TV Talk: Donald Glover on the return of ‘Atlanta’ and ending the series

Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week.

It’s been more than a minute since viewers got a new episode of FX’s “Atlanta” (10 p.m. Thursday). Actually, it’s been almost four years.

Viewers can blame at least two of those years on the pandemic.

“We wrote all of this in 2019,” series star/creator/executive producer Donald Glover said in a recent FX press conference during the Television Critics Association virtual winter press tour. “A lot of this stuff is going to seem like a parody of stuff that happened, but we actually prophesied most of this.”

The plan was to film the final two seasons of “Atlanta” back-to-back in 2020, with covid pushing the shoot dates to 2021. (Season four will air this fall.)

Two episodes air back-to-back this week with the first seemingly a nightmare Earn (Glover) has that was inspired by a horrific 2018 true-life crime. The second episode features the show’s regular characters – Earn, Paper Boi (Brian Tyree Henry), Darius (LaKeith Stanfield) and Van (Zazie Beetz) – in the midst of Paper Boi’s successful European tour, although this episode also has a shocking moment.

“Funny and scary touch very much,” Glover said. “We’ve always been into dream logic because dreams always feel like something bad can happen, even when nothing bad happens. … I’m not a horror fan really, but I like things that scare me or thrillers or stuff where you’re kind of creeped out or not sure where to place those feelings.”

“Atlanta” director Hiro Murai thinks of these elements more as ambiguity.

“I think that’s our lane,” he said. “It’s like a lot of interactions that hit you in a weird way and you don’t know how to take it. We lean into that a little bit more this season, probably just because it’s kind of a ‘fish out of water’ story. The cast is in Europe and there’s a literal language barrier.”

Writer Stefani Robinson said in many ways the characters go through what the show’s writers have gone through. Glover said if season two was the show’s season of distrust following the success of season one, then season three is “our maximalist season.

“It’s us being, like, ‘Yo, we are in control,’ but what does that mean?” Glover said. “Also, just leaving Atlanta, being, like, ‘Ok, the world is out there, and it’s not Atlanta.’ There are different rules different places and people go through different things.”

As for the decision to end the show with its fourth season, Glover said he almost ended the series after season two but ended up plotting a course that takes the series to a fourth season but no further.

“Death is, like, natural,” Glover said. “I feel like the story was always supposed to be what it was, and the story, it really was us. Everybody in that writers’ room, everybody on set, it really was what we were going through and what we talked about, and that’s the only way I like to make things. … I’ve done television now for almost two decades. So, I’m just, like, I like things ending.”