The trailer for American Horror Story season 12 has dropped and appears to include a black goat, but if it was meant to be Black Phillip, it suggests Satan will have something to do with the story. The twelfth season of the anthology series American Horror Story: Delicate is based on the book Delicate Condition by Danielle Valentine, and features many American Horror Story alumni like Emma Roberts and new additions to the cast like Kim Kardashian. While the latest installment in the long-running series seems poised to offer the sort of shocking delights fans have expected, this wouldn’t be its first dance with the Devil.

Satan, aka the Source of Darkness, was first introduced in American Horror Story: Asylum possessing various characters in Briarcliff Manor, and later known to be responsible for all the malevolent things occurring in American Horror Story: Hotel.American Horror Story: Apocalypse revealed that Satan was not only the true mastermind behind creating the Anti-Christ Michael Langdon, but all of the wickedness in the series. American Horror Story’s season 12 is risky already, particularly since it’s been split into two parts (which didn’t do well for American Horror Story: Double-Feature), so the reappearance of Satan could help get it back on track after several uneven seasons.

American Horror Story: Delicate’s Trailer Teases Satan With A Black Goat

In the official trailer for American Horror Story: Delicate eagle-eyed fans will spot a black goat being held by a figure wearing long black robes. While he’s most often been seen possessing people like Tate Langdon or Jed Potter, Satan’s true form is a winged creature with a goat’s head, suggesting this black goat is a manifestation of his evil essence. The character of Black Phillip, a black goat also associated with the Devil, was made popular by the horror movie The Witch in 2017, when director Robert Eggers explored its connection to witchcraft and the occult in 17th-century America.

Eggers utilized journals, diaries, and other paraphernalia of the time period that contained references to witchcraft and Satan to create his insidious goat character. Though his film focused on American settlers and the events of the witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts, European engravings and paintings have depicted the witches’ sabbath — when witches met remotely to pay homage to Satan — worshiping him in the form of a goat or an amalgamation of a goat and a man. Black Phillip has now entered the pop culture zeitgeist as either a representative of the Devil or Satan himself.

How Black Phillip Fits In With American Horror Story Season 12’s Story

American Horror Story season 12’s villain casting hints at an overarching threat to actress Anna Victoria Alcott (Roberts). What starts as a routine pregnancy takes a sinister turn once she starts being followed by a mysterious woman in black and becomes gripped by paranoia, believing that someone sinister may not want her baby to ever be born. The plot has been compared to Rosemary’s Baby, and since that horror classic featured a cult trying to engineer the birth of the Anti-Christ, combined with all the occult symbology with masked figures and the black goat, the trailer suggests the devil could be behind everything.

Given that depictions of witches often feature them with familiars like cats and dogs, it’s also possible the black goat is meant to be one as well. Rather than being agents of Satan, it’s possible that a coven of witches, who seem frightening to Anna at first, are actually working together to save her from the duplicitous doctors, scheming publicists, and conniving agents who may have actually made a pact with the Devil to taste her success. Perhaps Hollywood, and the sordid industry behind its glossy veneer is Satan in the latest American Horror Story rather than Black Phillip, taking the form of the devil she knows.