Atlanta Season 3 Begins as a Collection of Eerie, Horror-Tinged Fables
Photo Courtesy of FX
With so many TV series formerly on pandemic hiatus now returning, it’s been hard to remember where things left off two years ago. In the case of Atlanta, it’s been four years since its Season 2 finale, an unfathomable span of time that also—in this particular case—doesn’t matter. As one of television’s most experimental (and experiential), inventive series, Atlanta rolls back in on its own terms and in its own unique way. Four years? It’s no time at all.
In the first two episodes of Season 3 available to review (out of an eventual 10), Atlanta returns to themes from both of its prior seasons, led once again by director Hiro Murai’s dreamy interpretations. In one, we continue with the story of Earn (series creator Donald Glover), as he manages his cousin Paper Boi / Alfred (Brian Tyree Henry) on a European tour. Along for the ride is the always chilled-out Darius (LaKeith Stanfield), who goes on his own journey with Vanessa (Zazie Beetz)—the mother of Earn’s child—who also came along to try and figure out what she’s doing with her life.
But that’s confined to the second episode; in the first, we meet a boy whose life quickly unravels after he’s sent to the principal’s office for dancing in the classroom. From there he descends into a hellscape that’s ushered along by “well-meaning” white folk who—despite their liberal trappings—have seemingly created a kind of suburban slave trade.
Like Season 2, Atlanta is again interested in documenting both the everyday vignettes of its leads and playing with myth and legend as waking nightmares. Even in the second episode, which finds the crew in Amsterdam, there is an encroaching sense of unease. Though the local fans and even police treat Earn and Alfred with extreme politeness and excitement, they are encased in a culture that condones and even celebrates blackface. While the first two episodes are very different in terms of their stories, a quiet horror lurks in both, specifically in the way the show investigates the hypocrisy of whites who want to project how accommodating they are to the Black community without actually changing anything about the way they think at all.