American Horror Story returns 24 September, and Jessica Lange came back on one condition

American Horror Story comes back on Thursday, 24 September, and the thirteenth season is not another self-contained theme. It is the crossover the show has been building towards for fourteen years — and Ryan Murphy got Jessica Lange to return by agreeing to one condition.

She wanted a musical number.

“She said, ‘Great. I’m in as long as I have a musical number,’” is how Murphy tells it. Anyone who watched Sister Jude tear through “The Name Game” in Asylum, or Elsa Mars sing Bowie in a Florida freak show, will understand why he said yes.

Not one character. All four.

Lange has been away from the series for eight years. She is not coming back as one of her characters — she is coming back as all four: Constance Langdon from Murder House, Sister Jude from Asylum, Fiona Goode from Coven and Elsa Mars from Freak Show.

That is the structural idea of the season. FX has described it as a crossover between every installment, and several actors will play two characters from two different seasons in the same scene. Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters, Angela Bassett and Emma Roberts return as their Coven selves — Cordelia Goode, Kai Anderson, Marie Laveau, Madison Montgomery — and the first teaser also brings back two of the franchise’s most recognisable monsters: Twisty the Clown and Rubber Man.

Thirteen episodes of half an hour, and a Halloween finish

The format has changed, and it is worth reading twice: the season is thirteen episodes of roughly half an hour, not the hour-long installments the show has always run.

The release pattern is unusual too. Premiere night drops three episodes, week two drops another three, and from there it settles into pairs every Thursday. The thirteenth and final episode lands on 29 October — two days before Halloween, which is not an accident.

Who is in it

Alongside Lange: Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters, Emma Roberts, Billie Lourd, Kathy Bates, Angela Bassett, Gabourey Sidibe, Leslie Grossman, Frances Conroy, Jamie Brewer, John Carroll Lynch, Mena Suvari and Mat Fraser. The new name on the call sheet is Ariana Grande.

Filming ran from 6 April to 28 July of this year. The series was created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk for FX and is produced by 20th Television.

What this actually is

Thirteen seasons in, American Horror Story has spent years being praised for its casts and criticised for its endings. A crossover season is the most exposed thing the show could attempt: it only works if the writing can hold characters from nine different worlds in one frame without turning them into cameos.

The half-hour runtime suggests Murphy knows it. Thirty minutes is not enough room to meander, which has always been this show’s failure mode. Whether that discipline holds for thirteen episodes is the question the season has to answer.

American Horror Story: 13 premieres 24 September at 9/8c on FX, streaming on Hulu.

Tags: hulu, Ryan Murphy, Ariana Grande, Jessica Lange, American Horror Story, fx, Sarah Paulson