Archer New York Comic Con 2016 Panel Recap

Notes about the beginning of the end for Archer.

The main cast of Archer (minus Adam Reed) as well as producer Casey Willis stopped by the Hammerstein Ballroom to preview Season 8 for an overflowing, boisterous New York Comic Con crowd. It was one of the most exciting panels of the weekend, and the details that were revealed justified why fans continue to be excited for FX’s animated spy series as it gets closer and closer to a decade on the air.

The biggest announcement is that Archer’s reboot trend will continue, and this will be the reboot-iest reboot yet. Season 8 will take place in 1948, and the plot will cover the investigation of the murder of Woodhouse. This will establish a new continuity, in which all the characters will be the same, but different. Although, considering Archer’s anachronistic bent, one wonders if this will somehow fit into the already-established timeline.

A few other major Season 8 details emerged. Ray will be a trumpet player in Lana’s band. “Poovey” will be notably androgynous. There will not be Cheryl, nor will be there will be Carol, but instead there will be “Charlotte van der Tunt,” heiress to a publishing fortune. And keep an eye out for appearances from Barry, Len Trexler, and Babou!

The mystery of the Floyd County woman was also finally solved … sort of. It turns out that the strung-out woman in the production company still is from a stock photo website, though how she came to be in a stock photo in the first place remains unsolved.

In addition to the show news, the cast also revealed some personal details. Aisha Tyler presented a photo of a teenage, bespectacled version of herself, underscoring her nerd bona fides by noting her many solitary hours at that age spent gaming or going to the library. During a discussion on crappy jobs, Amber Nash confessed her former gig as a wrestler at a strip club. And H. Jon Benjamin insisted that he was apparently not invited to the ceremony for the show’s recent Emmy win.

As for the audience, there was plenty of impressive cosplay, and Tyler was especially happy to finally see some “ethnically correct” Lana’s. Her phrasing prompted Benjamin to speculate that Hitler concluded Mein Kamp with the sentence, “I wish we were all ethnically correct.”