American Horror Stories episode 4, "The Naughty List," features a homicidal Santa Claus, but how does he compare to Leigh Emerson's deadly St. Nick from AHS: Asylum? American Horror Stories, currently streaming on FX for Hulu, was created as a spin-off of American Horror Story from Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk. Unlike its predecessor, American Horror Stories is comprised of self-contained anthological episodes as opposed to seasonal installments that feature new themes and cast members. The two-episode premiere returned to AHS' famed Murder House, and episode 4 is reminiscent of Asylum's Christmas episode "Unholy Night," which focuses on Emerson's Santa suit-wearing serial killer.
Asylum is one of the more ambitious installments of the series, skewering both the hypocrisy of organized religion and America's historically barbaric treatment of those plagued with mental and emotional problems. There are also grotesque science experiments performed by a former Nazi physician, a nun possessed by Satan, and the presence of Asylum's mysterious aliens who conduct experiments on pregnant women. Asylum also incorporates several run-of-the-mill psychopaths, including serial killer Emerson who winds up becoming the psycho Santa Claus. The character makes his debut in episode 8 as a man who winds up at Briarcliff Manor after killing 18 people in December 1962. Murphy told Entertainment Weekly he developed the role with Ian McShane in mind to play the part, and the uber-producer saw the character as a way to pay homage to the horror subgenre of "psycho Santas."
Christmas came early for fans of American Horror Stories in the form of another killer Claus (Danny Trejo), in episode 4, "The Naughty List." Only this time, Santa's victims had it coming, unlike Emerson's hapless families. His targets are four social media influencers who reside together in the aptly named "Bro House" and whose determination to reach 5 million subscribers causes them to run afoul of Trejo's Santa at a local mall. After they announce to a line of children that there is no Santa Claus, Trejo's Santa warns them they'll get what they deserve, and that night he finds them and picks them off one by one. His motives for dispensing death instead of coal aren't established as it is with Emerson: a petty thief who was gang-raped in jail years earlier on Christmas Eve. Emerson tells Lily Rabe's Sister Mary Eunice, "I knew who deserved to live and who deserved to die, who was naughty and who was nice." Trejo's character gets a more folkish backstory drawing comparisons to the "wild man," a pagan nature god who punished those who were bad. There's no method to Emerson's madness, while Trejo's Santa is more calculating.
Trejo's character embraces the Santa persona with more authenticity than Ian McShane's Emerson, letting out the occasional creepy "ho, ho ho," using arrows that resemble candy canes and Christmas lights to kill two of his victims, incinerating another via the chimney, and hanging their assorted body parts on the tree as decorations. Emerson's subversive version of Santa Claus not only rejects Christmas in all of its commercial glory (he murders a couple for displaying too many decorations) but Christ himself, further evidenced by Emerson's treatment of Sister Jude and the other nuns he murders.
Ryan Murphy has writing credits on both episodes, and "The Naughty List," like other episodes of American Horror Stories, revisits territory already covered in AHS. However, while Emerson is motivated to kill by trauma, making his actions pretty pedestrian, "The Naughty List's" Santa has loftier ambitions. The episode's central focus is on the influencers and how their desperate need to remain relevant supersedes human decency. Trejo's killer uses social media to document the murders, spreading the message that Santa Claus does indeed see everything, so "be good for goodness sake."