As it's gone with all the other seasons, American Horror Story's sixth year pretty much defied expectations during each minute of its premiere. (Though expectations were all over the place, given the tricked out marketing.) American Horror Story: Roanoke _took its double-cast characters to a setting cursed by what appears to be the Lost Settlers of Roanoke, a name I don't mind capitalizing, and the shocktastic premiere made good on Ryan Murphy's promise that this season would start to really connect to past seasons. The most obvious cues so far, though, hearken back to Season 1, _Murder House.
To begin with, we have a married couple that has gone through a traumatic experience moving into a big new house that has lots of spooky problems, and in the dramatizations, Sarah Paulson and Cuba Gooding, Jr.'s Shelby and Matt Miller share the same attitudinal distance as Connie Britton and Dylan McDermott's Vivian and Ben Harmon. The story also starts in Los Angeles, where the Murder House in question is set, but what we're really referring to here is how the main thrust of Season 6's horrors will come from the lost colony of Roanoke, which was first referred to back in Season 1 from Sarah Paulson's own mouth.
If you'll recall, the episode "Birth" had Sarah Paulson's psychic Billie Dean Howard sharing a story about spiritual banishment, intending to give some good advice in helping to get rid of Zachary Quinto's rubber suit-wearing Chad. Her story was about how the ghosts of the colony members were haunting a native tribe, until its elder put a curse on them that included burning up all of their personal belongings and then casting them out using the word Croatoan (possibly yelled multiple times). The spell didn't work in Season 1 when Violet tried it on Chad, and it apparently didn't really work on the Roanoke folks, so I think what we can continue surmising is that Billie Dean Howard is full of shit.
Does that mean we'll soon see ol' Billie Dean, who just showed up last year for Hotel? It would be ridiculous to think otherwise, even without any psychic powers.
And hey, references to Roanoke were't the only connection to Murder House that showed up in the premiere. Shelby and Angela Bassett's Lee watched a home movie they found - because that's just what people do - and in that creepy footage was a quick shot of someone or something wearing a pig head. (Dead pigs had already come up in the episode, disgustingly enough.) You might recall Season 1 having an episode called "Piggy Man," in which Modern Family star Eric Stonestreet told his urban legend story about just such a creature. Is this the same Piggy Man he was talking about? Probably, but probably not at the same time.
Now, all we need to find out is that Christine Estabrook's realtor Marcy was the one that hooked Shelby and Matt up with the farmhouse. Make it happen, AHS.
_American Horror Story: Roanoke _airs Wednesday nights on FX at 10:p.m. ET. To see when all your other CROATOAN, er, favorite shows are coming back, check out our fall TV schedule.
