WARNING: The following contains spoilers for American Horror Story: Double Feature, available now on Hulu.
American Horror Story’s now-completed 10th season offered a conspiracy-fueled retake on the second half of the 20th Century. Its “Death Valley” storyline featured a series of black-and-white flashbacks, in which an alien species makes contact with President Eisenhower and forces him to make a hideous bargain. In the process, America’s history is rewritten as the aliens seek to keep their experiments hidden at all costs.
At least six major historic events are completely reimagined within AHS' mythology, tying them all together into its single, insane conspiracy. A brief list of each one follows, presented in chronological order.
Amelia Earhart Is Abducted and Births a Monster
Amelia Earhart was the aviation pioneer who broke numerous air records in the 1930s. Most notably, she was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, and the first person of any sort to fly solo from Hawaii to the mainland U.S. She disappeared in 1937 while attempting to become the first woman to circumnavigate the globe in an airplane. She presumably crashed into the Pacific and was either killed on impact or drowned.
American Horror Story presents her as one of the aliens' earliest abductees, impregnated with a hybrid baby and returned to Earth in 1954. There, she gives birth to a monster and dies, a victim of the extraterrestrials' plan.
The JFK Assassination Was Coordinated By Aliens
The real-life Kennedy assassination was officially the act of a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, but rumors of all variety have followed the president’s death almost from the moment it took place. In American Horror Story, it’s conducted at the behest of the aliens to prevent Kennedy from revealing what he knows about their existence.
Aliens Use The Vietnam War As a Distraction
In the real world, the Vietnam War officially began under Lyndon Johnson, whose prosecution of it further divided the nation and caused him to withdraw from the presidential election of 1968. Richard Nixon was elected that year, and his campaign included a promise to end the Vietnam War. He did not -- at least initially -- and the war escalated to include the bombing of Cambodia in 1969 and 1970 under the director of Nixon’s National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger.
In American Horror Story’s timeline, the war is conducted solely at the behest of the aliens, who use it as a distraction from questions about the thousands of Americans whom they abduct each year. American Horror Story depicts President Nixon trapped by their demands to keep the war going despite strong public opposition. The exchange assumes that Johnson left the White House for similar reasons. Kissinger is revealed to be a lizard person, one of the aliens' allies.
AHS' Moon Landing Was Directed by Stanley Kubrick
In one AHS' most outlandish conceits, “Death Valley” depicts a lunar landing as completely fictional, shot on a sound stage at Area 51 by Stanley Kubrick and broadcast to the world as reality. As with JFK’s assassination, the real lunar landing was beset by rumors and urban legends speculating that it could not have possibly taken place. Kubrick has long been attached to such rumors, owing largely to his movie 2001: A Space Odyssey which depicted exceedingly believable sequences on the moon and was released less than a year before the actual lunar landing’s July 1969 date.
In AHS' logic, the landing is faked in order to convince people that the rapid technological breakthroughs granted by the treaty are human-driven. Without a trip to the moon, too many would begin asking questions, and yet leaving the planet is forbidden for obvious reasons. The sets for the bogus moon landing are still in place in Area 51 in the modern era, and visited by some of its captives.
Nixon's Watergate Scandal Prevents an Alien Conspiracy Reveal
The real-life events of Watergate consumed the Nixon presidency. In 1972, burglars were arrested breaking into Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate hotel at the behest of the administration in order to wiretap their phones and photocopy documents. The ensuing scandal saw a number of Nixon’s cabinet members and inner circle resign or do jail time, and culminated with his own resignation in 1974 ahead of impeachment and almost certain conviction. The investigative reporting of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein played a large role in exposing the scandal, aided by an administration whistleblower, code named “Deep Throat.”
American Horror Story presents it as a punitive action to prevent Nixon from revealing what he knows about the alien conspiracy. Having overplayed their hand on assassinations, a political scandal lets them get rid of the President without excessive fuss. Deep Throat – in reality a Deputy Director of the FBI at that time – is revealed to be Mamie Eisenhower, using Woodward and Bernstein to get Nixon out of the way.
The Computer Revolution Is a Trade For Alien Experimentation
Though subtler than some of the other events depicted in American Horror Story, the computer revolution plays a significant part in the show’s mythology. In exchange for allowing the aliens to abduct and experiment on thousands of American citizens each year, the government -- and eventually the whole population -- receive the benefits of alien technology. Once the agreement is signed, Valiant Thor reveals a piece of alien technology that closely resembles a modern personal device.
The computer revolution thus becomes another pawn of the aliens, placing PCs and eventually cellular phones and similar devices in everyone’s hands as a reward for allowing their horrifying experiments to continue. It accentuates the point by revealing a still-living Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, in Area 51, despite having died in 2011.
To see America's alien takeover, all 10 episodes of American Horror Story: Double Feature are on Hulu now.