Archer and the rest of the crew aboard the International Space Station must escape the custody of the mutineers who plan on using the hostages to colonize Mars.
Bionic Barry takes over the KGB and ousts Nikolai Jakov, sending him to Siberia. Jakov decides to defect to America in hopes that Malory Archer will take him in. Sterling Archer wakes up for the first time with a hangover, unable to recall much from a night of insane drinking. Malory and the rest of the ISIS gang are eager to receive Jakov's defection. They try all they can to make sure Jakov is protected, but Barry is on the hunt.
Archer and Lana make a startling discovery about Ray after finding him snooping around the ISIS Armory. Ray opens up to the two that his brother (a drug farmer down South) is in need of help dealing with a corrupt sheriff. Carol/Cheryl tags along posing as Ray's wife. Krieger, Pam, and Cyril try to distract Malory from finding out where the field agents have gone.
Sterling is gifted a brand new Dodge Challenger Special Edition spy car by Malory for his birthday. Warned repeatedly not to lose sight of it by Malory, Sterling ends up losing it anyway. Desperate to recover it before his mother finds out, Sterling goes looking for it from the most likely culprits -- the Yakuza.
Archer, Lana, Malory and Cyril escort a wanted Canadian radical back to his country to face justice. They use a train to transport the prisoner back to the hands of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Unfortunately, Cyril ends up losing the prisoner and the team has to find him before he gets away.
With Ray being paralyzed from the waist down, Malory decides to make Cyril a field agent along with Archer and Lana. The three are assigned to a bounty hunter mission to capture a drug lord named Roman Calzado, worth one million. Archer and Lana reluctantly show Cyril the ropes of surviving in the hostile field. Pam, Cheryl/Carol and Ray all have to find a way to pass a drug screening back at ISIS headquarters, with Krieger offering a possible solution to their problem.
Despite his own best efforts, Sterling and gang manage to kidnap Bucky and escape the pirate fortress. The escape takes a toll on the team, Ray in particular, and only Archer makes it back to ISIS unscathed.
Sterling embraces his new role as "Pirate King" while his mother and the rest of the team wait anxiously to hear from his presumed captors. Despite being aided by new consort and egg-head translator Noah, pirate morale is plummeting and mutiny appears to be on the horizon. Rip tries to get an S.O.S. back to ISIS and Ray and Lana launch an expensive rescue operation, but neither plays out quite as expected.
Following the murder of Archer's wife by Bionic Barry, Archer disappears off the map. Malory is consumed with maternal worry over her missing son, and sends a man named Rip Riley to look for him. Finding Archer may not be as difficult as everyone at ISIS thinks, but getting him to willfully return is another story.