The aliens in American Horror Story season 10 are Death Valley’s primary villains as they abduct and manipulate humans on Earth, while the creatures also feature several key similarities and differences to the extraterrestrials that played a significant role in AHS: Asylum. Death Valley takes place in two timelines: The 1950s as aliens make a deal with President Dwight Eisenhower, and the present day when a group of college students becomes the aliens’ new test subjects. American Horror Story season 10’s characters are confronted with decades-old mysteries and conspiracies as the government’s role in partnering with alien lifeforms is revealed.
Aliens were first inducted into the American Horror Story universe in season 2, where several of Asylum’s characters were abducted and experimented on back in the 1960s. The aliens played a much smaller role in Asylum than in Death Valley, but they were integral to the resolutions of the main characters like Kit, Grace, Dr. Arden, and Jude. The American Horror Story season also left viewers with plenty of mysteries about the aliens that were never explained, namely the purpose of their experiments and why they were so fixated on Evan Peters’ character Kit Walker. With Death Valley bringing the creatures back, these questions may finally be answered.
Both Death Valley and Asylum’s aliens have an odd fixation on reproduction, with a few characters in each season being impregnated by the aliens after an abduction. American Horror Story: Asylum’s aliens were focused on Kit Walker for an unknown reason, making sure his sexual partners became pregnant after they abducted them. AHS season 10’s Death Valley extraterrestrials don’t seem to have any particular human that they want to impregnate - as every character so far that’s been abducted, but not really possessed by them, has returned to Earth pregnant. Amelia Earhart was missing for two decades, so it’s unclear why they spent so long experimenting on her before bringing her back to Earth two months pregnant. The modern-day college students, on the other hand, were very briefly abducted and returned.
They also share a similar manner of announcing their abduction, particularly with a bright white light that flashes to announce one is there or that they’re taking someone with them. Death Valley’s aliens have obviously been shown to have helped the U.S. and the world at large in advancing technology at fast rates. American Horror Story season 10 suggests that microwaves, cell phones, and other modern technologies were brought to the United States by the aliens during and after Eisenhower’s presidency. It’s already clear in AHS: Asylum that the aliens are technologically advanced, as seen when Doctor Arden finds an indestructible micro-bot that was placed in Kit’s body as a type of spyware.
The biggest difference between Asylum and Death Valley’s aliens so far is their physical appearances. American Horror Story season 2’s aliens had a different texture and shape for their faces and seemed much larger in scale. Death Valley’s extraterrestrials have extremely large black eyes, a shorter stature, and more pop-culture stereotypical alien limbs and head shape. AHS season 10's aliens also go on murder sprees after taking over the bodies of some of their hostages, a tactic not previously seen in Asylum. It’s unclear whether American Horror Story’s Death Valley and Asylum aliens are supposed to be the same species, but if so, the new season will be able to answer several of the unanswered questions left by AHS season 2's extraterrestrials.