Thank goodness because FX’s Atlanta is finally on the brink of returning after a four-year hiatus. That means that we’ll soon see Donald Glover’s brainchild bring its unique brand of surreal back to the small screen. The fourth season’s trailer gets intense, given that the core four — Earn (Donald Glover), Darius (LaKeith Stanfield), and Van (Zazie Beetz) — are maneuvering through unfriendly surroundings during a European tour. This has included some real-life mirroring with the cast experiencing racial profiling while abroad, although that’s something that they took in stride.
Hopefully, we’ll see Nutella sandwich man appear out of the blue, but the question on a lot of people’s minds is this: Why did the show have such a long break after Season 2 debuted on March 1, 2018?
It’s easy to chalk much of the delay up to the pandemic, and yep, that’s definitely something that slowed down production for nearly every show out there, but one must recall that we were still waiting on Season 3 arrival news back in January 2020. That’s when FX chief John Landgraf revealed that we’d see two more seasons of the show, and at the time, the plan was for 18 episodes to arrive with Season 3.
As for why it took nearly two years for that update, well, one can only chalk that up to Donald Glover being so in-demand, given his Star Wars detour and, of course, his musical career. Likewise, Lakeith Stanfield, Zazie Beetz, and Brian Tyree Henry have all been keeping quite busy as well, and it’s just damn hard to get in-demand stars in one place for an extended period of time. Yet they did it, and soon enough, we’ll reap those benefits.
Atlanta returns on March 24. Whew!
