American Horror Story 1984 Characters Ranked By Likability

The brilliance of a series like American Horror Story is that it continues to reinvent itself with each season. It would have been very easy for it to fall into familiar patterns and become stale, but again and again, it’s delivered new sorts of frights and chills to its audience and deserves more credit than it gets.

1984 is no exception, and it takes some unexpected turns as it reinvents the slasher films that were so popular during the 1980s (and it deserves more credit than it usually gets). As with the other entries in the series, there are some compelling characters here, some of whom are likable and some of whom are just plain awful.

10 Richard Ramirez

Given that he’s a serial killer, it’s probably not a surprise that Richard Ramirez is one of the series’ more unlikable characters. What’s more, he doesn’t really seem to have any sense, not even a little, that what he’s doing is bad or that he should have any remorse.

In fact, he’s so unlikeable that even his fellow ghosts can’t stand him, and they do everything they can to keep him from wreaking more havoc than he already has.

9 Margaret

If anyone is nearly as unlikeable as Richard, it would have to be Margaret. This is, after all, the woman who was responsible for many deaths. It’s not just that, though. She often makes a point of inflicting as much pain and agony as possible on her victims.

Even when she’s a ghost, she still tries to make everyone’s lives miserable and, like Richard, she has to deal with the fact that all of her fellow ghosts hate her (in fact, they’re responsible for her brutal and gruesome death in the woodchipper).

8 Montana

Billie Lourde has increasingly become one of the best things about this franchise, largely because she’s able to create all sorts of different characters. All of them, however, have at least one redeeming quality: one moment when they, at last, realize that what they’ve been doing is wrong.

Montana is no exception, and while she does have her redemptive moment, the fact remains that she does some pretty horrible things, in addition to being a lover to Ramirez.

7 Xavier

Cody Fern is one of the more recent additions to the show, and in each season he makes quite an impression (though apparently, he’s not returning for the tenth season of the show).

In this season, he plays the rather obnoxious teen Xavier, one of those who goes to the camp and finds himself caught up in the gruesome goings-on. He’s not the worst person, to be sure, but he is not exactly likable either, and it doesn’t seem to bother him that he can at times be a bit of a brat.

6 Chet

The casting of Gus Kenworthy no doubt raised a few eyebrows, largely because he’s more well-known as an Olympian rather than an actor. However, he turns in a pretty decent performance as Chet, one of the unfortunate camp-goers who meets his fate and is condemned to live there as a ghost.

Though his character doesn’t have a lot to do in this season, what the viewer gets to know of him suggests that he’s actually a pretty decent fellow and quite likable in his own right.

5 Benjamin Richter

It might seem a bit counterintuitive to say that the serial killer responsible for many of the murders in this season is a likable character, but the truth is that he really is. It’s to the writers’ credit that they give viewers more insight into his complicated psychology than the show usually gives to its villains (with some noted exceptions).

In some ways, his story is actually one of the most tragic of the entire season, since he’s constantly dragged back into a world of death that he’d much rather escape.

4 Trevor

It’s actually rather great to see Matthew Morrison in this show, especially since he was such a fantastic actor on Glee. Now, it has to be said that his character Trevor isn’t the brightest star in the galaxy, but he makes it clear pretty early on that he, unlike some of the others, isn’t a monster, and he really does seem to have the well-being of others in mind.

What’s more, he seems to actually adore Montana, and their love story is one of the few bright spots in a pretty bleak season.

3 Donna Chambers

Again, it might seem a bit counterintuitive to see this character as likable, since she literally sets Benjamin up to continue his murder spree, simply so that she can learn what it is that makes serial killers tick.

Like some of the other characters, however, she has her own redemption and, when one gets right down to it, she’s actually a likable enough person, willing to admit her mistakes and to take action to correct what she’s done, and she does it all while being very well-dressed. This is a far cry from what some of the other characters, most notably Margaret, do.

2 Brooke

Brooke is in many ways the main character of the season. The “final girl” who gets swept up in the brutal events surrounding her (largely through no fault of her own). She’s a fairly likable character, something of a rarity for Emma Roberts, who usually plays villains in this series (and in many others).

Perhaps it’s the playing against type that gives Brooke such an aura of innocence, and it certainly helps that she manages to survive and make a new life for her when so many others have perished.

1 Bobby Richter

Finn Wittrock is, of course, a staple in this series and one of the best recurring actors, though in this season he only makes a last-minute appearance. Further, despite the fact that he has almost exclusively played villains before, in this season he plays Benjamin’s son, and it’s clear that he’s nothing like his father.

In fact, the final episode goes out of its way to make sure that the viewer knows that he’s a good guy, an innocent young man who just wants to know more about his father and what led him to do the horrible things that he did.

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