Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Wu-Tang: An American Saga’ Season 3 on Hulu, The Culminating Run For This Strong Ensemble Hip Hop Drama

Wu-Tang: An American Saga, created by The RZA and Alex Tse (2009’s Watchmen), returns to Hulu for its third and final season as the pioneering New York rap group enjoys the success of its full-length debut and continues to tackle the separate solo ascendance of its core membership, a system of making and releasing records that was famously specific to the Wu-Tang collective. Can RZA keep his mind right and everyone on point as success brings new challenges and demands? As the song goes, “Cash rules everything around me…”

WU-TANG AN AMERICAN SAGA – SEASON 3: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

Opening Shot: With their debut Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) skipping past gold on its way to Platinum record sales, Bobby “RZA” Diggs (Ashton Sanders, Moonlight) and the Wu have moved out of Staten Island and into a sprawling mansion in a wooded stretch of New Jersey. 3.5” floppies salvaged from the burst pipe in RZA’s studio dry out in the new digs.   

The Gist: The widespread success of their debut album has validated all of RZA’s hard work, powered the purchase of the cushy mansion complete with a pool and decked-out recording facilities, and predicted the next chapter of Wu domination, which are solo albums from group members Corey “Chef Raekwon” Woods (Shameik Moore) and Jason “Inspectah Deck” Hunter (Uyoata Udi), amongst other priorities. Tical, the solo debut of Method Man (David “Dave East”  Brewster) is approaching Platinum itself, and Def Jam wants RZA to create a radio-friendly remix of “All I Need.” Divine Diggs (Julian Elijah Martinez), RZA’s older brother and the Wu’s business manager, plots out all of the deadlines on a dry erase board in the mansion. And even though he authorized the purchase of the lavish home – “Excellence happens in isolation” – RZA is feeling the heat to create, and to recover the material lost in the pipe burst.

There’s also Dirty’s album to worry about. After he and RZA’s falling out over the Elektra deal, ODB (TJ Atoms) has been AWOL from the Wu circle. As his cousin stares at a notebook page devoid of lyrics or ideas, Dirty indulges himself with cocaine and the company of strippers. Divine gives each Wu member a personal corporate Amex, and negotiates with Loud Records exec Steve Rifkind (Jake Hoffman) to secure even more financial juice with the higher-ups at RCA. (At the label’s square and very white headquarters, Divine encounters racial barriers to the breakfast spread until Rifkind arrives. Glass ceilings are some bullshit.) And Oliver “Power” Grant (Marcus Callender) sees opportunities to diversify the Wu-Tang brand, channeling Wu Wear’s street-level energy into the aspirational spaces of Tommy Hilfiger and the like.

As Dennis “Ghostface Killah” Coles (Siddiq Saunderson) revels in the luxury of a velvety new robe and reaffirms his love for Shurrie (Zolee Griggs), he’s also experiencing the severe headaches and exhaustion that will reveal his diabetes diagnosis. And even as Benzos are delivered to the mansion on a flatbed, RZA is feeling the pressure from Divine, Deck, and others. Those eight solo albums aren’t gonna produce themselves.      

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Hulu is said to be moving forward with a biographical series about Sammy Davis, Jr., created by Lee Daniels and starring Elijah Kelley in the title role. (Kelley also played Ricky Bell in BET’s three-part The New Edition Story.) And like Donald Glover’s FX hit Atlanta, Wu-Tang: An American Saga has made a round of sharp casting decisions that often have a stars-in-the-making or they-already-arrived quality.  

Our Take: “We have to do everything to hold our position while we got it.” Divine Diggs knows his brother Bobby is a genius in the studio – it’s RZA’s curatorial and lyrical vision that helped propel them out of Staten Island’s Stapleton Houses. But he’s always seen the business side of things, too, and as Wu-Tang: An American Saga enters its third and final season, it feels like there will be a reckoning between RZA’s wish to keep all Wu creative decisions in-house and the expectations tied to the group’s expanding financial portfolio. RZA is less present in his personal life, spends hours and hours in the recording studio, and has stress dreams about the beats he lost in the flood. But there are still bits and pieces forming up, and even though he eventually erases the deadlines on Divine’s big board and returns to drinking and smoking, there’s the sense that he’ll find a successful way into the material. After all, we know what happened in real life, as the Wu solo records often became classics in their own right.

Ashton Sanders is captivating here as RZA, the heady genius with pronounced social awkwardness and a rap empire in mind. And while he’s joined by a terrific ensemble cast, everyone in Wu-Tang is tasked with representing his or her biggest self inside the brackets of hour-long TV episodic television, and that sometimes limits what the series can accomplish. It’s got a lot of huge individual stories to juggle, while also exploring their personal connections and placing Wu-Tang: An American Saga into the context of culture in the middle 1990s. To do all of that, it’s a benefit to have a clutch of fantastic actors, the arc of a dynamic true story narrative, and another full season. But it can feel like these episodes should have been two hours each.

Sex and Skin: A shower scene, and some behavior in a strip club champagne room that’s decidedly against the posted rules. But there’s nothing too explicit here.

Parting Shot: RZA is addressing the partygoers gathered in the mansion, all there to celebrate Chef Raekwon’s record deal. The mood is boozy and ecstatic. “To the Wu takeover!” And everyone raises a glass. And that’s when the emergency call from Shurrie comes in. ODB is in the hospital.

Sleeper Star: Wu-Tang: An American Saga is akin to the real life Wu-Tang Clan in that there are many individuals and personalities to fit in and define, a challenge the series has become more adept at meeting with each season. In the early going of its third and final go-round, Both TJ Atoms as Ol’ Dirty Bastard and Zolee Griggs as Shurrie Diggs are standouts amid the ensemble cast.  

Most Pilot-y Line: “We are on top of the game right now, right?” RZA is justifying his possessive, obsessive nature in the home studio that’s quickly become known as “the dungeon.” “Everyone’s gunnin’ for us, bitin’ our shit. The disks stay here.” Of course, Inspectah Deck has his own ideas about those hard copies of his solo album’s beats.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Wu-Tang: An American Saga mirrors and honors the expansive nature and broad range of creativity that defined Wu-Tang themselves, even if it sometimes struggles to hammer the whole thing into straightforward TV series storytelling.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges