Archer won its first “Outstanding Animated Series” Emmy on Sunday (for its Season 7 premiere “The Figgis Agency”) and Executive Producer Matt Thompson took the opportunity to reveal a little more about the upcoming Archer Season 8. Beginning with Season 8 episode 1, Archer will ditch “modern day” Los Angeles (it’s hard to tell the exact time period with Archer) for 1947.
To understand what will bring the Archer ensemble to 1947, we need to look back to the San Diego Comic-Con panel, which explained exactly how Sterling Archer survived getting gut shot and drowning in a pool. Unfortunately, the explanation is a bit of a cop-out: the Archer Season 8 premiere will reveal that Sterling Archer is now in a coma.
Similar to the fantastic Season 6 episode of The Sopranos, “Join the Club,” Archer Season 8 will be set in a “dreamland,” where Archer lives out a coma-induced fantasia, finding himself a private eye in the 1940s. It appears that all, or at least most, of Archer Season 8 will take place in this new setting.
The new season will recast all of the characters in this same 1940s milieu. The plot begins with Archer investigating the death of his partner, Woodhouse (voice actor George Coe died last year). Mallory figures into Archer’s delusions as “M,” just like James Bond’s boss. Krieger, Lana and Ray all work at the same nightclub, where Lana sings. Cheryl will be subjected to yet another name change, appearing as Charlotte Vander Tunt in the 1940s coma “dreamland.” Cyril and Pam play other detectives, with Detective Pam Poovy “living as a man,” according to creator Adam Reed.
Archer Season 8’s setting inside Sterling Archer’s mind will also allow for the renewal of several series bad guys, with Len Trexler returning as a mob boss (once again voiced by Jeffrey Tambor, whose character hasn’t appeared since getting brainwashed in Season 2) with a non-cyborg (presumably) Barry Dillon at his side.
With such a strong ensemble of characters, Archer has gotten away with radically changing its form over the years, beginning with Archer Season 5, which saw the ISIS spies try their hands at cocaine smuggling. Can an entire season of Archer sustain itself inside a coma, essentially playing 1940s make-believe with its cast? We’ll find out when Archer returns for Season 8 in January of 2017.
