Will Peters fans be able to handle this development? Even his charisma might be no match for this role.

Ally’s mental state appears to deteriorate in the wake of the election; she confesses to her therapist (Cheyenne Jackson’s Dr. Rudy Vincent) that her fear of clowns has been getting worse. Kai, meanwhile, appears to be leading some kind of cult, as some fans suspected—and one of his recruits seems to be Billie Lourd’s Winter Anderson. Winter confesses to Kai that children are her No. 1 fear, but in the next frame she's interviewing for a job to babysit Ally and Ivy’s (Alison Pill) son, whom she gives a doll of Twisty the Clown. It seems, based on an introductory video, that members of this cult can “keep” each other’s fears through physical contact. (Pinky to pinky, specifically.)

Several key characters still appear to be missing from this trailer: returning players Adina Porter, Frances Conroy, Mare Winningham, Emma Roberts, and Chaz Bono are nowhere to be seen, and neither are Billy Eichner, Leslie Grossman, Colton Haynes, or Lena Dunham. (Perhaps they were some of the scary people Paulson saw in clown masks?) But don’t be too quick to assume that Paulson’s character is the protagonist; it appears that at some point, she’s got a corpse hanging in the freezer of her restaurant.

Either way, it seems that Cult will examine the mass hysteria on both sides of the political aisle. (As Kai says, “If you get people scared enough, they will set the world on fire.”) The modern setting and focus—a family facing terrifying circumstances—is territory that Murphy knows well, but it appears that this season might have its sights on a grander theme. How, exactly, this will tie in with Twisty the Clown, who appears to have become posthumously famous, we’ll have to wait and find out.