Let the countdown to the freak show begin!  We’ve known American Horror Story: Freak Show is on the way for quite some time now, and guessed it was coming well before that, but now we’ve got an official date and time to look forward to – Wednesday, October 8th at 10pm on FX.

There are always plot rumors out there for highly anticipated movies and TV shows, but when the possibility of a circus/freak show-themed American Horror Story popped up, it was just too good to brush off.  Even though that made the official announcement more of a told-you-so type of thing, it’s hard to imagine anything else topping that concept.  Hit the jump for more on American Horror Story season 4.

So far we know that Jessica Lange, Kathy Bates, Angela Bassett, Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters, Emma Roberts and more are set to return.  The season’s going to take place in Juniper, Florida in the 1950s where one of the very last freak shows is up and running.  Lange’s character is the woman in charge, Elsa Mars, and then we’ve got all the performers around her.

No word on how Bates will fit into the freak show side of things, but, as we reported out of Comic-Con, we do know that her character, Ethel Darling, is AHS newcomer Michael Chiklis’ ex-wife.  Chiklis’ character, Wendell del Tolito, is the resident strongman who’s remarried to Bassett’s character, Desiree Dupree.  Peters will portray Ethel and Wendell’s son, Jimmy Darling, while Roberts revealed that her character’s name is Maggie and that she's not a villain, but nothing beyond that.  John Carroll Lynch is also joining the show as the season 4 villain and then of course we’ve got Paulson who might have the best freak show character of all – conjoined twins, Bette and Dot.  I cannot wait to see how they pull that off!

And that’s not all.  Wes Bentley is in as a “shady figure” from Ethel’s past while, via EW, Patti LaBelle just signed on to play Gabourey Sidibe’s character’s mom.  On top of that, showrunner Ryan Murphy recently tweeted that the world’s smallest woman, Jyoti Amge, is joining the cast as well, and posted the picture at the bottom of this article to go along with the announcement.  And then we’ve still got Frances Conroy, Denis O’Hare, Finn Wittrock and Jamie Brewer, but we don’t have any information on who they’re playing thus far.

Enough characters for you there?  There is just no way a single season of a TV show will be able to develop 16 brand new characters, so, odds are, some of them will probably get the Patti Lupone/Alexander Dreymon treatment and get introduced as though they’ll be pivotal components of the show only to fizzle out as the season goes on.  But this is American Horror Story we’re talking about here; it can get away with it.  Proper story structure is always nice, but half the fun of a show like this are the eccentrics and the shock value, and with a setting like a freak show, American Horror Story season 4 is poised to deliver.