American Horror Story: Coven Poster Offers A Mouthful Of Snake

Following a series of darkly bizarre teasers comes a dark, creepy and kind of sexy new poster, which depicts three women with their faces close to one another. A white snake has a tongue-like quality about it as it slithers from one mouth to the next and faces the viewer with its own tongue out . What does it mean? I don't know but it makes me uncomfortable and I sort of can't stop looking at it. I guess that's part of the appeal of American Horror Story to begin with. The series has a way of crawling under the skin of its viewers and slithering around a bit as it tells its story each season.

In the case of American Horror Story: Coven, that story will involve witches, as you may have surmised by the title. And the poster adds to that, with its focus on three females. You'll also note that almost all of the names listed among the cast near the bottom of the poster are women, with the exception of AHS veteran Evan Peters. Also returning to the series are Jessica Lange, Taissa Farmiga, Lily Rabe and Sarah Paulson. They're joined by Kathy Bates, Angela Bassett, Patti Lupone, Emma Roberts and Gabourey Sidibe.

If you're familiar with the FX horror drama then you know that the series picks up each season with an entirely new story and a new set of characters, many of which are played by cast members from previous seasons. While Lange, Rabe and Peters were among the casts of both American Horror Story: Murder House and AHS: Asylum, Taissa Farmiga was only a part of the cast for the first season, but she'll be back for Season 3. AHS: Coven is said to focus on Salem and Voodoo witches and a a rivalry that's spanned centuries between the two groups. Lange and Bassett's characters are on opposite sides of the fence, but it'll be up to them to mend things between the two groups. Perhaps that's where the snake comes in, assuming it represents some joining force between the two groups of women. Or it's just super creepy. It's hard to know how literally we're supposed to take the promotional material with this series, though I expect all of the teasers and the poster to make more sense once the series gets going. Fortunately, we have just over a month to wait for that.

American Horror Story: Coven will debut October 9.

Here are a couple of the mentioned teasers: