Photo: FX

When American Horror Stories launched in July 2021, it felt like a product of the pandemic, a cheap-and-easy way to tide fans over while production stalled on Ryan Murphy’s proper cult hit American Horror Story. Why not go back to some of the grisly ideas that never found their way into an installment of AHS and give them the anthology treatment with the kind of limited productions that COVID necessitated? Bring in some fan favorites from the Murphyverse, like Matt Bomer, Billie Lourd, Dylan McDermott, Denis O’Hare, and many more, and the thing practically writes itself. It helps that the most common complaint of AHS critics is that seasons of the show, especially lately, seem to run out of ideas before the finale. What if there was no finale?! As is the case with pretty much every anthology show, the run of American Horror Stories has been rocky, but the quartet of third-season episodes that just dropped on October 26 reveal a show that seems to actually be gaining in confidence, even bringing in a special appearance by an Oscar winner. We went through all 19 episodes of Stories to date and picked out the five must-watches so far, episodes that exceeded expectations and transcended their twists to become the best of the best, presented chronologically.

“Drive In” (Season 1, Episode 3)

It helps to get a horror legend involved with a show like this one, and the first standalone episode of American Horror Stories after the frustrating two-part “Murder House” tie-in that opened the series includes none other than Adrienne Barbeau, star of genre classics like The Fog and Swamp Thing. The stunt casting of Barbeau is fun, but this is one of the best episodes of Stories because of its concept and another memorable guest star in Freak Show, all-around great character actor John Carroll Lynch. The actor plays a horror director who, rumor has it, once made a film so terrifying (called Rabbit Rabbit) that it could drive people so insane that mass violence would ensue in the aisles of the theater. When a drive-in schedules a screening of the banned film, a young man named Chad tries to stop it. The urban legend of a movie so shocking that it permanently damages those who see it has been a part of the underground of horror forever, and it’s fun to see the new spin that AHS puts on it with the episode’s twist ending. Maybe streaming really will be the end of us all.

“BA’AL” (Season 1, Episode 5)

Anthology series like The Twilight Zone and Black Mirror often get a lot of mileage from the episodes that feature the best performers — that’s definitely the case with this season-one standout anchored by Murphyverse veteran Billie Lourd. The star of the last six chapters of American Horror Story brings truth to her performance as Liv, a woman who has been trying desperately to get pregnant. When the latest attempt fails, she takes a totem from a receptionist of what is supposed to be a fertility god. Of course, she ends up pregnant shortly thereafter, but she starts seeing visions of the demon Ba’al after the baby is born. The final twist that turns “BA’AL” into a gaslighting cautionary tale is a bit goofy, but Lourd even sells that unexpected turn, bringing us into Liv’s existence as if it’s real. There’s also just nothing more terrifying than the idea of seeing something impossible on a baby monitor. Creepy.

“Bloody Mary” (Season 2, Episode 5)

The second season of American Horror Stories saw the writers of the FX/Hulu show unearthing some common urban legends with their own twists, such as the “Killer in the Backseat” and this season-best episode with a concept almost everyone on Earth first heard about around a campfire. We all know the deal here. Say Bloody Mary’s name in the mirror the right number of times and she will appear, usually with murder on her mind. However, writer Angela L. Harvey gives the legend of Bloody Mary a cultural twist by tying it to Mami Wata, an African goddess. In injecting an international element into Bloody Mary, Harvey finds new life in the legend, and her narrative is anchored by a fantastic performance from Oscar nominee Quvenzhane Wallis (Beasts of the Southern Wild) as a teenager who gets caught up in Mami Wata’s spell.

“Daphne” (Season 3, Episode 2)

This is the most Black Mirror episode of American Horror Stories to date, and arguably its most star-packed. A pandemic-influenced twist on Spike Jonze’s Her, it’s the story of an artist (Reid Scott of Veep fame) who is going a bit crazy during the next worldwide pandemic — this one makes you blind. Stuck in his home like we all were during COVID, he starts using an Alexa-esque device known as Daphne, voiced by none other than Gwyneth Paltrow, who does phenomenal voice work that segues perfectly from supportive to threatening, sometimes in the same line delivery. Daphne starts out as a helper but soon becomes a romantic obsession, but the twist is it’s not the man but the machine who has developed a murderous streak of jealousy. Or has she? Most final twists here in this show are blunt (and usually silly), but this one has the rare gotcha that can be left open to interpretation. That, along with some of the most assured pacing in any Stories episode, make this a solid contender for the best episode overall to date.

“Organ” (Season 3, Episode 4)

The quartet of episodes released for the third mini-season ended with a banger, another blending of a classic urban legend with a modern issue. In this case, toxic masculinity gets merged with the urban legend of an underground that steals kidneys and leaves people in bathtubs. Raul Castillo (Looking) is excellent as a player who sets up an online date with a mysterious woman played by Emily Browning (Sucker Punch). When he wakes up with a bandage over his abdomen, the bad news is that one of his organs is gone — the worse news is that it’s been replaced by something else and the doctors have no idea what it is. With fun performances from Castillo, Browning, Havana Rose Liu (Bottoms), and Laila Robins (The Walking Dead), this is an episode only slightly hampered by a rushed ending, but it’s also one of the most stylish and funniest chapters so far. It almost feels like it could be a whole season of AHS. Maybe someday it will.