'American Horror Story: Apocalypse's cable ratings displayed a downward trend again this Wednesday after FX aired the third episode for the season, 'Forbidden Fruit'. Although it still maintained its top position in the ratings in comparison to other shows like CC's 'South Park', VH1's 'Black Ink Crew' and FXX's 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia', this is the lowest the viewership has gone for the show this season. The horror drama scored a 0.9 rating in the adults 18-49 demo with its third episode, coming down from the 1.1 that it had scored with its second episode, 'The Morning After'. 

'Apocalypse's premiere itself was the lowest in the show's season roster. It got 3.08 million views for its much-awaited season premiere and has been slipping ever since. 'Morning After' got 2.21 million views while 'Forbidden Fruit' scored a meager 1.95 million. In terms of critical acclaim, it has been doing positively overall. Rotten Tomatoes gave the season a 91% approval rating, with an average rating of 7.86/10, based on 59 reviews. On Metacritic too it did fairly well, scoring 62 out of 100 based on 30 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". The season has seven episodes this season unlike its last season 'American Horror Story: Cult', the seventh in the series, which had 11. 

From an audience perspective, these ratings won't really affect the franchise. FX has already announced that 'American Horror Story' will come back for two more seasons. It was renewed for a ninth time return in January last year and a tenth season renewal was announced subsequently on August 3, 2018. Created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk each season in the franchise is based on a different story with a completely fresh line of characters. Only the current season, 'Apocalypse', is a crossover between the first season of AHS called 'Murder House' and season 3, 'Coven'. The creators have, however, always weaved the plots in such a way that they always remain interconnected to each other. 

There is not much information out about the last two season yet. The creators have almost always held the themes for 'American Horror Story' seasons close to their chest in the initial stages and revealed them only when the season premiere was just a month or two away. 'Apocalypse' too only started dropping clues in July this year after the release date was announced to be in September.  

Popular fan theories suggest that Murphy has based each plot of the show on Dante's Inferno. The theory states that each season of the show represents one of the nine circles of Hell. The sins include limbo ('AHS: Murder House'), lust (AHS: Apocalypse') , gluttony ('AHS: Hotel'), greed ('AHS: Freakshow'), anger ('AHS: Roanoke'), heresy ('AHS: Cult'), violence( AHS: Apocalypse'), fraud ('AHS: Asylum') and treachery ('AHS: Coven'). Murphy himself has nodded to the theory on Instagram.