'American Horror Story': Who Is Mead? Bates Might Be the Scariest TV Robot

Only two episodes of American Horror Story, Season 8 have aired so far, but the show is already full of twists that fans never saw coming. In a season that’s featured the possible Antichrist and promises to re-introduce our favorite witches pretty soon, it might seem like there are plenty ghouls running around. So, why not add in some androids as well?

To be fair, fans can’t be entirely sure yet whether androids are going to be part of the American Horror Story: Apocalypse equation. But based on the events of the AHS Season 8 Episode 2, there’s a good chance at least one character may be a robot — or at least part robot.

At the end of the second episode of AHS Season 8, Kathy Bates’ character, Miriam Mead, was shot. But she didn’t bleed like a normal human would. Instead, a strange milky fluid dripped out of her. As an odd bonus, it looked like she had some internal wiring when the wound was revealed to the audience.

Fans on Reddit and Twitter went wild, questioning whether Mead is some sort of android, robot, cyborg, or other type of creature with biomechatronic parts. If it turns out that she is some form of robot, Mead could rank up there with some of the scariest in TV history, just based on what we’ve seen so far this season.

Mead helps run the outpost where survivors of the end of the world are being held, and she’s pulled some pretty creepy moves so far – like when she deemed one of the survivors “unclean” and possibly served him as part of a meal to the other residents. She’s also seen saying “Hail, Satan” in the official promo for the season, which implies she will continue to get up to some pretty scary hijinks as it continues.

If Mead is indeed some type of robot, it would be a bit out of the ordinary for American Horror Story, but not for TV in general. Robots on TV are often of the more friendly variety; think K-9 on Doctor Who. But let’s take a look at some of the scarier robots on TV, in case Mead does end up joining their ranks.

The Westworld hosts

Sure, many of the robot “hosts” of Westworld can be pretty friendly and harmless on an individual basis. But when a bunch of robots rebel, they are capable of being a pretty terrifying unified force.

The sudden acts of violence and high stakes nature of the latest season of Westworld practically made it into a horror show, and I think the hosts definitely deserve to be on this list, for what they have done and what they could do in the future.

The robot dog from Black Mirror’s “Metalhead”

Sure, it’s a dog instead of a human. But robot dogs are scary as Hell. Just check out any YouTube video of the ones in development right now. In this particular Black Mirror episode, the dog might have seemed so scary because it “feels unquestionably real,” Forbes reported. Entertainment Weekly noted that the moment the dog pushed itself back upright after it was overturned was “perhaps the most chilling vision yet of the well-worn killer robot trope.” This is clearly not a good example of man’s best friend.

The Cybermen from Doctor Who

Sure, the Cybermen might look a little cheesy, like a lot of things on Doctor Who over the years. But they can also kill people with one touch. They’re technically aliens-turned-machines, but I still think they belong on a list of scary TV robots. They’re so…iconic.

Brainiac on Smallville

Brainiac was actually a Kryptonian artificial intelligence, but close enough. He was able to unleash a computer virus that infected every piece of technology on the planet, and could shapeshift into any form. Any time shapeshifting is involved, things can get scary — fast.

The scariest robots tend to populate horror movies and other big screen projects instead, but there are still plenty of scary TV robots out there, and there’s a good chance Mead from American Horror Story may be one of them.

**American Horror Story

airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on FX.**