American Horror Story's Double Feature plotline delved deep into UFO lore in its tale of a dark deal between President Eisenhower and a race of beings from outer space. Season 10, Episode 9, "Blue Moon" goes deeper than ever, including references to a number of well-known urban legends, such as Area 51 and the appearance of "Greys" with enlarged heads and giant black eyes.
But not all the riffs are so well known. The appearance of a new character named Valiant Thor, played by series regular Cody Fern, may look like a random part of the show's signature weirdness, but in fact he's a well-established piece of UFO history. So who is Valiant Thor, and how does he fit into urban lore?
Who Is Valiant Thor on AHS: Double Feature?
American Horror Story imagines the figure as a liaison between humanity and the aliens Eisenhower has signed a deal with. In "Blue Moon," Thor appears in 1957, casually brushing aside White House security's every effort to contain him. He reveals a piece of the aliens' long promised technology – a device deliberately similar to modern phones and mobile devices – as well as mitigating the shock and horror of national leadership at the grotesque results of their efforts. Far from benevolent, he's played as the smiling face on a monstrous conspiracy.
Thor's precise nature on the show is unknown, though he is not a possessed human being, which has been the aliens' preferred means of communication thus far. He appears to be an artificial creation of some kind, even opening the top of his head to reveal alien technology working beneath it. As he later explains to Eisenhower, the aliens believe that their true forms would be so horrifying to humans that Eisenhower would call the deal off immediately. Fern, who cut his teeth on American Horror Story playing the Antichrist in Apocalypse, brings the requisite poisonous charm to the part.
Is Valiant Thor a Real Person?
Definitive stories vary, like many urban legends, but the basic assertions come from a book called The Stranger at the Pentagon by Frank E. Stranges. It claims that, at some point in the 1950s, Eisenhower was visited at the White House by an inhumanly handsome man calling himself Valiant Thor, who claimed to come from an advanced civilization beneath the surface of Venus and wanted to help humanity avoid destroying itself by preventing nuclear war.
Stranges claimed to be an eyewitness to Thor's fantastic abilities, which included the ability to walk through walls and leave no fingerprints, and that Thor's spaceship, the Victory One, is hidden somewhere near Lake Mead in Nevada. Rumors circulated of Thor making an actual appearance at a UFO convention hosted by Stranges, but nothing more than that. The author's claims are highly dubious and easily debunked, but like other urban legends, bits and pieces of it can be found floating through fictional retakes. For example, the Men in Black franchise riffed on Thor's lack of fingerprints by having the fingerprints of their various agents permanently removed.
That's exactly the kind of pop culture ground where American Horror Story likes to develop its narratives. The roots of the character lie in books like Stranges', but the show moves him in its own direction in order to make him work with the plethora of other urban legends that constitute the current storyline. There will likely be more to learn about Valiant Thor in the AHS: Double Feature season finale, and whatever the show reveals about him will undoubtedly have more than the writer's imagination to back it up.