Atlanta season 3 cast: Who is returning or new to the series?

Season 3 of FX’s hit series Atlanta premiered last week after nearly a 4-year hiatus. With the long-anticipated wait came a lot of speculation from fans about what the new season could look like, including the potential of seeing some new faces.

Leading up to the season, showrunner and lead star Donald Glover has kept most news about Season 3 under wraps with the exception of announcing in April 2019 that both Seasons 3 and 4 would be filming back-to-back.

Unfortunately due to the pandemic, production in 2020 was halted and that led to the Season 3 release date being delayed until this March. There were some rumblings of new cast members set to be joining the show but viewers never got any formal announcements leading up to the premiere.

Atlanta season 3 cast

The third season of Atlanta has only confirmed to return main leads Donald Glover, Brian Tyree Henry, Zazie Beetz, and LaKeith Stanfield.

Back in 2018 when promoting Season 2, Stephen Glover — one of the writers on the show and brother to Donald Glover, revealed that the third season would feature “female-centric stories.”

When speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Stephen Glover elaborated on this comment by saying the following:

"“I think we have some cool ideas in season three that’ll put some more women on screen. There’s a very specific perspective from the Atlanta woman that I think we’re gonna explore in season three.”"

The statement led fans to believe there could possibly be some big-name female actors added to the cast for the future though as of now Beetz remains the only main female lead billed for Season 3.

When the Season 2 finale left off, Earn (Glover), Paper Boi (Henry), and Darius (Stanfield) were on their way to Europe for Paper Boi’s tour along with fellow rapper Clark County (RJ Walker).

In an effort to avoid being detected by airport security, Earn planted the gun in Clark’s bag in order to protect Paper Boi. Clark caught wind of what was going on and planted the same weapon in his manager Lucas’ (Matthew Barnes) bag in order to avoid any legal trouble for himself.

We could expect to see Walker reprise his role as Clark at some point down the line of the season to see how the dynamic between the characters now gets addressed following the fiasco at the airport.

Ryan Gosling almost appeared in Season 3

This past week, People Magazine reported that Donald Glover expressed interest in having Ryan Gosling appear in the season.

Glover had noted that Gosling was a huge fan of the show and even went as far as to have a phone call with him to discuss a potential role. Ultimately, talks broke down to due Gosling’s scheduling conflicts, so fans will be left having to theorize what the role could have looked like.

It would have been super cool to see the two-time Oscar nominee appear in this series and we’re sure he would have nailed whatever role the creative mind of Donald Glover had in store for him.

New episodes of Atlanta drop every Thursday on FX. Who do you think could pop up in Season 3? Let us know in the comments below!