No longer content with a mere “zone” of danger, Archer is diving straight for a whole island of the stuff, with FXX announcing today that the animated show’s upcoming ninth season—which will see a still coma-bound Sterling Archer dreaming his way through a brand new tropical island setting—will arrive on the network on April 25.
For those not fully up-to-date on their Archer lore, H. Jon Benjamin’s phrasing-obsessed superspy got shot at the end of the show’s seventh season, and spent the last year sleeping through a series of throwback P.I. adventures that re-imagined his semi-friends and family members as familiar noir tropes. Now, Archer’s subconscious is heading from Dreamland to Danger Island, as he switches to the role of a hard-drinking pilot, still surrounded by familiar faces (Amber Nash’s Pam as his trusty co-pilot, Lana as a revolutionary island princess, Cyril as an obvious German spy.) The weirdest shift might be to Lucky Yates’ Krieger; instead of a Teutonic super scientist, he’ll apparently be playing an “audacious scarlet macaw” named Crackers. The whole thing will take place on the South Pacific island of Mitimotu—full of “quicksand, cannibals, super-intelligent monkeys, poison darts, pirates,” and yet more quicksand—on the cusp of World War II.
Dreamland was Archer’s weirdest season by a pretty comfortable margin, remixing familiar relationships and characters in ways that only sometimes yielded strong results. We’ll have to wait until April 25 to see if Danger Island can bring the full package this time.
Correction: An earlier version of this story stated that the season would premiere on March 20, the date of the DVD release for Archer: Dreamland, and not the correct date of April 25. We regret the error.