American Gods season 3 is “much smaller and more personal”

Neil Gaiman admits that the second season of American Gods was a bit of a let-down, but promises that season 3 is “fantastic.”

Starz’s American Gods has never lacked for ambition. An adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s 2001 novel, the show tells the story of a battle between the world’s old gods — Odin, Anubis, that whole crowd — and new gods that have sprang up as the world has entered a new age, people like Mr. World (Crispin Glover) and the Technical Boy (Bruce Langley), with demi-god Shadow Moon (Ricky Whittle) caught in the middle.

It’s a heady idea, and the show itself is visually lush. But it’s taken its lumps, particularly after a messy second season plagued by behind-the-scenes drama. Now, with showrunner Charles Eglee in control for season 3, Gaiman promises that the series will break new ground.

“One of the really important things for us in Season 3 was for the whole thing to feel integrated,” Gaiman told CBR. “All of the story that we had in Season 1 and Season 2, where was it going? How do we get to this point? So Shadow now, getting Shadow particularly to step up and be our lead, be are hero.”

"And Ricky’s, you know Ricky, if you’re going to talk to Ricky, you will find — or if you’ve ever talked to Ricky, you will find — he is one of the sweetest, funniest, most charming human beings on this planet, and Shadow as a character is a lot more sort of taciturn and a lot less charming than Ricky. So, allowing the version of Ricky in Lakeside as he’s adopting a new identity to become just more vulnerable, funny, charming, more Ricky was an absolute delight."

Shadow will spend much of season 3 in Lakeside, an icy Wisconsin town that, in true American Gods fashion, holds some weird secrets. Gaiman has been looking forward to shooting this section for a long time and was psyched to finally bring it to life. The town

But like I said, American Gods is a visually opulent show, so it will take more than just a good small town set to make it work. When your story is about gods, you’re going to need some impressive special effects. “[W]e’re starting to deploy CGI as its own art form,” Gaiman said. “One of the things that American Gods has always been is beautiful. Even, you know, in the second season — which might not have been as strong on story as Season 1, let alone Season 3, which is fantastic — it was always beautiful, but making sure that the beauty carried the story was huge for me in the same way that one of the things we wound up doing… Season 1 was fantastic, but it wound up feeling a little bit episodic, almost like an anthology show. Here, they go to another town, and they meet another god, and another thing happens.”

Overall, you can tell that Gaiman is coming back to American Gods recharged and ready to do right by it, promising Radio Times that the new season is “much smaller and more personal than the previous seasons, which have tended to be huge and bombastic”.

"If you watch episode one [of this season], you’re going to watch the whole thing. You’re sat on the rollercoaster in a way that I don’t think either of the previous two seasons managed."

You can be the judge of that when American Gods season 3 premieres this Sunday, January 10.

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