‘Archer’ Kills ‘ISIS’ Off The Show
Archer, FX’s popular animated spy series, is giving the boot to “ISIS” because of recent events involving the militant group which calls itself the Islamic State, or ISIS.
According to The Daily Beast, Archer has survived five seasons using the acronym ISIS for its International Secret Intelligence Service, a secret and unapproved spy agency in which mostly everything in the show is based upon.
As more people became aware of the terrorist group ISIS, concerns that Archer’s acronym could become offensive and somehow related to the terror group. Creator Adam Reed told The Daily Beast he originally hoped the problem would just go away on its own, but in the end the acronym had to go.
“We quietly did. 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.”
Reed and executive producers Matt Thompson and Casey Willis decided the change would happen in the premiere episode of the sixth season of Archer. While character Malory Archer, voiced by Jessica Walter, is speaking on the phone, the circular blue ISIS acronym is being rolled out by two movers in the background.
There was a different version of the episode of Archer in which ISIS was not effectively killed off from the show. That episode was aired in July at San Diego Comic-Con, since the decision to get rid of the ISIS acronym came later. Archer creators added the movers in the background taking the sign away, and Walters recorded a new dialogue for Malory Archer for the new episode. She explains over the phone to her son the agency will now be overseen by the CIA.
Executive producer Thomson was firm in the decision to remove the acronym from Archer.
“We won’t say ISIS anymore, and the only visual representation of it will be that sign rolling off the show. It’s just the most awful thing, and we didn’t want to have anything to do with it.”
Although ISIS will no longer be a part of Archer in the future, it will remain in the earlier episodes. FX now has more ISIS merchandise related to Archer than it knows what to do with, according to The Daily Beast. The ultimate plan is to just let a landfill have it all, but some people chose to keep their merchandise and not associate it with the terror group.
“I’m one of the few people that has the white ISIS cup and it’s mixed in with all my other cups,” Walter told The Daily Beast. “The other day, I was looking at it and thought, ‘Should I throw it out? But it reminds me of Archer.'”
[Image via FX]
