FXXX’s Archer

About the Show FXX’s Archer is an original animated, half-hour comedy that follows Sterling Archer as he navigates the changing landscape of the spy world. In Season 12, Archer and gang face a new threat: a spy conglomerate known as IIA (International Intelligence Agency). With a limited number of spy jobs up for grabs, can the Agency compete against the soulless vultures of IIA, or will our mom-and-pop spy agency be the next to get swallowed alive?

Archer was created by Adam Reed and is executive produced by Reed, Matt Thompson and Casey Willis at Floyd County Productions. The series is produced by FX Productions.

What Was One Of The Biggest Themes For The Season?

DEN OF GEEK: Now that this season has wrapped up, what were the biggest themes and ideas that you wanted to communicate across these episodes? CASEY WILLIS: Themes for the season are sometimes an organic process. We go into the season with pretty broad concepts, but as the episodes are written the themes narrow or branch off into related areas.

We also wanted Lana to struggle with…well, everything: career, motherhood, marriage, etc. We wanted to contrast what she had in season 11 with what she was going through in season 12. It was also exciting to work with the diverse writing staff this season and see what everyone was able to contribute to their scripts and the Archer universe. PIERRE CERRATO: I think particularly with Lana, she served as a reflection of what a lot of us were going through.

“Mission: Difficult” ties up a lot of the loose threads from “Colt Express” and continues that story. Did it always seem like the right approach to conclude the season in this big two-part manner? We would not have been able to get through everything in that timeframe.

CASEY WILLIS: We also had a lot of fun ideas for Eric André and “Colt.” Even with the two-parter, there were some really funny things that ended up on the cutting room floor.

What Is Archer About?

Archer is a show consciously and intrinsically about the search for identity. This theme is textual and subtextual, it is constant and continuous. Creator Adam Reed, his creative team, and the other voice actors found that identity long ago.

Archer’s characters once grappled and evolved, but now seem stuck doing what they’ve always done, which seems less charming because they’re no longer exploring new spaces. During that time its seasons have grown shorter, going from a 10-episode premiere season to five straight 13-episode seasons, winding back down to 10, and has now had five straight seasons with eight or nine episodes. Eight episodes is not enough to dig into these characters and this setting the way Archer used to, especially with episodes only running between 19 and 24 minutes.

And yet, 12 seasons through, it very much feels like Archer has said all it has to say. After the fourth season, our gang of spies became witless drug dealers in Archer: Vice, an adventure that eventually turned into a retrospective and critique on U.S. foreign policy in Latin America. That season ended with Sterling going into a coma, leading to three anthology seasons.

Perhaps turning three straight seasons into extended dream sequences was a sign that the creators’ creative well was running dry. The problem is this seems to extend past the protagonist and to the creative team writing his exploits. Archer was more interested in its world and characters than that once, even as a comedy—even as a show that would jokingly reference and acknowledge the lack of clarity in its anachronistic Cold War era.

It needs to go places, to move and change. We used to learn new things about the characters that added depth and plot elements—Amber Nash’s Pam Poovey is a streetfighter with loose ties to the Yakuza; Judy Greer’s Cheryl Tunt is a billionaire with a philanthropist brother; Lucky Yates’ Dr. Algernop Krieger is a clone (possibly of Hitler) that grew up in Brazil, and the current Krieger might not be the original after the end of Archer: Vice—but that rarely happens now. Except the show was more interesting when it was exploring Archer’s psyche, or at least different locales.

About the Show FXX’s Archer is an original animated, half-hour comedy that follows Sterling Archer as he navigates the changing landscape of the spy world. In Season 12, Archer and gang face a new threat: a spy conglomerate known as IIA (International Intelligence Agency). With a limited number of spy jobs up for grabs, can the Agency compete against the soulless vultures of IIA, or will our mom-and-pop spy agency be the next to get swallowed alive?

Archer was created by Adam Reed and is executive produced by Reed, Matt Thompson and Casey Willis at Floyd County Productions. The series is produced by FX Productions.

What Was One Of The Biggest Themes For The Season?

DEN OF GEEK: Now that this season has wrapped up, what were the biggest themes and ideas that you wanted to communicate across these episodes? CASEY WILLIS: Themes for the season are sometimes an organic process. We go into the season with pretty broad concepts, but as the episodes are written the themes narrow or branch off into related areas.

We also wanted Lana to struggle with…well, everything: career, motherhood, marriage, etc. We wanted to contrast what she had in season 11 with what she was going through in season 12. It was also exciting to work with the diverse writing staff this season and see what everyone was able to contribute to their scripts and the Archer universe. PIERRE CERRATO: I think particularly with Lana, she served as a reflection of what a lot of us were going through.

“Mission: Difficult” ties up a lot of the loose threads from “Colt Express” and continues that story. Did it always seem like the right approach to conclude the season in this big two-part manner? We would not have been able to get through everything in that timeframe.

CASEY WILLIS: We also had a lot of fun ideas for Eric André and “Colt.” Even with the two-parter, there were some really funny things that ended up on the cutting room floor.

What Is Archer About?

Archer is a show consciously and intrinsically about the search for identity. This theme is textual and subtextual, it is constant and continuous. Creator Adam Reed, his creative team, and the other voice actors found that identity long ago.

Archer’s characters once grappled and evolved, but now seem stuck doing what they’ve always done, which seems less charming because they’re no longer exploring new spaces. During that time its seasons have grown shorter, going from a 10-episode premiere season to five straight 13-episode seasons, winding back down to 10, and has now had five straight seasons with eight or nine episodes. Eight episodes is not enough to dig into these characters and this setting the way Archer used to, especially with episodes only running between 19 and 24 minutes.

And yet, 12 seasons through, it very much feels like Archer has said all it has to say. After the fourth season, our gang of spies became witless drug dealers in Archer: Vice, an adventure that eventually turned into a retrospective and critique on U.S. foreign policy in Latin America. That season ended with Sterling going into a coma, leading to three anthology seasons.

Perhaps turning three straight seasons into extended dream sequences was a sign that the creators’ creative well was running dry. The problem is this seems to extend past the protagonist and to the creative team writing his exploits. Archer was more interested in its world and characters than that once, even as a comedy—even as a show that would jokingly reference and acknowledge the lack of clarity in its anachronistic Cold War era.

It needs to go places, to move and change. We used to learn new things about the characters that added depth and plot elements—Amber Nash’s Pam Poovey is a streetfighter with loose ties to the Yakuza; Judy Greer’s Cheryl Tunt is a billionaire with a philanthropist brother; Lucky Yates’ Dr. Algernop Krieger is a clone (possibly of Hitler) that grew up in Brazil, and the current Krieger might not be the original after the end of Archer: Vice—but that rarely happens now. Except the show was more interesting when it was exploring Archer’s psyche, or at least different locales.

About the Show FXX’s Archer is an original animated, half-hour comedy that follows Sterling Archer as he navigates the changing landscape of the spy world. In Season 12, Archer and gang face a new threat: a spy conglomerate known as IIA (International Intelligence Agency). With a limited number of spy jobs up for grabs, can the Agency compete against the soulless vultures of IIA, or will our mom-and-pop spy agency be the next to get swallowed alive?

Archer was created by Adam Reed and is executive produced by Reed, Matt Thompson and Casey Willis at Floyd County Productions. The series is produced by FX Productions.

What Was One Of The Biggest Themes For The Season?

DEN OF GEEK: Now that this season has wrapped up, what were the biggest themes and ideas that you wanted to communicate across these episodes? CASEY WILLIS: Themes for the season are sometimes an organic process. We go into the season with pretty broad concepts, but as the episodes are written the themes narrow or branch off into related areas.

We also wanted Lana to struggle with…well, everything: career, motherhood, marriage, etc. We wanted to contrast what she had in season 11 with what she was going through in season 12. It was also exciting to work with the diverse writing staff this season and see what everyone was able to contribute to their scripts and the Archer universe. PIERRE CERRATO: I think particularly with Lana, she served as a reflection of what a lot of us were going through.

“Mission: Difficult” ties up a lot of the loose threads from “Colt Express” and continues that story. Did it always seem like the right approach to conclude the season in this big two-part manner? We would not have been able to get through everything in that timeframe.

CASEY WILLIS: We also had a lot of fun ideas for Eric André and “Colt.” Even with the two-parter, there were some really funny things that ended up on the cutting room floor.

What Is Archer About?

Archer is a show consciously and intrinsically about the search for identity. This theme is textual and subtextual, it is constant and continuous. Creator Adam Reed, his creative team, and the other voice actors found that identity long ago.

Archer’s characters once grappled and evolved, but now seem stuck doing what they’ve always done, which seems less charming because they’re no longer exploring new spaces. During that time its seasons have grown shorter, going from a 10-episode premiere season to five straight 13-episode seasons, winding back down to 10, and has now had five straight seasons with eight or nine episodes. Eight episodes is not enough to dig into these characters and this setting the way Archer used to, especially with episodes only running between 19 and 24 minutes.

And yet, 12 seasons through, it very much feels like Archer has said all it has to say. After the fourth season, our gang of spies became witless drug dealers in Archer: Vice, an adventure that eventually turned into a retrospective and critique on U.S. foreign policy in Latin America. That season ended with Sterling going into a coma, leading to three anthology seasons.

Perhaps turning three straight seasons into extended dream sequences was a sign that the creators’ creative well was running dry. The problem is this seems to extend past the protagonist and to the creative team writing his exploits. Archer was more interested in its world and characters than that once, even as a comedy—even as a show that would jokingly reference and acknowledge the lack of clarity in its anachronistic Cold War era.

It needs to go places, to move and change. We used to learn new things about the characters that added depth and plot elements—Amber Nash’s Pam Poovey is a streetfighter with loose ties to the Yakuza; Judy Greer’s Cheryl Tunt is a billionaire with a philanthropist brother; Lucky Yates’ Dr. Algernop Krieger is a clone (possibly of Hitler) that grew up in Brazil, and the current Krieger might not be the original after the end of Archer: Vice—but that rarely happens now. Except the show was more interesting when it was exploring Archer’s psyche, or at least different locales.

About the Show FXX’s Archer is an original animated, half-hour comedy that follows Sterling Archer as he navigates the changing landscape of the spy world. In Season 12, Archer and gang face a new threat: a spy conglomerate known as IIA (International Intelligence Agency). With a limited number of spy jobs up for grabs, can the Agency compete against the soulless vultures of IIA, or will our mom-and-pop spy agency be the next to get swallowed alive?

Archer was created by Adam Reed and is executive produced by Reed, Matt Thompson and Casey Willis at Floyd County Productions. The series is produced by FX Productions.

What Was One Of The Biggest Themes For The Season?

DEN OF GEEK: Now that this season has wrapped up, what were the biggest themes and ideas that you wanted to communicate across these episodes? CASEY WILLIS: Themes for the season are sometimes an organic process. We go into the season with pretty broad concepts, but as the episodes are written the themes narrow or branch off into related areas.

We also wanted Lana to struggle with…well, everything: career, motherhood, marriage, etc. We wanted to contrast what she had in season 11 with what she was going through in season 12. It was also exciting to work with the diverse writing staff this season and see what everyone was able to contribute to their scripts and the Archer universe. PIERRE CERRATO: I think particularly with Lana, she served as a reflection of what a lot of us were going through.

“Mission: Difficult” ties up a lot of the loose threads from “Colt Express” and continues that story. Did it always seem like the right approach to conclude the season in this big two-part manner? We would not have been able to get through everything in that timeframe.

CASEY WILLIS: We also had a lot of fun ideas for Eric André and “Colt.” Even with the two-parter, there were some really funny things that ended up on the cutting room floor.

What Is Archer About?

Archer is a show consciously and intrinsically about the search for identity. This theme is textual and subtextual, it is constant and continuous. Creator Adam Reed, his creative team, and the other voice actors found that identity long ago.

Archer’s characters once grappled and evolved, but now seem stuck doing what they’ve always done, which seems less charming because they’re no longer exploring new spaces. During that time its seasons have grown shorter, going from a 10-episode premiere season to five straight 13-episode seasons, winding back down to 10, and has now had five straight seasons with eight or nine episodes. Eight episodes is not enough to dig into these characters and this setting the way Archer used to, especially with episodes only running between 19 and 24 minutes.

And yet, 12 seasons through, it very much feels like Archer has said all it has to say. After the fourth season, our gang of spies became witless drug dealers in Archer: Vice, an adventure that eventually turned into a retrospective and critique on U.S. foreign policy in Latin America. That season ended with Sterling going into a coma, leading to three anthology seasons.

Perhaps turning three straight seasons into extended dream sequences was a sign that the creators’ creative well was running dry. The problem is this seems to extend past the protagonist and to the creative team writing his exploits. Archer was more interested in its world and characters than that once, even as a comedy—even as a show that would jokingly reference and acknowledge the lack of clarity in its anachronistic Cold War era.

It needs to go places, to move and change. We used to learn new things about the characters that added depth and plot elements—Amber Nash’s Pam Poovey is a streetfighter with loose ties to the Yakuza; Judy Greer’s Cheryl Tunt is a billionaire with a philanthropist brother; Lucky Yates’ Dr. Algernop Krieger is a clone (possibly of Hitler) that grew up in Brazil, and the current Krieger might not be the original after the end of Archer: Vice—but that rarely happens now. Except the show was more interesting when it was exploring Archer’s psyche, or at least different locales.