The best scene in American Gods takes place on a slave ship.
The second episode opens below deck, where Orlando Jones, playing the Ghanaian trickster god Anansi, tells the chained men in front of him exactly what America has planned for them. Then he tells them to burn the ship and die free. It’s the most underrated piece of acting in any fantasy show of the last decade, and it arrives roughly 90 minutes into a series most people gave up on by season two.
That speech is the whole argument for this show in miniature. Prime Video's 26-part adaptation could hold a mirror up to the country and write a blistering critique of what it saw. Then the behind-the-scenes chaos got in the way.
Old gods, new gods, one very tired ex-convict
American Gods runs three seasons and stages a war between the deities people brought with them to America and the ” new gods ” of technology now competing for worship. Anansi, the Norse god Odin and Jesus Christ share a continent with Media, Mr. World and Technical Boy. Into that mess walks Shadow Moon, a brokenhearted former convict whose arrival is set to change the balance.
The Matrix and Lucifer have almost nothing in common beyond a working knowledge of the internet. Lucifer made Biblical figures human through self-aware jokes; The Matrix made a horror story out of technology that stopped answering to anyone. American Gods took the best of both and never got the credit.
The casting is the reason to show up
Gaiman’s novel works because the characters feel physical. Mr. Wednesday and Mad Sweeney read like men you’d avoid in a parking lot, not like myths. Translating that to screen meant assembling character actors who could carry divine weight and bar-stool grubbiness in the same shot.
This is the only show where Gillian Anderson plays both Marilyn Monroe and David Bowie. Peter Stormare turns the Slavic death god Czernobog into a grumpy hammer-wielding slaughterhouse worker. Emily Browning makes a zombie sympathetic, which shouldn’t work and does. Add Ricky Whittle, Ian McShane, Omid Abtahi and Iwan Rheon, and you have one of the strongest ensembles fantasy TV has put together.
Jones, McShane, Anderson and Whittle were all nominated for awards for their work here.
What went wrong, in order
The cancellation isn’t just sad. It’s infuriating, because the damage was self-inflicted.
Bryan Fuller and Michael Green developed the first season, then left after rumored disagreements with Gaiman, who wrote both American Gods and Lucifer. Every season after that had a new showrunner. Anderson and Kristin Chenoweth reportedly walked because of the change, and continuity started coming apart.
Then came the departure of Jones, who was said to be told that his character, Mr. Nancy, ” sent the wrong message to Black America .” Given that racism sits at the center of the book and Mr. Nancy was a fan favorite, that landed badly. The third season closed on a major cliffhanger and got canceled. With Gaiman facing multiple accusations of sexual assault, it appears the show will never get a fourth season or a resolution.
The numbers track the decline exactly
Season one, in 2017, sits at 92% with critics and 84% with audiences. Season two, in 2019, drops to 61% and 63%. Season three, in 2021, recovers slightly to 74% from critics while audiences stay at 62%. The tonal shift shows up in the scores the way a fever shows up on a chart.
Five seasons were planned. Three got made. And the visuals stayed remarkable throughout, the first season is close to perfect, and the acting never once dropped off, even when the scripts around it did.
So watch it for the reason it was always worth watching: a man in chains on a ship, telling a room full of strangers the truth about where they’re going.
