When speaking to the L.A. Times about coming back to work on Season 3, Hiro Murai revealed why they decided to move the central cast over to Europe. He explained that it's down to the fact that Donald Glover and the writers "had a lot of stories to tell and things to unpack from being away from home, being on the road."
He went on to say that it naturally brings some comedy to the show: "There's something specifically very fish-outta-water about touring Europe, 'cause obviously all the cultural things, but you are also bringing American Black music to a different land, so the story naturally bent that way." It's clear the team wanted to take risks and approach the characters and their stories from a new angle, and a fresh setting is the perfect way to do that. "It was almost like a thought experiment: What does this feel like in this new setting with these different faces?"
Murai then described Season 3 as "a weird one-season spinoff," before noting that the team did something "very different" compared to the previous seasons. However, he also calls it a product of its time, because they made it during the COVID-19 pandemic. He recalled, "We were in a tight bubble because of the pandemic, and we felt a little bit disconnected from the world, and it was a little bit isolating."
Well, it clearly produced something pretty special — "Atlanta" Season 3 currently has a 100% critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
