Archer officially drops Isis

Minor spoilers below

The creators of Archer have confirmed that any future references to the fictional spy agency in the show, Isis, have been dropped due to the emergence of the jihadist group of the same name in Iraq and Syria.

In a re-edited version of the season six premiere, due to be shown in January, workmen are seen wheeling the International Secret Intelligence Service sign out of the office of Mallory Archer, mother to the titular, booze-soaked spy.

"We were waiting for it to go away - at least I was. Back in season five, FX said, 'This might be a thing,' and I thought, 'Maybe it won't be? Maybe it'll be the mole that I'm gonna ignore and nothing will happen,' creator Adam Reed told the Daily Beast.

"We got sort of lucky and could organically make a merger with the CIA, so we went back and retroactively painted out the Isis logos in parts of the show, and we just don't talk about it in dialogue."

Executive producer Matt Thompson said re-recorded dialogue would explain the CIA had taken over running of the spy agency, and Isis would never be mentioned again.

"It's just the most awful thing, and we didn't want to have anything to do with it. There were people online saying that we should address it and say, 'Oh, I can't believe these guys have co-opted our name.' That's the way South Park would do it, coming after them and saying, 'These assholes stole our name,' but that's not the way the Archer universe works, where it's all our own creations. In our universe, they don't exist," he explained.

Reed admitted that there was now a lot of Archer merchandise destined for the landfill.

I was at a meeting with the FX execs and I said, 'You know, with all this extra Isis merchandise, you should just make the bad guys buy it.' Dead silence.

• Adam Reed

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