“Sopranos only ones who can touch us,” wrote Donald Glover, creator and star of Atlanta, in a now deleted tweet from November 6, 2021. The last two seasons will be “some of the best television ever made,” according to Glover. Bold claim, but he could be telling the truth.
It has been four years since Brian Tyree Henry, LaKeith Stanfield, Zazie Beetz and Glover shared the screen for Atlanta’s second season, and two more since the first. After the long wait, Atlanta is finally returning for a third season on March 25, with season four set to release later this year, which Glover recently announced will be the last season of the show.
After a long break, it can be hard to remember what’s going on when a new season appears out of the blue. Here’s a little field guide of what has happened in Atlanta thus far, and where the last two seasons might be headed.
While working at the airport, Earn Marks (Donald Glover) discovers his cousin Al (Brian Tyree Henry) aka Paper Boi is an up-and-coming rapper in Atlanta. The Princeton dropout, who sees an opportunity to escape his commission-based job, wins over the trust of Al and his roommate, Darius (LaKeith Stanfield), by getting Paper Boi’s music on the radio. While celebrating Al gets into a confrontation leading to the three getting arrested in connection to a shooting.
Van (Zazie Beetz), a school teacher and the mother of Earn’s kid, pays bail and picks him up, starting a feud between the two, and one of the few serialized plot points throughout the first season. Although the episodes are each fantastic on their own, the lack of serialization can alienate new viewers. The season ends with Al telling Earn he did a good job, and giving him a roll of money, which he then hands over to Van, who recently lost her teaching job for admitting to smoking weed on the day of a drug test.
Season two, nicknamed “robbin season”, follows the four in the leadup to the holiday season, when crime supposedly skyrockets in Atlanta. One of the more serialized storylines is Earn and Van’s blossoming relationship, which starts out well but ends at a Dutch festival when Van realizes she puts in much more effort than Earn. But the largest storyline is a conflict between Al and Earn, who has trouble managing Paper Boi’s meteoric rise.
Throughout the season the two are constantly butting heads, which is compounded when Paper Boi is invited to open for fellow rapper Clark County (RJ Walker) on a European tour. This offer is followed by an episode depicting Paper Boi performing a college show, which quickly goes south, and leads Al to look for a new manager. With Earn’s relationship dead in the water, and job on the line, the season ends with him slipping a gun into Clark County’s bag at the airport, hoping to make Paper Boi the tour headliner. Al notices, and as they shuffle onto the plane, tells Earn that’s exactly what he needs in a manager.
From what the trailers for season three have shown, the entire season will take place on the European tour, with the fourth and final season presumably taking place where the show began: Atlanta. Hopefully it’ll be “some of the best television ever made.”