American Horror Club: A Guide To Ryan Murphy’s Worst (Best) Villains

With new series Scream Queens starting this week and American Horror Story: Hotel coming in October, we are super excited to meet a new round of gloriously messed up characters whom we will simultaneously root for, identify with, despise, and fear. Are we going to hate Emma Roberts' sorority queen as much as we want her to survive her school's serial killer? Will we wish we could be one of Lady Gaga's creepy vampire children? We've got goose bumps just thinking about it. Only a show created by Ryan Murphy can make us so confused about our feelings like this.

Since his first short-lived series Popular, Murphy has been crafting villains that leap off the screen and steal scenes away from much nicer protagonists. Just watch the scenes with Tammy Lynn Michaels' vibrant Nicole Julian and you will see strains of Sue Sylvester and Santana Lopez. Nip/Tuck's serial killers could make our skin crawl almost as much as the sleaze factor of the show's "good" doctors — and there's a clear line from them straight to the many murderers of AHS. And as much as Murphy's protagonists have been flawed people who sometimes deserve a good scare from these evildoers, the villains also have their own redeeming qualities. Even if that's just to make us shake our fists in rage or scare us silly. Warning: SPOILERS ABOUND.