FX
When I first came across Archer—FX’s animated series about suave spy Sterling Archer (H. Jon Benjamin) and his team of, let’s say, equally colorful agency cohorts—it began as all great love stories do: with a happy accident. Late one night well over a decade ago, on the precipice of graduating high school, I was doing a little thing that nobody does anymore called channel surfing. I happened to stumble across a marathon of Archer reruns, and the show’s strange animation style, boundary-pushing jokes, and obscenely vulgar characters were the perfect thing to keep me up well past the witching hour.
I can no longer stay up that late without wanting to kneel before God and repent the next morning, and much like my fondness for being a night owl, my affection for Archer waned somewhat over the years. The show stumbled through the later seasons while trying to keep itself fresh, as all long-running animated series do at some point. (Though, credit where it’s due, the more high-concept, fantastical seasons that take place inside Archer’s comatose mind were far more creative than, say, a musical episode.) Though the series had its extended convoluted stint, Archer always remained a fascinating look at how far ribaldry can take a television show.
Now, having pushed just about every button it can—and after losing the driving wit of the brilliant Jessica Walter, who voiced Archer’s cantankerous mother and agency head, Malory, in 2021—Archer is finally closing up shop. The series’ fourteenth season, which will air on FXX Aug. 30 and stream on Hulu the following day, will be its last. But now that the show has shed the need to keep itself afloat for god knows how long into the future, Archer has returned to the original form that viewers fell in love with from the jump. The series’ final season is leaner, deliciously meaner, and more consistently outrageous than it has been in years, making Archer’s last missions the perfect cap on a truly rare television gem.