American Horror Story has always been full of surprises, so perhaps it shouldn’t come as a shocker that, after much mystery, FX announced season 12 will drop much, much sooner than expected.
With little fanfare, the network revealed AHS: Delicate will arrive on Sept. 20 and will stream on Hulu. Not only that, but the new poster, showing Emma Roberts’ Anna cradling a giant bulbous spider as if it were her own pregnant belly, announces that the season will be split up into multiple parts.
“Don’t worry. We’ll hold you,” reads the social media posts debuting the poster and premiere date.
AHS: Delicate adapts author Danielle Valentine’s new horror book Delicate Condition, which hit shelves this month. It’s the story of actress Anna, who’s been enduring countless IVF treatments.
She’s convinced there are forces at play stalking her and attempting to thwart her pregnancy, even though no one, including her husband, will believe her. When she finally gets pregnant, she miscarries — at least, that’s what the doctors tell her. She can still feel the fetus growing inside her and see the physical toll the pregnancy is having on her body.
“It is essentially a horror novel about pregnancy,” Valentine previously told EW of her book. “It’s a novel exploring not just the actual physical gruesomeness of what pregnancy is, but also the medical gaslighting that even modern, very privileged women experience as they’re going through their pregnancies and the symptoms that I feel we as a culture still don’t talk about for strange reasons.”
While early praise for Delicate Condition likened it to a modern, feminist Rosemary’s Baby, Valentine clarified, “I was really much more inspired by Alien, which I think will also give readers an idea of where I’m taking this.”
Spider imagery is clearly a big motif for the season. The first AHS: Delicate teaser, which arrived in July, revealed Roberts, Kim Kardashian, and Cara Delevingne sporting special glasses the emulated the many eyes of an arachnid.
Kardashian is the latest stunt casting for the franchise. Series creator Ryan Murphy once told The Hollywood Reporter that Halley Feiffer, who adapted the book for the show, had “written a fun, stylish, and ultimately terrifying role especially for Kim, and this season is ambitious and unlike anything, we have ever done.”