REVIEW: ‘Mythic Quest’ Continues To Be The Best Workplace Comedy With Season 3

Mythic Quest is easily the best workplace comedy out right now, and one of AppleTV+’s singing series. After two stellar seasons that dove into game development, pandemic work-from-home depression, and the ways that game development helps you thrive creatively or leaves you burned out (and sometimes both), Mythic Quest Season 3 is back and going bigger.

If you’re unfamiliar, Rob McElhenney, Charlie Day, and Megan Ganz are the series’ creators and the series is made in partnership with Ubisoft. It stars McElhenney, Charlotte Nicdao, David Hornsby, who also executive produces, Danny Pudi, Ashly Burch, Imani Hakim, Jessie Ennis, and Naomi Ekperigin.

In season three, like every other one, the ensemble cast of characters each carries their own plot point and they all work together perfectly. At Mythic Quest Season 3’s center, Ian (Rob McElhenney) and Poppy (Charlotte Nicdao) navigate the gaming world and their partnership at the newly formed GrimPop Studios.

Instead of Ian taking a creative lead, the two work on Hera together, and sometimes Poppy’s mechanical mindset may put Hera’s playability in a boring spot. All the while, Dana (Imani Hakim) is forced to act as a mediator to her bosses’ incessant bickering.

Back at Mythic Quest, David (David Hornsby) settles into his new role as the boss, where he fumbles his way through leadership, all with Jo (Jessie Ennis) returning as his assistant, who is even more aggressively loyal. Carol (Naomi Ekperigin) attempts to figure out where she fits in after a new promotion and tries not to be manipulated into crypto schemes by the people around her, including a post-prison Brad, who tries to return to society as a reformed man. And of course, social justice-focused Rachel struggles to balance her morals with capitalism as she embodies her worst nightmare of a job.

Read Our Interview With The Cast of Mythic Quest Season 3  Here. 

The most compelling part of Mythic Quest Season 3, once again comes down to Poppy. Maybe it’s because I identify with her work ethic or her stubborn nature, but Poppy’s intelligence and engineering talent, being both her strength and her weakness, is one of the best takes on a character in the series and more broadly.  Throughout the first half of the 10-episode season, we see Poppy struggle to get creative. It’s not that she isn’t creative. She just sees the world through coding.

While Ian is trying to come up with some really bad web3 ideas, Poppy is trying her hardest to progress Hera but not looking at it beyond the mechanics. This leads her to confide in Dana, “I’m a glorified mechanic, and people don’t celebrate mechanics.” Processing what she is good at, building tools, and what she’s not. Building stories allow her to find her real joy. Which, in this case, is building something for others to be creative on.

But while Poppy is extremely compelling, we also get the chance to dive into more relationships between the cast of characters. Primarily, Jo is more than just the loud aggressive assistant. I mean she is that, of course, but we also see her attempt to connect to the other women in the office for the first time.

Plus we get to see Dana and Rachel’s relationship and the surprisingly endearing mentor/mentee relationship build-up between Dana and Ian. These elements all help keep Mythic Quest Season 3 both on track and growing. While the series covers a lot of themes, like movies and games intersecting with adaptations, bad metaverse focuses, crypto, starting a new studio from scratch, and learning when to compromise yourself and when not to.

Finally, Mythic Quest Season 3 Episode 7, “Sarian” serves as the season’s story outside of the story episode. While it doesn’t touch Season 1’s “Dark Quiet Death,” it’s fantastic and comes really close. So much so that I won’t spoil the surprise, except to say that it captures the magic video games offer perfectly. “Sarian” only bolsters the strength of workplace comedy in understanding the themes and characters that audiences are deeply invested in, seeing parts of ourselves.

Mythic Quest Season 3 is yet another amazing season for a strong, hilarious, and authentic series that continually manages to create hyperbolic characters that also have a grounded core.

Mythic Quest Season 3 has started streaming now on AppleTV+.