Two new promos for Archer Season 8 finally give us a good look at the radical changes made to the characters and narrative. While Archer has done season-long jaunts away from its original spy comedy roots before — in Season 5 they tried to build an international drug empire and became a private detective agency in Season 6 — nothing has been quite so dramatic as the upcoming Archer Season 8, “Dreamland.”
The new season of Archer time-warps Sterling and Mallory Archer, Pam Poovey, Lana Kane, Cyril Figgis, Cheryl Tunt, Dr. Krieger and Ray Gillette back to 1947, transmuting the characters in vastly different roles. Since Archer was shot and drowned in a pool at the end of Season 7, could this noir pastiche be his afterlife? Or maybe “Dreamland” suggests this is a coma-induced dream, similar to Tony Soprano’s alternate life in The Sopranos Season 6 episode “Join the Club.”
There’s another, stranger possibility.
But first check out the promos.
Yes, in all likelihood we’re looking at a season-long coma dream. But “Dreamland” has a compelling secondary meaning that might just tie into this hallucinatory new milieu.
Dreamland is not just a nickname for Hollywood and an old Brooklyn amusement park, it’s also a nickname for Area 51, the secret Groom Lake government facility visited by the Archer characters in Season 6. Could the title of the new season indicate a return of the extraterrestrials that Dr. Krieger and Pam met on the Nellis Air Force base?
It’s a little hard to imagine Archer revisiting what may be the series’ very worst episode, but it would be a surprising way for showrunner Adam Reed and company to subvert our expectations that Season 8 is essentially a coma fugue. Perhaps instead, it’s Sterling Archer’s consciousness implanted in a simulated alien or government-experimental reality from which he’ll have to escape.
Yes, mostly I just want Archer Season 8 to become Dark City. Archer Season 8 premieres this spring.
