Shadow declares 'I am a God' in American Gods season 3 teaser

Thank heavens! The Gods have blessed us with the first teaser for American Gods season 3 — and you can watch it exclusively here on EW.

Ricky Whittle, Yetide Badaki, and the rest of the cast from Starz's adaptation of Neil Gaiman's novel unveiled the teaser at the end of their panel at New York Comic-Con, which was moderated by this writer. A recent Starz promo featured a few clips from the new season (namely, Ian McShane, who plays Mr. Wednesday, crowd surfing), but this teaser is our most substantial look at season 3 yet.

Picking up where season 2 left off, the new season finds Whittle's Shadow still grappling with learning that Wednesday — a.k.a. the Norse God, Odin — is his father, a discovery that significantly destroys their relationship. Shadow sets off on his own and settle down in a small Wisconsin town called Lakeside, which should ring a bell to fans of the book. Unfortunately, destiny still finds him there.

"It becomes a very relevant storyline in today's current climate where you have a stranger come into the town, an old kind of all-white traditional town, and you have this man of color come in and [there’s] an overwhelming surface positivity, but an underlying kind of darkness and suspicion. You kind of really feel that when you get into Lakeside, not everything is as it seems," said Whittle during the panel. "It's incredible that we get to tell such powerful stories and that's something that I've really been excited by in season 3 is the fact that we are telling truly powerful stories. We're seeing a really diverse cast [that's] possibly the most diverse of all three seasons, that has a lot of representation, which I feel is very important nowadays."

Discovering his true parentage also forces Shadow to wonder if he has powers. "I kind of liken it to, Clark Kent's just found out he's an alien and [wonders], can I fly? Can I see through things?" said Whittle. "We kind of have a little bit of fun where Shadow's trying to learn who he is."

It seems as though Shadow finds some clarity, because he makes quite a declaration at the end of the teaser. "You have no idea who I am. I am a God," Shadow says.

Lakeside isn't the season's only arc. Gaiman and new showrunner Charles H. Eglee developed brand new stories for the rest of the characters: Wednesday hires the brilliant Cordelia (new series regular Ashley Reyes) to handle all of his tech needs; Shadow's ex-wife Laura (Emily Browning) goes from "being dead to being even more dead," said Gaiman, and eventually embarks on an adventure with Salim (Omid Abtahi); and Badaki's Bilquis embarks on a journey into her past.

"It's something that we see with every single character along the way. There is this journey of self-discovery," said Badaki. "We see that with Shadow. We see that with Laura. We see it with Technical Boy [Bruce Langley], with Salim. We see it with Cordelia. I think it's been an interesting thing to see because we're going back to, I think Neil said it best — that American is this country that's trying to figure out who it is, what it is. As each of these characters go on these journeys finding themselves, they then start to see further how it all interconnects."

Overall, Gaiman is very happy with the trajectory of the season. "I think season 1 was terrific, but it felt a little bit like an anthology from time to time. It felt like, 'Okay, we've got this story, but we're going over here and we've got this story and we're going over there. Season 2 had its own quirks. Season 3 just feels like it's telling this fabulous story and it's all come together," said the author. "What I loved about it was sitting, starting to watch episode 1 [of season 3] and being drawn in and getting to the end and not believing that 50-something minutes had just passed, and just wanting to find out what happened next. Feeling that about American Gods was a wonderful thing to feel."

Watch the teaser above.

American Gods will return to Starz in early 2021.

(Video provided by Starz)

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