'Atlanta' Cast Explains How the Unsettling Premiere Sets Tone for Season 3 (Exclusive)

etonline.com:

is back – and in a big way. The acclaimed series starring Donald Glover, Brian Tyree Henry, LaKeith Stanfield and Zazie Beetz picks up with the group amid a tour of Europe.

Despite the fan support for Paper Boi (Henry), the four friends find themselves navigating – and struggling to adjust – to their new surroundings and the unwanted attention that comes with growing success. “You’re in for a ride,” director Hiro Murai tells ET’s Nischelle Turner. “There’s a lot of coming your way, and we are going to take you places.” “We can’t come back doing what you expect.

I mean, after you all yelled at us for four years, we got to give y’all something to wait for,” Henry quips.However, before fans can follow their many unexpected and unsettling adventures through Europe, season 3 opens with a waking nightmare inspired by the real-life Hart family massacre, which Murai describes as a tone-setter for the remaining nine episodes. [: Spoilers for the first two episodes, “Three Slaps” and “Sinterklaas Is Coming to Town,” of season 3.]After opening with a white man explaining the concept of whiteness, the episode then follows Loquareeous (Christopher Farrar) who unexpectedly gets separated from his family by child services and placed in a foster home with a white lesbian couple, Gayle (Jamie Neumann) and Amber (Laura Dreyfuss), who are also caring for three other, young Black children.

It’s not long before Loquareeous, renamed Larry by his new mothers, realizes that he’s in an abusive and neglectful household and is determined to get out.