WARNING: The following contains spoilers for American Horror Story: Double Feature, available now on Hulu.

American Horror Story delved deep into UFO lore this season, touching on a number of common tropes from extraterrestrial conspiracy theories. That includes the appearance of Grays – the spindly, hairless beings with enlarged black eyes – and stalwart urban legends like the existence of Area 51. It added a comparative latecomer in the final episode of the season: a race of reptile people, disguised as humans, operating secretly within the halls of power alongside the series’ more familiar Grays. Though less well-known than the other UFO urban legends presented on the show, the notion goes back a long way and has legitimately disturbing roots.

The show presents the idea with its usual mixture of camp and terror. Season 10, Episode 10, “The Future Perfect” reveals Henry Kissinger – then serving in the Nixon White House as the president slowly comes apart – to be a lizard being masquerading as human. His kind have signed a treaty of their own with the show’s dominant aliens, and will live alongside them in a future Earth free of humanity. It slips into the rest of the season’s insanity seamlessly, occupying the show’s alternate universe in which every significant event in the late 20th Century has served an evil alien agenda.

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The concept itself predates the notion of UFOs by many years, and can be traced to the writings of self-proclaimed mystic Helena Blavatsky. She published numerous works of pseudo-science in the late 19th Century – most heavily plagiarized and rife with anti-Semitism – describing among other things a race of “dragon men” from the lost continent of Atlantis. Pulp writers of the 20th Century picked up the idea for their works of fiction, most notably Robert E. Howard used them as the villains in his 1929 short story “The Shadow Kingdom.” In it, his hero Kull the Conqueror discovers a race of snake people secretly passing as humans and occupying powerful positions in society. He slays one intended to replace him, revealing the conspiracy and vowing to hunt the remainder of the snake people down.

Howard’s work carries significant amounts of racism as well. Yet it’s still very clearly fiction, initially appearing in Weird Tales magazine and never presented as anything but a fantasy. In his book A Culture of Conspiracy, however, political scientist Michael Barkum traces the source of the conspiracy theory to “The Shadow Kingdom,” which adherents eventually connected to UFOs. The most prominent, David Icke, claimed that lizard people came from Alpha Draconis and have controlled the world from time immemorial by impersonating various ruling families and national leaders. Needless to say, his theories have been roundly debunked.

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American Horror Story Double Feature - alien

As preposterous as the concept is, it still holds troubling levels of power. Notions of secret conspiracies tie in very easily to anti-Semitism and similar forms of xenophobia, and in a modern world full of misinformation, an obviously insane idea can still draw belief from the fringes. A 2013 Public Policy Polling survey found that 12 million Americans believe in the existence of lizard people, and it continues to appear prominently in conspiracy-minded corners of the Internet.

American Horror Story steers well clear of those dark realities, revealing the idea for the outlandishness that it is. Appearing amid such elements as Mamie Eisenhower floating three feet off the ground and mutant infants with squid tentacles attacking the men who just gave birth to them, a secret conspiracy of intelligent reptiles feels both completely unhinged and very much at home. By connecting it to its other wild components, "The Future Perfect" labels the idea as the balderdash it always was and suggests that giving it any credence beyond sci-fi musings flirts with madness.

The show doesn’t linger on the idea for long, and indeed, the sudden appearance of the lizard people at the very end of an already overstuffed season leaves it feeling a little random. Whether or not that plays out in future seasons has yet to be seen – a number of questions were left unanswered – but considering how viable it remains among supposedly rational people, the show plays with fire a bit. by bringing it out. Getting around that make take more than a single episode can manage, leaving “The Future Perfect” to make a brief nod and carry on with the rest of its over-the-top finale.

To see America's alien takeover, all 10 episodes of American Horror Story: Double Feature are on Hulu now.

KEEP READING: AHS: Double Feature Episode 10, 'The Future Perfect,' Recap & Spoilers