At the end of the last season of Archer , the ISIS crew had gone from elite CIA contractors to blacklisted nobodies, sweating it out alongside a highway with uncertain futures. In an interview with Slashfilm, Archer creator Adam Reed described how Season 7 will turn some of the world’s best (and worst) spies into private dicks.
Archer previously showed off its narrative flexibility with Archer Vice , a season-long experiment that recast the characters as international cocaine dealers. The changes didn’t stick, with the following season returning to more standard spy hijinks.
In comparison, the changes between Season 6 andSeason 7 look a little more modest. Instead of drastically changing characters and plots (RIP outlaw country Cheryl), Reed says Season 6 will retain a lot of the same elements.
“Surprisingly not very different,” Reed said, comparing the international spying and the jobs of private detectives. “A lot of misadventure and bickering seems to be common for both professions.”
Where Vice retooled Archer for season-long serialization, it sounds like Season 7 will retain a more episodic focus. The cases I think are very analogous to missions,” Reed told Slashfilm. “It’s not too much different from spying. They’re still spying on people, just domestically rather than internationally.”
Since the Archer characters have grown, taking on an ensemble dimension not seen in early episodes, the plots have begun to avoid standard spy tropes. One episode in Season 6 took place entirely in a stuck elevator.
“I was just worried about writer burnout and viewer burnout on spy stories,” Reed said, but it wasn’t just a matter of running out of spy riffs. The state of the world came into play. “Now, as the news is more dominated by global conflict, it was a little harder to escape as a writer into spy stuff when the news is all not great lately. Having them be detectives was a good way for me at least to shut out the bad news and have fun that didn’t involve terror cells.”
Even more surprising than the change in milieu is a change in who’s in charge. Even when they had ditched spying to cart cocaine around Miami, there’s never been any question that Mallory Archer was in charge. Now it’s Cyril Figgis’ turn.
“At least in the ’70s and/or ’80s, to be a private eye in California, you have to have either 2,000 hours of investigative work or a law degree. Since Cyril has a law degree, it’s actually going to be the Figgis Agency and all the former field agents are now working under Cyril, which Archer more than anybody really hates,” Reed said.
So will Archer Season 7 be like Archer Vice: a one-season break from Archer’s ongoing espionage plot? Right now Adam Reed isn’t sure. “I don’t know what the future seasons will hold. I’m just trying to bring all the moving parts in Season Seven together in the last script.”
