‘American Horror Story: Roanoke’ builds ratings momentum before finale

For those wondering if “American Horror Story: Roanoke” is going to go out with a ratings bang this season, you’re in luck: Just about every sign that we’ve got seems to be pointing towards the answer being yes.

After we saw the show suffer a little bit of a decline for episode 8, when it aired against the World Series, it recovered back up to a 1.3 rating in the 18-49 demographic for the penultimate episode of the season on Wednesday. What this means is that we’ve got some momentum entering the finale, and that should be another ratings increase for two simple reasons:

1. We’re building momentum towards it now – You always want your show to move a little bit like a freight train picking up steam, and in this case, we do very much think that this is happening.

2. The return of Lana Winters – Sure, Sarah Paulson’s played a number of awesome characters over the course of the series’ run, but we do think that her part from “Asylum” remains one of the most interesting. Getting to get her back at this point feels like a really cool gift, and one that we’re more than glad to have on the show.

For those who want to continue to compare the ratings of “Roanoke” to “Hotel” a year ago (we definitely like to do it), know that this episode compares to a 1.1 rating that we saw for the ninth episode last season. For an even more favorable comparison, know that this episode compares to a 0.9 rating that the penultimate episode of last season received. As a whole, season 6 has a leg up of over 7% from season 5, and we like to think that it’ll continue to stay around there following the finale.

In getting back to Lana Winters, you can see a finale preview featuring that character just by heading over to the link here. Enjoy!