After a four-year hiatus, season three of Atlanta returns with a question: What can’t water wash away?
Opening with a night-fishing scene in which two men, one white and one Black, discuss their unease on the water, episode one of the new season begins when a forgotten history rises to the surface. As the two men look out into the murky waters, the Black man suggests they call it a night. “Hey, man, I think it’s ’bout time we haul it up out of here,” he says. “Yeah, it might be,” the white man responds, agreeing to head out once he finishes his beer. As they sit, lacking urgency in their plans to leave, the Black man begins to share a traumatic childhood memory of nearly dying in the lake. “This place always gave me the heebie-jeebies, man,” he says. “I almost drowned in [the water] when I was, like, 8,” he explains, noting that he “felt like [he] was being pulled.” Unsurprised, the white man suggests that he was, in fact, being pulled.