Archer Will End After its 10th Season, Says Series Creator Adam Reed

FX recently gave its uproarious animated spy comedy Archer three more seasons, but it seems those are the last the show will see. Series creator Adam Reed revealed in a recent episode of the Modern School of Film’s Murmur podcast that Archer will end after its 10th season.

Reed explained:

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. … 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.

Reed seems aware that even a delight like Archer can overstay its welcome, a TV sin he is not too keen on committing. “I do think that things can go on too long,” Reed said, “and maybe instead of just looking at the bottom line, maybe those creative energies could be better used coming up with something new rather than continuing the same thing.” We can only hope that live-action Archer movie (starring Jon Hamm, but with H. Jon Benjamin’s voice, please and thank you) is what Reed means by “something new.”

Archer’s eighth season will debut in early 2017, running just eight episodes. Season eight, which Reed teased at San Diego Comic Con as “Archer: Dreamland,” will take place in the mind of a comatose Sterling Archer, who dreams that he is a 1920s PI out to solve the murder of his partner, Woodhouse. Find out more about Archer’s next season here.