose pop culture reference comes from AHS newcomer Macaulay Culkin in episode 2. While Mickey (Culkin) gets high with Tuberculosis Karen (Paulson), he shares his own fan theory that the killer shark from the 1975 film Jaws is actually the good guy, trying to avenge a shark relative who was previously hunted and killed by the film's protagonist, Quint. While Mickey's theory is a stretch, it is fairly cool to see the Home Alone actor as a fanboy who says movies are his "whole life."
The Jaws reference also brings some regional realism to the show, as the classic movie was filmed in the Cape Cod town of Falmouth, Massachusetts. Plus there's a light moment when, after Karen says her friend might have been an extra on Jaws 2, Mickey says, "F–k Jaws 2. They shot that s–t in Florida."
Quentin Tarantino
The first reference of Episode 3 comes from Harry's agent Ursula (Leslie Grossman), who arrives at his house with news of the prolific action director. Apparently Tarantino wants Harry to write his first-ever limited series, which has already been greenlit by Hulu (a.k.a. the platform you're probably watching AHS on right now).
Harry doesn't believe the offer, saying that "Quentin" writes all of his projects himself (which is true both IRL and in the AHS universe). However, Ursula quotes Tarantino saying, "That motherfucker is a better writer than I am," throwing in the director's favorite curse word. She also mentions that Tarantino just got married so he can't "do what he has to do" to write things anymore, and that Harry would understand. With that vague explanation, Tarantino is the second biggest Hollywood name to use the pills in the show (behind Ryan Murphy himself).
Herman Melville
In the same scene, when trying to convince Ursula that nothing weird's going on in Provincetown, Harry mentions that writers often stay in the town for inspiration, name-dropping playwright Eugene O'Neill along with the Moby Dick author. It turns out that, while O'Neill did spend time there, Melville did not. Instead, the inspiration for Moby Dick came from New Bedford, Massachusetts, which hosts a famous whaling museum. Other notable writers and journalists who were inspired by Provincetown include Michael Cunningham, Norman Mailer, Mark Protosevich, Kurt Vonnegut, and Tennessee Williams.
Land's End by Michael Cunningham
Ursula stays at the Land's End Inn in town, which takes its name from the 2002 novel Land's End: A Walk in Provincetown by Michael Cunningham. The novel, which sits on Harry's desk in an earlier episode, is a "celebration of one of America's oldest towns," according to its official description. Pulitzer Prize-winner Cunningham has visited, and later lived in, the Cape Cod town since 1981, and he previously called it "one of the places in the world you can disappear into."
"Too Much, Too Little, Too Late"
For their second karaoke night at The Muse, Sommers and Belle Noir (her name's too good to shorten) sing the 1978 duet "Too Much, Too Little, Too Late" by Johnny Mathis and Deniece Williams. The breakup song was seen as a comeback for Mathis, who rose to fame in the 50s. It hit no. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was certified gold, making it the last no. 1 of the crooner's career. There's no big horror connection for the song, but it is about the end of something (a relationship), so it could be foretelling the fate of jeering Ursula.
Home Alone (1990)
Double Feature couldn't not include a reference to the classic film series after casting Macaulay Culkin. In a clever Easter egg twist, the show flips the script and has Culkin become a frequent home invader. He breaks into both Belle Noir's house and Ursula's hotel room in this episode, though he changes his mind about killing Ursula once she reveals that she got him a gig writing the Speed Racer remake.
Chief Burleson's questioning
Before Burleson's (Adina Porter) untimely end, she fit multiple nods to previous AHS seasons into her questioning of Alma. When she enters the house, the cop makes small talk about Alma and her mother, Doris', names, saying that they're surprisingly old-fashioned, and mentioning nostalgia. Besides being a stylistic choice, those names have also been used in other installments, with Alma Walker, Evan Peters' character's wife in Season 2 (Asylum) and Doris Kearns Goodwin, a biographer who appeared as herself in Season 6 (Roanoke)
There are also two obvious nods when Burleson asks Alma whether a cult is behind the killings, or if she has a rare blood disease. The cult is a nod to Season 7 (Cult), and the blood disease hints back at the show's psuedo-vampires in Season 5 (Hotel).
Norman Mailer's Maidstone
While showing The Chemist her new rental home at the beginning of Episode 4, interior designer Holden Vaughn (AHS alum Denis O'Hare) says that he once saw novelist Norman Mailer bite actor Rip Torn's ear off in one of the house's rooms, referencing the 1970 film Maidstone. Mailer wrote, directed, and produced the film, which follows fictional filmmaker Norman Kingsley as he runs for president. Its production became infamous because of an improvised between Mailer and Torn, which became an actual brawl and cost Torn his ear. Maidstone was actually filmed in upstate New York, but Mailer did own a house in Provincetown.
Belle Noir's "seduce the maid" storyline
Before she was Belle Noir, Sarah Cunningham came to Provincetown to promote her independently published novel. Martha’s Cherry Tree is an America Revolution-era historical drama that includes sex scenes between George and Martha Washington (and one where the two are joined by Benjamin Franklin). At the reading shown in the flashback episode, Cunningham reads from a scene where Martha decides to seduce the maid who's been having an affair with George.
The steamy storyline is an echo of Frances Conroy's first AHS character in Season 1 (Murder House). Conroy played Moira O’Hara, the housekeeping ghost who appeared as a matronly senior to women, and a 20-something sexpot (Alexandra Breckenridge) to men. Moira would use her different appearances to taunt and confuse the men around her, mostly dad Ben (Dylan McDermott).
"Magic Man"
We meet flashback Austin Sommers as he performs a lip-sync of Heart's "Magic Man" as his drag alter-ego, Patty O'Furniture. "Magic Man" is a song off the band's debut album, Dreamboat Annie, and it's said to be about singer Ann Wilson's then-boyfriend and manager, Michael Fisher. Its supernatural-leaning lyrics includes talk of casting a spell, and references the moon and winter nights, making a great soundtrack for a night of transformation.
RuPaul's Drag Race
For Double Feature's drag scenes, the show tapped Drag Race alum Eureka!, in their first AHS appearance as Crystal Decanter. The famous queen has appeared in Seasons 9 and 10 of Drag Race as well as All Stars Season 6, and they went on to host the HBO series We're Here alongside Shangela and Bob the Drag Queen. The queen even spent their last moments on the show watching a Drag Race dupe, claiming that they could win the show herself before Sommers and Belle Noir crash the viewing. After escaping and seeking refuge in the cemetery, they die at the hands of Provincetown's first Pale Person.
Gaslight (1944)
Episode 5 borrows its name from George Cukor's 1944 film Gaslight, which also popularized the term. In the movie, a naive woman (Ingrid Bergman) moves into her deceased aunt's house with her new husband (Charles Boyer). Her husband confines her to the house and tells her she's imagining things when she hears a knocking in the walls and sees the gas lights dimming. She starts to doubt her sanity, but (spoiler alert) it turns out her husband was just tricking her, so he could steal her aunt's jewels.
Pietro Locatelli’s L’arte del violino
The violin piece that Alma plays throughout the episode, and that she uses to justify drinking her baby brother's blood is Locatelli Caprice in D major, which she says is so complicated that a man once killed himself because he couldn't get it right. Though there's no historical record of the man, the piece itself is part of Baroque violinist and composer Pietro Locatelli’s L’arte del violino.
The 1737 composition–12 concerti written for solo violin, strings, and bass–made Locatelli known as a pioneer of modern violin technique. Alma was likely referring to the final concerto of the composition, which Locatelli nicknamed "Labyrinth," short for "Harmonic Labyrinth: Easy to enter; difficult to escape!"
Tuberculosis Karen's death
After killing Mickey and painting her masterpiece, Tuberculosis Karen kills herself by cutting her wrists and walking into the ocean. The way Karen dies is actually similar to the suicide of 20th-century writer Virginia Woolf. In March 1941, the modernist author, who had a long history of depression, filled the pockets of her coat with stones and walked into the River Ouse near her home, where she drowned at the age of 59.
Lily Rabe playing Doris
Doris Gardner's story has a rough end in Episode 5, where she turns into a Pale Person after her daughter, Alma, convinces her to take the black pill. Red Tide isn't the first time that Lily Rabe has played a dedicated mother in AHS. In Season 1 (Murder House), she played Nora Montgomery, a socialite (and the house's original owner) who took her life after her baby died and her husband mutilated the corpse. Also, in Season 9 (1984), she played Lavinia Richter, the summer camp cook who went on a rampage, murdering several counselors, after her favored son Bobby died on her other son, Benjamin's, watch.
The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951)
Death Valley's black-and-white 50s plot seems to draw from the classic alien invasion flick The Day The Earth Stood Still. Robert Wise's 1951 horror film followed the government response to an alien invasion.
Amelia Earhart
In the 1954 scenes, Lily Rabe plays Amelia Earhart, the first female pilot to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean. President Eisenhower discovers Earhart in the desert, 17 years after she disappeared during a flight over the Pacific Ocean in 1937. She tells the president that she was abducted and probed by aliens, and she is now pregnant.
When Earhart panics out in the hospital room, saying that Eisenhower isn't the president, Franklin D. Roosevelt is, she starts shouting for "Fred." The man she called for is Fred Noonan, the aviator who served as Earhart’s navigator during her fatal flight (and also disappeared).
Mamie Eisenhower's Halloween party
Though Death Valley spends half its time revising history, First Lady Mamie Eisenhower did have an excessive love of parties. She loved celebrating birthdays, including those of her staff members, for which she would order ornate decorated cakes. She also became the first person to decorate the White House for Halloween in 1958. Presidents John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and Jimmy Carter followed the tradition, and now the presidential residence typically hosts trick-or-treaters or throw a party on the holiday.
Valiant Thor
AHS alum Cody Fern plays an human-alien diplomat based on one of several conspiracy theories jammed into Death Valley's '50s storyline, that President Eisenhower met with aliens. Frank Stranges' book The Stranger at the Pentagon claims that the extraterrestrial group was led by Commander Valiant Thor. The book's version wasn't specified as part-robot, though, and didn't hook up with Mamie Eisenhower.
Marilyn Monroe's death
The legendary actor died of a drug overdose, an apparent suicide, in 1952, but several conspiracy theories about her death claim that she was murdered by government operatives for knowing too much. In Death Valley, both she and John F. Kennedy were assassinated after JFK spilled the beans about the alien treaty and Monroe films a confession video for the American public. The show's Marilyn even had her own close encounter as a kid, where her teddy bear morphed into an alien.
Steve Jobs and the iPod
On one of his visits with President Eisenhower, Valiant Thor offers up some alien tech that looks very similar to a first-generation iPod. He says that one day the human race will computers that will fit in their pockets, showing how all of the present day's advanced tech is a product of the alien treaty (including Mamie's new microwave oven. Steve Jobs had also shown up in the present-day alien compound (a.k.a. Area 51) so it looks like he had a long partnership with the aliens.
Stanley Kubrick directing the fake Moon Landing
There are several conspiracy theories about the government faking the moon landing, and in the world of Death Valley, the aliens were in on it. The show has famed director Stanley Kubrick directing the fake landing, with NASA approaching him because Nixon loved his film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). The real-world theory claims that Kubrick spent 18 months on a soundstage shooting the footage for the Apollo 11 and 12 moon missions. In a 2016 Facebook post, Kubrick's daughter Vivian called the theory a "manifestly a grotesque lie."
Quinci LeGardye is an LA-based freelance writer who covers culture, politics, and mental health through a Black feminist lens. When she isn’t writing or checking Twitter, she’s probably watching the latest K-drama or giving a concert performance in her car.
