In Season 3 American Gods Has Lost the Magic It Once Had

The opening scene of the new season of American Gods indicates the kind of show it has become. Ballerinas appear on stage, with tutus shimmying in unison. Soft music plays in softer lighting. And then the drums start, the lights come on, and the ballerinas turn to reveal their bloody faces from a human sacrifice underneath them on the stage. A band called Blood Death walks onto the stage as the ballerinas exit. Their concert is dedicated to Wednesday (Ian McShane), the All Father himself. Adoring hands reach out to Wednesday, and the leader of the band (played by Marilyn Manson) presents a sword to him as people in the crowd scream Odin’s name. A delicate dance gives way to pageantry, revealing the show’s tone: loud and obvious.

This season attempts to copy the aesthetics of previous seasons without matching the intent behind them. CGI isn’t just what made American Gods beautiful, it was the meaning and artistry behind the visual choices. Although the visuals this season can still be interesting at times, they can also ring hollow. Slowed-down blood droplets flying across the screen have little impact if they are just there to look cool and not to further the story. (It does not bode well that one of my notes from one of the four episodes I got to watch was just “bored.”)

This season of American Gods finally gets Shadow to Lakeside, Wisconsin, which book readers will recognize and have likely been waiting for. Lakeside is a typically American story of small-town niceties covering atrocities, like children who go missing without a trace. After a teenage girl disappears, Shadow (Ricky Whittle)—known to the town as Mike Ainsley—becomes an immediate suspect. The sweet and slightly bumbling sheriff apologies to Shadow for the “optics” of a white cop interrogating the only Black man in the town when a girl goes missing and says that Lakeside isn’t like that. Shadow responds by saying it’s still in America, isn’t it?

Leaning into the contradictions and atrocities of what makes up the U.S. is what makes a particularly American story like American Gods so interesting. It would be to its benefit to dig into the complexity of these contradictions. Evil can lurk under everything in the U.S., even and especially when it looks saccharine from the outside. The key to doing this without seeming preachy or boring is to pay attention to how easily evil can hide in plain sight. What makes it appealing? How does it benefit those in power? What makes it so hard to dismantle? How does it continue to get excused and promoted?

Exposing these questions involves reimagining typically American images and showing the rot beneath them, and how long that rot was able to grow. But as the opening scene attests, American Gods seems less interested in this subtlety and more interested in unleashing evil outright.

The big bad of the show still seems to be technology and the new gods, but there’s a lack of subtlety there, too. Technology and social media are portrayed as empty and harmful, but there’s little time spent on what is actually good about new media and tech. In the show, it just becomes a means for the new gods to get access to followers. But the emptiness of gaining followers and likes is a tired argument for hating social media and doesn’t add anything new to the conversation.