While some horror series don’t display their full potential until well into their first seasons, shows like Ash Vs Evil Dead peaked with their instant classic pilots. A television pilot is always a tricky beast. Ideally, the first episode of a show should epitomize its appeal without giving away too much. However, many pilots either under or oversell their stories.
For example, Netflix’s adaptation of The Fall of the House of Usher is an underrated modern classic, but viewers would be unlikely to guess this from its pilot episode alone. A surprisingly slow, grim outing, the pilot of this Edgar Allan Poe re-imagining lacks the playful wit and colorful style that ignites the rest of the show.
Similarly, although some viewers still argue that Lost’s finale was unfairly maligned upon its original release, it is fair to say that almost no one thinks the show lived up to its killer pilot. After stranding the heroes on a deserted island with a traumatic plane crash, the show inevitably had to slow down drastically in the episodes that followed.
8
Ratched
Sarah Paulson as Nurse Ratched crying in Ratched
That said, Lost at least deepened its mystery and introduced new characters as the series progressed. This is more than can be said for some horror shows, like 2020’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest re-imagining, Ratched. In theory, an entire miniseries exploring the backstory of the cult classic’s titular villain could have been fascinating.
Ratched’s pilot episode lived up to this promise, with Sarah Paulson successfully uncovering the humanity underneath the callously cruel Nurse Ratched’s steely, uncaring exterior. However, as the show progressed, Ratched lost sight of its original premise and began to feel more like another messy, overstuffed season of American Horror Story than an earnest character study of this odious villain.
7
True Blood
While a lot of True Blood’s seven seasons were fun, any show would have had a hard time living up to its killer pilot. The sizzling chemistry between Anna Paquin’s waitress Sookie Stackhouse and Stephen Moyer’s vampire Bill Compton instantly elevated this swampy blend of Southern Gothic horror and soap opera.
However, it is the efficient world building of the show that truly stands out upon a re-watch. Later seasons became interminably bogged down by excessive exposition, but True Blood’s first episode only needed a few brisk conversations to get viewers up to speed before the show got into the good stuff. Meaning, the plentiful gore and hot vampire sex.
6
The Haunting of Bly Manor
Rahul Kohli in The Haunting of Bly Manor next to Carla Gugino in The Haunting of Hill HouseCustom image by Nick Bythrow
While Mike Flanagan’s The Haunting of Hill House remains Netflix’s best horror show ever, its much-anticipated follow-up was much more divisive. Still Flanagan’s lowest rated show on Rotten Tomatoes, this re-imagining of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw was both too ambitious and too slow at the same time.
The show had less story to tell than its predecessor, but the delivery of its narrative was needlessly convoluted. However, none of this was evident from its killer pilot, a genuinely chilling ghost story that still excels as a patient, unsettling standalone horror. The rest of the season may have failed to live up to its high bar, but this episode alone is a classic.
5
American Horror Story: Asylum
American Horror Story Asylum Sarah Paulson as Lana Winters
Many seasons of American Horror Story start out strong, only to become overly complicated and unnecessarily complex. The worst instance of this came in season 2’s story Asylum, which begins with an all-too believable real-life horror. When Sarah Paulson’s intrepid journalist sneaks into the titular asylum, she is horrified to find herself committed by its tyrannical head nun.
Since American Horror Story: Asylum’s story is split between the present and flashbacks to the ‘60s, viewers are introduced to a monstrous serial killer at the same time that they learn about the fate of the show’s trapped heroine. Unfortunately, the show’s remaining episodes soon descended into a disastrous pile up of zombies, demonic possessions, killer Santas, and alien abductions.
While every season of American Horror Story has at least one subplot that could have been trimmed if the show had employed the efforts of a more judicious editor, this one particularly stings. Asylum’s pilot is a masterclass in narrative efficiency, setting up every major plot strand of the season while simultaneously balancing two timelines.
4
Hemlock Grove
Nosferatu’s Ellen and Hemlock Grove’s Roman GodfreyCustom image by Ana Nieves.
Based on the Brian McGreevy novel of the same name, Hemlock Grove was poised to become a major horror hit when the show premiered on Netflix in 2013. With the backing of Eli Roth and a stacked cast that included Bill Skarsgard and Famke Janssen, the werewolf horror seemed too big to fail. Indeed, its stellar pilot episode only reaffirmed this perception.
Then something unfortunate happened. Hemlock Grove’s pacing slowed to a crawl after a bombshell opening episode, as the show introduced more and more supporting characters and wandered further and further from a cohesive storyline. By the end of season 1, the series had lost any narrative momentum and goodwill generated by that killer pilot episode.
3
The Following
Max (Jessica Stroup) and Ryan (Kevin Bacon) running on The Following
Debuting in 2013, The Following arrived with a lot of goodwill on its side. Primarily, the show was a comeback for Dawson’s Creek creator/Scream screenwriter Kevin Williamson, so lovers of ‘90s horror were ready for the master of the genre to bring his unique voice to a dark serial killer thriller.
A stellar cast that included Kevin Bacon, Maggie Grave, and James Purefoy only made The Following more intriguing, but it was the show’s pilot episode that sealed the deal. A terrifying introduction to the killer’s cult proved that Bacon’s antihero was in way over his head in this outing, setting up what seemed like a thrilling, chilling game of cat and mouse.
Instead, The Following lost all its steam after episode one, wasting most of its limited screen time on distracting subplots and rendering its main villain less scary and more laughable with each passing episode. Before long, it was hard to even remember what made episode 1 seem so strikingly original in the first place.
2
Scream Queens
Emma Roberts in We’re the Millers and Scream QueensCustom Image by Yailin Chacon
Fortunately, Glen Powell’s breakthrough performance in Scream Queens will always be a credit to Ryan Murphy’s horror comedy show. Furthermore, it was daring and original for the superproducer to even attempt a serialized take on the teen slasher subgenre, and doubly surprising for Murphy to give the show such a goofy, playful and comedic tone.
In the pilot episode of Scream Queens, the gruesome gore and over-the-top character comedy blend beautifully. This outing introduces a cast of characters who are so hilariously unlikable that it is not only understandable, but outright necessary for viewers to root for their grisly deaths. However, as season 1 continued, the problems with populating a show with annoying characters became clear.
The overblown idiocy and self-involvement of the Chanels left viewers with no one to root for, since the show’s ostensible heroine was arguably even more annoying and everyone else was a suspect. As such, Scream Queens was a rare horror TV show that might have been better off as a tight 90-minute movie.
1
Ash Vs Evil Dead
Whether Ash Vs Evil Dead season 4 happens or not, the show already proved that it could effectively translate the unique charms of the horror comedy franchise to the small screen. So, if Ash Vs Evil Dead is one of the best horror comedies in TV history, what is it doing on this list? Well, it still can’t live up to its pilot.
Ash Vs Evil Dead’s first episode was directed by horror legend Sam Raimi, so the opening outing inevitably outdoes the rest of the show’s episodes despite how inventive, original, and funny the series remains after episode 1. Fortunately for Ash Vs Evil Dead, the show only fails to outdo its pilot because of how uniquely strong its first episode is.