The Monster Conundrum American Horror Story Fans Want To See In Season 11
Through ten seasons, "American Horror Story" has given us ghosts, witches, vampires, monsters, deranged doctors, Anti-Christs, serial killers, and even aliens to fill in the role of different seasons' big-scary-big-bad. Some of these have been more effective than others. Zachary Quinto's Bloody Face just carried way more gravitas (and frankly was a lot more tasteful) than Zach Villa's Night Stalker. And fans have been trying to figure out the connection between the vamps of "Hotel" and those of "Red Tide" ever since Season 10.
Whether this is due to inconsistency, or because creators Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk have just decided to jettison the interconnected seasons without telling us, isn't clear. Ultimately, though, it's abundantly obvious that "AHS" has basically covered just about all of the chilling bases in horror. Even beyond the villains, some of the series' most memorable characters have been some form of ghost, vampire, witch, or just plain inhuman monster.
However, there remains one horror trope that has been largely neglected throughout the run of the series: zombies. Shuffling corpses have probably been the least featured of all monsters in "AHS," only turning up briefly in Season 3 when Marie Laveau (Angela Bassett) of "Coven" summons an undead horde. Since then, there's been nary a zombie in sight. Some fans, however, would like to see them not only more heavily featured, but also used to parse a particular contradiction of the horror world.
Some fans want to see the zombie-ghost conundrum addressed
On the r/AmericanHorrorStory subreddit, u/Notorious_mkp posted an interesting screenshot from Twitter. In a tweet, @meghanlynnFTW asked, "Can a ghost and a zombie come from the same person?" It is not as silly a question as one might think at first. Diving into the typical lore, a ghost is a human being's spirit separated from their body, all consciousness with very little agency. Conversely, a zombie is a human body that (Bub in "Day of the Dead" notwithstanding) contains no memory of its humanity. This all means that, by and large, a ghost watching their mindless body rise from the grave would be able to do nothing about it.
Interestingly enough, zombies have not always been so distinct from other supernatural archetypes. Only since George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" have they come to be associated not with voodoo or necromancy but with biological disasters, airborne pathogens, and other anxieties of modernity (via Den of Geek). In other words, zombies have become more scientific than supernatural or paranormal. It is somewhat ironic that "AHS" hasn't fully explored the genre even as its popularity continues to grow.
Could Season 11 be the chance? Could we be about to watch one of the series' iconic ghosts see their own body resurrected beyond their control? Some on the thread, like u/WhateverIWant888, are a bit dismissive, saying, "This is more of a comedy concept than it is a horror one..." To others, that's part of the allure. As u/deeeeekun pointed out, the writers of "What We Do In the Shadows," kind of already did something similar, though with vampires instead of zombies.