For those that haven't watched the latest season of Archer, best look away now because we'll be discussing some spoilers.
Gone? Good. So, as we know, the final episode of Season 7 saw Archer, well, dead. Adam Reed, the show's creator and showrunner was even playing up the fact that FX hadn't picked up the show for another season - at the time, anyway - and was even acknowledging that Archer was dead.
Now, as we know, Archer has been picked up for three more seasons, won an Emmy and we know that Archer will spend three months in a coma where he'll enter a dream world that's akin to 1920s detective serials. No, really.
However, after those three seasons, Archer will be no more. In a recent interview, Reed explained that the end is near for Mallory, Cheryl, Lana and the rest of the gang. "The plan is to end Archer after season 10. I don’t know that anybody has talked about that, but that is definitely my plan - to do 8, 9, and 10 and they’re gonna be each shorter seasons of just eight episodes - and then wind it up."
To be honest, it's understandable. Far too many animated series go way longer than what's needed. Yes, we're talking about The Simpsons and, in some respects, Futurama as well. Keeping it that long just doesn't work, especially in a comedy scenario where the same setup and framing can get tiresome pretty quickly.
For Reed, it was only a burst of creativity that allowed him to come up with a way to keep it going for three more seasons.
"I was gonna end it after 8, but then I had sort of a brain explosion of a way that I could do three more seasons and really keep my interest up. So the three seasons that are coming up are gonna be pretty different from what has come before, and they’re gonna be different from each other."
Archer's eighth season kicks off in January 2017.
Via Murmur Podcast / Modern School