The premiere of American Horror Story: Cult was an appropriately-paced mental thrill ride that, minus a few dips in action, kept us fully engaged for the entire episode to the extent that when the end credits rolled we were shocked it was already over and were left excited for more.

We will avoid as much about politics and political opinions as the show allows, which is easy than you’d be lead to believe with the craziness of the season, so here is your tl;dr of the seasons first episode.

The episode opens with introducing us to two distinct groups of players: the Mayfair-Richards family, a nice lesbian couple and their son Ozzy (Ally played by Sarah Paulson, and Ivy played by Allison Pill), and the Anderson family who are played by Billie Lourd, as Winter, and Evan Peters as Kai.  It is unclear if the Anderson’s are siblings or in some kind of shared name cult union, but they’re in the same house.

His unkempt, root-laidened blue man bun was the scariest thing in this episode. –AHS: Cult brought to us by FX

A largely played up angle we are enjoying this season is Ally’s metal illness high anxiety and debilitating phobias that may or may not cause hallucinations. The potential hallucinations cause her to be unreliable and all of her allies seem to not listen or fully believe her, but we do (most of the time)!

This was the premise behind our favorite scene!

She visits her therapist, played by Cheyenne Jackson, who we believe is also part of the cult, and we believe her revealing her fear of clowms and tiny holes to him is how the cult knows to target her so well and it isn’t all just a coincidence.

This coincides with her late night trip to a grocery store that was about to close (rude), where she is terrorized by creepy clowns that have a lot of sexual undertones (doing it in the produce section). In true Sarah Paulson on AHS fashion she scream-cries a lot without ever making for an exit – but she did lob some bottles of wine at her antagonists, completely missing but making herself seem more crazy when the stores employee says she was crazy and hallucinating.

AHS: Cult brought to us by FX

This comes into play later when Kai (presumably) sends the SAME clowns to murder the Mayfair-richards neighbors. Ally and Ivy aren’t home, having a “date-night” but more of a work night, since it ia a tasting at their failing restaurant and is a means to get Ally back into the business promoting/hosting/feels irrelevant to us because THEORY TIME!

We think the majority of the town is part of this cult, and has been moving in for some time but are just now revealing themselves mainstream. So their restaurant has been losing business as the cult moved in, but this isn’t our biggest theory.

While they were on their date night, they left Ozzy with their new nanny — Winter Anderson. Kai’s cohort wins baby sitter of the year when she shows Ozzy the “dark web” and is just terribly creepy the whole time.  Winter seemed to know the clowns would be coming and wasn’t afraid when he pointed out their arrival and their breaking into the neighbors house. She was bold enough to take him to investigate and hoist him into a window so he could watch the murder. It all seems intentional and indoctrinating.

The episode ends with the mom’s coming back to a police scene in front of their house and the murders being ruled murder-suicide and no one believing Ozzy’s account, which loses credibility due to his highly teased Twisty thr Clown comic and his mother’s delusions.

AHS: Cult brought to us by FX

We can’t blame the skepticism surrounding Ally, but Ivy seems like a very tired and unsupportive partner, actually using the words “you’re acting crazy,” which is just a big no-no (even if true).

BIG THEORY:

We keep asking ourselves: why are they terrorizing this specific family? Why have Winter infiltrate their home and mess with the child? We believe Ozzy is a bigger part of the story than we know. We think it may be possible that Ozzy could be Kai’s biological son and maybe Ally’s fear of clowns could potentially be from a rape by Evan Peter’s character in a clown costume (which explains why soemnof her hallucinations have clowns having sex and seem very traumatizing for her).

This is an early theory and we hope that Ryan Murphy has more up his sleeve for the season, but we are happy with what we’re getting so far!