Not only will FX’s Archer “unreboot†next season, but according to creator Adam Reed, the series will also drop spy organization name ISIS – short for International Secret Intelligence Service – from the show going forward. Speaking to The Daily Beast, Reed and executive producer Matt Thompson explained why they decided to “quietly†erase ISIS from the Archer universe rather than address it on the show:
“We were waiting for it to go away—at least I was. Back in Season 5, FX said, ‘This might be a thing,’ and I thought, ‘Maybe it won’t be? Maybe it’ll be the mole that I’m gonna ignore and nothing will happen.’ We got sort of lucky and could organically make a merger with the CIA, so we went back and retroactively painted out the ISIS logos in parts of the show, and we just don’t talk about it in dialogue.â€â€œIt’s just the most awful thing, and we didn’t want to have anything to do with it.â€
Thompson addressed some fans’ suggestions to actually tackle the real-life ISIS on Archer: “That’s the way South Park would do it, coming after them and saying ‘These assholes stole our name,’ but that’s not the way the Archer universe works … In our universe, they don’t exist.†In any case, FX now has a pile of ISIS-themed Archer merchandise and nothing to do with it: “I was at a meeting with the FX execs and I said, ‘You know, with all this extra ISIS merchandise, you should just make the bad guys buy it,’†Reed said. “Dead silence. And then they said, ‘We have a lot of ISIS merchandise.’ So I guess that’s all going to a landfill somewhere.â€