AHS Season 12 Going for Split Release: When Will Part 2 Premiere?
The split release could destroy the show.
FX's American Horror Story has been in serious trouble for the past few years. The quality of the seasons has been on a steady decline, year after year, causing viewers to rapidly lose interest in the once-adored anthology series. However, all of this was expected to change with the ongoing season 12. Series creator Ryan Murphy put in a huge amount of effort to try and regain the fans' trust. He hired Emma Roberts and Kim Kardashian for the lead roles and described Delicate as a genuine return to form.
Regrettably, it looks like he failed miserably to deliver on any of those promises. The painfully slow and uneventful start to the season bore no resemblance to AHS's outstanding early installments. Instead, it was more akin to a tedious direct-to-video wannabe thriller. Furthermore, it would appear that fans may now be opting out of watching the show en masse despite its somewhat intriguing storyline, and the reason they're doing so is the split release schedule.
The Curse of Modern Television
It's widely acknowledged that viewers universally hate the modern television trend of splitting seasons into parts. It tends to disrupt the immersion. However, Murphy and FX apparently thought it was a good idea to roll out Delicate as promptly as possible, and the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes didn't deter them from releasing the season in September.
The first half of season 12 will conclude with episode 5. Considering that nothing remotely interesting has happened in the first half of Delicate so far, fans are finding it difficult to comprehend how Murphy intends to keep the show relevant until the second half is released.
Moreover, don't anticipate seeing Roberts and Kardashian again in the near future, as the final batch of episodes hasn't even started filming yet due to the SAG-AFTRA strike halting production entirely.
With the start of filming yet to be announced, fans will have to wait at least a year to return to Delicate. That sounds like an awful long time for such a lackluster season to entice viewers to come back to find out what happens next. Murphy's decision to stagger the season's release may very well doom the show for good.
American Horror Story Season 12 Episode 5 will premiere on October 18 on FX.