In the new teaser for the upcoming second season of American Gods, which premiered on Friday at New York Comic Con, one line seems to stand out among the rest.
“There are new gods growing in America and they want to destroy us,” a god shrouded in smoke and fire says. “If you think otherwise, you are fooling yourself.”
If that line sounds eerily similar to any number of not-so-pleasant things you may have seen in the news recently, that was very much an intentional effort by the show’s creators.
Neil Gaiman, the executive producer of American Gods and author of the 2001 novel upon which the show is based, told Deadline that the upcoming season of American Gods is “dark,” “brutal,” and “beautiful” — and suggested that it was meant to strike a familiar chord of discomfort in its viewers.
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“Season 2 goes even deeper, even more deeply, even more painfully into the heart of America right now, what it means to be American right now,” Gaiman said. “It gets to look back into the 1930s back at the rise of fascism briefly in America.”
According to The AV Club, this is likely a reference to a brief period in the 1930s in which fascist groups like the German American Bund and the Silver Legion of America gained prominence in America. It may also seem familiar, however, to anyone who watched President Donald Trump say there are “good people on both sides” in response to 2017’s neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, VA.
Not much else is revealed in the teaser, other than the knowledge that the old and new gods are very much at war and that the next season of American Gods probably won’t exactly be feel-good escapist fare. (Though, if you watched the first season of the series, there was no good reason to think it would be.) But it may offer up some comfort in the idea that living in America can be hard on anyone — even gods.
No official release date for American Gods’ second season has been announced, though it is set to come out at some point in 2019.