The eighth season of the animated television series ''

Archer Archery is the sport, practice, or skill of using a bow to shoot arrows.Paterson ''Encyclopaedia of Archery'' p. 17 The word comes from the Latin ''arcus'', meaning bow. Historically, archery has been used for hunting and combat. In mo ...

'', subtitled ''Dreamland'', began airing on April 5, 2017, and consisted of eight episodes. This season is also the first to air on

FXX FXX is an American basic cable channel owned by the Walt Disney Television unit of The Walt Disney Company through FX Networks, LLC. It is the partner channel of FX, with its programming focusing on original and acquired comedy series and fea ...

since the series was moved from FX.

Production

FX renewed ''Archer'' for three more seasons with each season consisting of a total of eight episodes. On January 12, 2017, it was announced that the series would relocate to FX's sister channel FXX, beginning with Season 8 onwards. This season resolves the cliffhanger from last season, which ended with Archer floating lifeless in a swimming pool after being shot several times. It is revealed that Archer survived but has been in a coma for three months, trapped in a 1947 noir-esque Los Angeles setting called Dreamland. It also reveals the fate of Woodhouse (whose original voice actor

George Coe George Coe (born George Julian Cohen; May 10, 1929 – July 18, 2015) was an American actor. He was a cast member for the first season of ''Saturday Night Live'' and voiced the character of Woodhouse in ''Archer''. Early life Coe was born in ...

died in 2015), the heroin-addicted valet of Archer dying shortly before the season premiere. This season is notable for portraying

Sterling Archer Sterling Malory Archer (codenamed Duchess after his mother's dog) is the fictional titular character on the American adult animated sitcom ''Archer'', which aired on the basic cable network FX from 2009 to 2019 and is currently broadcast on sist ...

in a more sympathetic light than all previous seasons, i.e. far less narcissistic and irritable. After the success of the hidden scavenger hunts in Seasons 6 and 7, animator Mark Paterson devised an

augmented reality Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience that combines the real world and computer-generated content. The content can span multiple sensory modalities, including visual, auditory, haptic, somatosensory and olfactory. AR can be de ...

mobile phone app A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a phone, tablet, or watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop applications which are designed to run on d ...

called ''Archer, PI'' to run side-by-side with the show. It featured 8 interactive cases, one for each episode, that could only be accessed by viewing the episode through the phone's camera, "something that had never been attempted in the history of television" according to the creator. The app won two Clio Awards in 2017 and was a finalist for a number of awards in 2018. The episode "Auflösung" is dedicated to

, who was the voice of Woodhouse in the earlier three seasons of the show and died on July 18, 2015 before the episode aired.

Episodes

Critical response

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

the season has an approval rating of 86% based on 14 reviews, with an average rating of 7.5/10. On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

the season has a score of 72 out of 100, based on 8 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

References

External links

* * {{Archer 2017 American television seasons Archer (2009 TV series) seasons Fiction set in 1947 Neo-noir television series