‘Atlanta’ Series Finale Spoiler Review – “It Was All A Dream”

The time has come for Donald Glover’s hit FX surreal comedy-drama television series, Atlanta, to end, and it has indeed been a long time coming. Of course, the series creator and his cast and crew do not fail to provide us with an on-point way to conclude things for its world.

The series finale is titled, “It Was All a Dream”. It is written by Glover and directed by executive producer Hiro Murai.

In this review, I will be discussing Atlanta Season 4 Episode 10. There will be spoilers here, as the title of this article suggests. Nonetheless, please read ahead at your own discretion.

Plot Synopsis

According to FX Networks, here is the logline for Atlanta Season 4 Episode 10—“It Was All a Dream”.

You know what? As much as I hated this show, I think I’m gonna miss it.

FX Networks Press Room

Discussion

“It Was All a Dream” is hit-or-miss with fans of Atlanta, and as a fan, the episode possesses an appreciative ability to wrap things up properly. The details of the plot itself play out to be Glover’s emulation of how The Sopranos ended but with the most vexing cliché twist ever. With the way David Chase’s hit HBO crime drama series ended, we see adults walk into a diner as the titular family waits for one of their family members to arrive. The scene cuts to black, and we never know what happens, whether or not the protagonist will be killed in a shootout. Chris Rock and Ali LeRoi’s mid-to-late CBS 2000s sitcom series, Everybody Hates Chris, also ends in a similar fashion.

For Atlanta to follow this trend with the “dreamlike” element in mind is an interesting take on the cliché. Not every television or film needs to do this, but the series’ surreal angle works well. Most narratives that pull the “it was all a dream” twist almost always doesn’t work and is only just for show, but with Atlanta, there is a meaning and a purpose.

Rick and Morty made it a habit of playing around with the real-or-not-real trope. We’ve seen this in Season 2’s Roy arcade game in “Mortynight Run”, the false memory parasites in “Total Rickall”, or in Season 3 with “Morty’s Mind Blowers”.

Surrealism (n)

[A] 20th-century avant-garde movement in art and literature [that] sought to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind, for example by the irrational juxtaposition of images

Oxford Dictionary

[T]he principles, ideals, or practice of producing fantastic or incongruous imagery or effects in art, literature, film, or theater by means of unnatural or irrational juxtapositions and combinations

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

In its six-year and four-season run, Donald Glover’s Atlanta has lived up to its surreal promise that it is “Twin Peaks with rappers”. The creator also claimed that the show’s latter two seasons are on the same level as The Sopranos. Boy, does it live up to both statements!

The finale follows Darius Epps (LaKeith Stanfield) in one subplot as he spends part of his day at a sensory deprivation tank appointment. He explains to his friends, Earnest “Earn” Marks (Donald Glover) and Alfred “Paper Boi/ Al” Miles (Brian Tyree Henry), how it works: “It’s just you, alone with your thoughts, floating in water. It’s like being in the womb again—[it] replenishes your mind and soul” (1:43-1:52). From here, we can tell that the episode takes a journey through the metaphysical realm. That is, assuming the entire series itself isn’t the journey from the pilot to the finale.

The second subplot of the episode follows Marks, Miles, and Marks’s partner Vanessa “Van” Keefer (Zazie Beetz) at a Black-owned sushi fusion restaurant out of support for members of their community. It all seems pretty grounded, except for perhaps a creepy villainous laugh from the establishment’s owner, Demarcus (Calvin Dutton).

Black Culture and Fashion

What Atlanta tackles so well with every episode that releases is its love for culture and fashion. Hasbourne created sweet outfits for the series’ protagonists. This includes Epps’s “Art That Kills” t-shirt, Miles’s “Old McAlfred” look, or Keefer’s beige crop top and zebra-colored pants. They’re nothing too fancy, as the show is not quite aiming to go out with a bang.

In terms of the music choices, Malone, Udeorji, and Pilzer dump so much into this final episode. Although, I’m not one to complain. The team calls upon Georgia natives Ghetto Mafia and Gunna as well as Kami, The East Flatbush Projekt, Marvin Gaye, and Funkadelic to fit the soundtrack, and I quite like how it begins and ends the narrative of the finale.

The restaurant subplot does add a good layer of support for the Black community to it which is a must. Not only is Epps offered a bowl of Joloff rice by his brother (Kevin Iso), but we see our beloved characters having to choose between local-made cuisine or a capitalist chain’s chicken sandwiches.

As someone who is Filipino surrounded by other people of Philippine descent who either accept or deny their roots, I understand this struggle for support via nationalism. On one hand, there is an engagement with who you are and where you come from, but then you have characters like Marks in Season 1’s “Juneteeth” episode who doesn’t know where his roots in Africa are. In our modern-day world, we are witnessing and/or experiencing the Americanizing/ Westernization of old cultures evolving in an uncanny manner. Glover calls this the “Atlanta” state of mind.

How to Say “Goodbye”

Stanfield’s character is used by the writers to convey a lovely farewell. Bringing in Cree Summer of Rugrats and Codename: Kids Next Door fame is a wise and merit-worthy move. Epps and the guest character have a sweet conversation at a pharmacy together. In the end, the former says that Cree has “a beautiful spirit” and thanks her for sharing time together. It’s worth noting that Rugrats is a children’s animated television series that has gotten some surreal conspiracy theories over the years, one of the most popular theories being that the “rugrats” of the show were all made up in an older child’s mind. The inclusion of Summer, then, only adds to the mystery of whether or not Atlanta is, in fact, a dream.

The character also runs into an old friend of his, London (Naté Jones). They try to bid each other a “nice to see you”, but she offers him a ride to his “dep date” appointment. It’s a hilarious scene about crossing paths by chance and just enjoying the journey no matter how brief or how long it might have taken.

Epps also meets his brother — or we are led to believe — who offers food. The character insists he won’t be staying long as he has plans with friends, but then also opts to stay for a little while longer. Chi responds by saying, “I don’t want you in here. I want you out there [the world]. Have fun. Go see your people” (21:05-21:11). Like the line directed at Summer’s character, Chi’s line here is written as not only directed at a particular character but the audience and fans as well. You don’t have to be in Atlanta. It is totally okay to leave. As Marks said in the penultimate episode, “Atlanta’s not going anywhere.”

Atlanta as a Machine

Interestingly enough, if we can go back to the pharmacy store scene, Summer has a 25-second monologue that speaks so well about how to define our current state of living.

I think I was trying for a long time to look at this world like a battle, and in some ways it is, but I’m a part of this world too, this big thing, and I’m allowed to dance in it how I want to. As a matter of fact, I demand that I do.

Cree Summer in ‘Atlanta’ Season 4 Episode 10, “It Was All a Dream” (7:20-7:45)

As we have learned throughout the course of the series, Atlanta is not a place but rather a state of mind. Atlanta is just a synecdoche for America, which is itself a state of living. America, in the case of Donald Glover’s Grammy-winning 2018 song, “This Is America”, is but an idea. Therefore, we can say that the finale’s title deals with this concept of “the American Dream”, whatever that may be. We are just cogs in a much larger megamachine that work to keep the mechanisms moving. In the case of the Popeye’s/ sushi subplot, it is capitalism.

The Crew of Atlanta 

Donald Glover is the creator of Atlanta.

Glover, Paul Simms, Dianne McGunigle, Stephen Glover, Hiro Murai, and Stefani Robinson serve as the executive producers of the series. Janine Nabers serves as the co-executive producer, while Kathryn Dean and Kaitlin Waldron serve as the producers. Ibra Ake, Taofik Kolade, Jamal Olori, and Francesca Sloane serve as the supervising producers. Jordan Temple, David Swinburne, and Christian Sprenger serve as co-producers.

Alexa L. Fogel serves as the casting director. Tara Feldstein Bennett and Chase Paris serve as the Atlanta casting directors. Kathryn Zamora-Benson is the casting associate.

Christian Sprenger serves as the director of photography. Isaac Hagy and Kyle Reiter serve as the editors for the Atlanta series finale. Jen Bryson and Cameron Ross serve as the assistant editors. Eric Binmoeller works on visual effects, while Ashley Sengstaken serves as the visual effects coordinator.

Jen Malone and Fam Udeorji return as the music supervisors, with Whitney A. Pilzer as the associate music supervisor.

Timothy O’Brien serves as the production designer, while Taylor Mosbey serves as the art director. Tiffany Hasbourne serves as the costume designer. Liz Ayala is the set decorator. Denise Tunnell is the head of the make-up department, while Shunika Terry is the head of the hair department.

The Cast of Atlanta

Donald Glover, Brian Tyree Henry, LaKeith Stanfield, and Zazie Beetz portray the main characters, Earnest “Earn” Marks, Alfred “Al”/ “Paper Boi” Miles, Darius Epps, and Vanessa “Van” Keefer, respectively.

Calvin Dutton guest stars as Demarcus. Cree Summer guest stars as a woman named Cree. Kevin Iso plays Chi, Darius’s brother.

Deshon Green co-stars as the hostess of deMarcus’ sushi restaurant. Nick Kayea portrays a waiter, while Damian White plays Chef Kenny.

Naté Jones plays London, a friend of Darius’s. Darrell Snedeger plays a police officer.

Daniel Chung plays an assistant, while Amy Fox and Wanda Morganstern play two white women. Mona Amein plays a pharmacist.

Performances and Character Developments

The rocky dynamic that Glover and Beetz’s characters have had throughout the four seasons of Atlanta seemed to resolve nicely in Episode 407, “Snipe Hunt”. To see Marks and Keefer in this finale is more of an epilogue for their story, if anything, with Marks kissing his partner once he enters the restaurant. Still, my favorite performance comes from Henry’s character, Miles, and his chemistry with every other character on-screen.

The group has a hilarious reaction to Epps claiming, by the end of the episode, that he is still in the tank — seemingly having succumbed to its effects. However, in my opinion, the better scene for Henry has got to be his interaction with Dutton’s Demarcus. There is something in the way the restaurant owner forces Miles to eat poison blowfish that reminds me of Marks’s peanut butter and jelly sandwich offer from a stranger (Emmett Hunter III) in the series pilot. It’s a subtle work of the spiral that further points to the suggestion that perhaps this could all be a dream.

I have to laud Stanfield for his soft-spoken and composed mannerisms in the role of Darius Epps. We do not get much of a backstory from him aside from the fact that he is from Nigeria, his testicles were crushed when he was younger, and now, he happens to have a living sibling. There is a uniqueness to Epps that I find relieving, and it’s only in some stressful scenes that we see him break. His scenes in the tank are hilarious, and we never do know what exactly the final scene is meant to indicate.

Final Thoughts on the Atlanta Series Finale

For a 35-minute narrative, “It Was All a Dream” has enough detail in it for me to fill up over two pages of notes. It consists of surreal elements that may or may not be familiar. Of course, it depends on how deep you are into the show. Going in on a second watch, I knew what to anticipate, so it did get underwhelming. If you are looking to see this episode (or again), I would suggest giving some time to breathe or to rewatch the entire series again. The scene at the end with Epps punching Demarcus square in the jaw is one of the episode’s last opportunities to blend comedy with drama, and for me, it succeeds.

Judge Judy airs late in the afternoon, so for Epps to rescue his friends from Demarcus around 3 o’clock hints that maybe he is still in the tank. He also shares a joint of marijuana with London, which he rarely smokes before his weekly appointments. Perhaps there have been signs that his experience in the tank has been tampered with and that he has never gotten out of surreality.

Overall Thoughts on Atlanta

Donald Glover’s Atlanta is a comedy-drama series that I have tuned in for since its pilot, “The Big Bang”, which aired in early September 2016. Since then, I got to witness the history of the show in real-time. It dealt with death quite often, and the COVID-19 pandemic affected the production of its latter two seasons. In between hiatuses, I got to see its main stars work on various projects outside of the show. I invested my leisure time into this show after watching Glover in NBC’s Community and having been introduced to him in November 2011 through his hit song, “Heartbeat”, from his Sophomore studio album, “Camp”.

I was a Sophomore in undergraduate college when Atlanta premiered and now I end it in my final semesters of graduate university. In the later parts of the show’s time on television, I collected a notebook full of notes on how the series ties in with Glover’s beliefs about social media and technology, which I plan to analyze in my Master’s thesis.

As both a critic and a fan, I am proud of how far the show has come and how committed it is to telling a complex story about four Black people just living their lives, and for that, I have to thank the Glover brothers, Murai, the actors, and the crew of the show for giving their all. I am both relieved and sad to see it end, but like all good things, they do not go away forever.

Donald Glover’s Atlanta Season 4 is now airing on FX and is streaming via Hulu!

Have you seen Glover’s series? If so, then what are your thoughts on it so far? Let us know! For more comedy and drama-related news and reviews visit and follow The Cinema Spot on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram!