Image Source: YouTube user FX Networks
Great news for “Atlanta” fans: we’re in the home stretch of the FX dramedy’s long-awaited return. On Dec. 22, the series announced that, after a three-plus-year hiatus, season three will premiere on March 24 with not one, but two new episodes to kick off its 10-episode comeback. Season’s three first teaser trailer dropped this past Christmas, and, as we see in the clip, the story picks up with Earn (Donald Glover), Paper Boi (Brian Tyree Henry), Darius (LaKeith Stanfield), and Van (Zazie Beetz) adjusting to their foreign surroundings and newfound success on a European tour.
This past Halloween, show creator Glover surprised fans with a first look at “Atlanta”‘s third season, tweeting “happy halloween” with a link to a mysterious “nite-site” called Gilga (which users can only access between 8 p.m. and 3 a.m.).
In the clip, Sun Ra’s “It’s After the End of the World” accompanies various B-roll shots from all around Europe. The lyrics “It’s after the end of the world, don’t you know that yet?” repeat throughout the clip, with a final close-up shot of Paper Boi wearing a Gucci sweatshirt with the word “fake” written across it in bold lime-green font. The teaser ends with a shot zooming in on him as a screech of horror music plays in the background.
The cryptic clues from the teaser became a bit clearer in the official season three trailer, which arrived on March 4 and provides a closer look at the trouble awaiting the crew in Europe. Between everyone’s collective culture shock and rabid fans terrorizing Paper Boi, things are sure to get crazy this season.
If you’re still wondering what to expect in season three, Glover and writer and producer Stefani Robinson teased episode one in a recent interview at SXSW. The premiere episode titled, “Three Slaps,” features little of the main cast, according to Variety. Instead, the opener will follow a young boy named Loquareeous (Christopher Farrar). The episode includes parodies of real-life viral videos of kids and reimagines the death of Devonte Hart. “I like to describe ‘Atlanta’ as a group thread in real life. We’re just sh*tting a group text thread . . . We’re just cobbling together internet videos that make us laugh,” Robinson told Variety of the premiere.
Glover added, “We just wanted to make a Black fairytale. I remember sitting in the writers’ room and being like, ‘What do we write about?’ We just wanted to do short stories. Something I would want to watch.”
Mystery still remains and there’s no telling what’s in store for the show’s fourth and final season, set to debut this fall. Ahead, watch the latest trailer for season three of “Atlanta.”