American Horror Story: Ryan Murphy Loves the Dante's Inferno Theory
Ever since American Horror Story's Season 2 (Asylum) established its unique anthology format in 2012, fans have wildly speculated about a unifying theory that would bind all the disparate seasons and universes together.
The theory posits that every season of the FX horror series represents one of the nine circles of Hell, as depicted in the 14th century Italian poem by Dante Alighieri.
In Dante's poem, each circle of Hell is dedicated to tormenting those who commit a specific sin, which fans claim is also true of American Horror Story: the characters of Season 1, Murder House,are all trapped by lust; Asylum's terrors correspond to the pitfalls of fraud; Coven is a hell of treachery; Freak Show's overarching theme is greed, and the excesses of Hotel are products of the sin of gluttony.