The last time Atlanta aired a new episode on television, Drake’s “Nice for What” was the No. 1 song in the country. About a week later, Childish Gambino’s own “This Is America” took over that spot, and later went on to a successful and history-making night at the 2019 Grammys. That feels like a long, long time ago, and in a lot of ways, it was. Atlanta‘s Season 2 finale, “Crabs in a Barrel,” was broadcast on FX on May 10, 2018. A lot has happened since then.
Most notably, show creator and star Donald Glover has appeared in major films for Disney (Solo: A Star Wars Story and The Lion King) and released another Gambino album called 3.15.20, while co-star Zazie Beats has helped anchor Joker and Deadpool 2, and Paper Boi himself, Brian Tyree Henry, has racked up over a dozen film credits and become an actual Marvel superhero in Eternals.
This is all to say: Atlanta‘s third season, long rumored and highly anticipated, will arrive in a much different climate than either of its first two did. But that just drives the excitement levels up even further, especially considering Glover’s tweet from Halloween 2021, ultimately teasing new episodes of the show set to air in 2022.
The tweet is a link to the website for something called “Gilga,” which is, as the text describes, a “nite-site” with “operational hours” from 8 p.m. to 3 a.m. local time. When it first launched, a link to a Season 3 trailer was present.
That trailer, which has since been captured and circulated widely online, primarily features a collection of static shots of locales, including performance spaces, nightclubs, and a particularly unsettling darkened staircase with a naked doll buried in the corner. By the end, Henry’s Paper Boi sits at a table looking very disaffected as servers behind him face the wall before the screen fades to black and the year 2022 is all that’s left.
The entire thing is quite menacing, which is par for the course for the show that gave us the unholy and completely gripping episode of television called “Teddy Perkins.”
Beginning in April, Glover shared behind-the-scenes photos of the making of Season 3, including photos and videos of himself with Henry, Beetz, and Lakeith Stanfield. A real gem is one of Henry and Stanfield sitting in chairs between takes, where Henry remarks, “Donald, this is creepy.”
From the looks of it, Atlanta‘s third season will premiere in 2022. Get ready.
