After further investigation, FX has decided to renew Archer for three more seasons, but the animated spy comedy will be a little different than viewers are used to.
The network announced today that the series has been picked up through Season 10. However, this time around seasons will only last for eight episodes. Previously, the show had been made up of 13 episodes each year except Season 1 and Season 7. Those were both ten episodes each.
The renewal of Archer, which stars H. Jon Benjamin and Aisha Tyler, was far from certain considering the show had been lagging in the ratings. The most recent season saw average viewership drop to 781,000 viewers, a far cry from Season 4, when it averaged 1.38 million viewers.
Regardless of this dive, FX appears to remain excited about the show. “The move to Los Angeles this past season as private detectives was just the latest twist in Archer“s legendary exploits and the next three seasons will…be just as amazing and unpredictable,” Nick Grad, President, Original Programming for FX Networks said in a statement.
In addition to renewing Archer, FX signed Floyd County Productions, the company behind the series, to an overall deal. The network had previously worked with Floyd County on two other animated series – Unsupervised, which got sacked after 13 episodes and Chozen, which lasted 10 episodes.
One nugget that”s most interesting is that the network has basically confirmed that the Figgis Agency, and Sterling”s new world as a P.I., is around for a while to come. The network wrote in their release, “Archer is an animated, half-hour comedy that revolves around a former spy agency turned private investigation firm and the lives of its employees.”
So any hope we had of them returning to address broader geo-political crime, or perhaps taking on the real ISIS, are dashed. Sorry folks.