Tonight marks the first half of “Space Race,” the two-part Archer season finale with guest star and UPROXX favorite, Bryan Cranston. We’ll be welcoming in our final special guest from the Archer team, Background Director Jon Bass, this evening. No special guest for next week’s final Season 3 live blog. Instead we’ll have a pretty amazing treat earlier in the week that you will not want to miss. Intrigued? You should be.

Jon — like our other guests — will be here later to answer any and all questions. Quick bio from Jon himself:

“I’ve been with the show since the fifth episode of the first season. Since then I have worked in character design, props design and digital painting. In Season 3 I took over as director of the background department on the episode ‘The Man From Jupiter.’ “This episode 312 was easily the hardest episode we worked on all season but it wasn’t without significant reward. We were ambitious and we were able to come up with some stunning visuals that made this finale episode one of our best episodes yet.”

Jon has also provided some special behind-the-scenes images that I’ll be sharing after the show.

Pre-show talking points…

“Archer and his colleagues at ISIS voyage to the final frontier in an effort to prevent a catastrophe on the International Space Station.”

Alderaan reference!

Will the office crew get their own separate storyline?

I got to check out the space model costumes when I dropped by the Floyd County offices last week. Jealous?

Does Bionic Barry make a finale appearance? Can he breathe in space?

“6 Enemas” would make a great band name.

Odds on pop culture space references?

Open thread is open. Live blog with Jon Bass begins promptly at 10PM EST, but he may drop in beforehand if the conversation warrants. As always, everyone is encouraged to chat and GIF away well into the morning. I’ll put a cap on things in the AM.

Follow us @KDMaske, @TheCajunBoy, and @UPROXX for reminders. Images via FX and Floyd County.