Aziz Ansari isn’t the center of Master of None anymore. In the show’s third season, released Sunday—subtitled Master of None: Moments in Love—the narrative firmly belongs to Denise (Lena Waithe) and her partner Alicia (Naomi Ackie, the season’s true star). Ansari, who starred in the first two seasons as Dev, a lovesick actor and reality competition host, retreats into the background of the show. But he doesn’t disappear completely. Instead, he pops up for a pair of cameos, casting the character—and Ansari himself—in a revealing new light.
The show, directed by Ansari, opens with Denise and Alicia happily ensconced in a house upstate. Their lives are cozy and quotidian; they fold laundry, feed their chickens, and smoke weed in bed. Denise is now a successful writer and Alicia is the genius caught in her shadow, but she’s not bitter about it. One-third of the way into the episode, we see them preparing for a dinner party. Who are the guests? None other than Dev and his girlfriend Reshmi (Aysha Kala). The initial revelation obliterates the romance of the Season 2 finale, which saw Dev entangled in a will-they/won’t-they plot with Francesca (Alessandra Mastronardi). (They show decided They Will, ending with Francesca leaving her life in Italy behind in order to stay with Dev in New York.)
This new relationship is the first sign that Ansari has opted to cast Dev in a less than flattering light this season. He and Reshmi are cute at first, playing the part of the couple in love—but as the dinner party goes on, the knives come out. They start to bicker, with Reshmi complaining loudly about how they live with his parents in Queens now. (RIP to Dev’s beautiful, improbably huge apartment.) Dev’s career has been torched; he’s no longer an actor or a reality TV competition host, but an assistant to the accounting department of NCIS Brooklyn, in addition to being a part-time TaskRabbit.
Reshmi and Dev just keep snipping, fighting over everything from their failed stay at her parents’ house in Chicago to his thinning hair. Dev pauses, apologizing to Denise and Alicia and declaring that this is just how the couple is: “This is Tuesday. We do this shit all the fucking time.” It’s a precursor to what will happen with Denise and Alicia. It’s also part and parcel with the show’s mission of depicting modern love, or lack thereof, though it’s bereft of the flashes of whimsy—like slapdash dates to Nashville and lush meals in Modena—that buoyed Master of None’s first two seasons.
Dev’s appearance continues in a later one-on-one conversation with Denise, where it’s revealed that she and Dev aren’t really close anymore. Once Denise found literary success, she found a new set of friends, too. “You’re doing so well, and I’m doing so bad. It’s embarrassing,” Dev laments. “We used to have it so good. Running around New York doing whatever we wanted, having fun whenever we wanted. I never realized how good I had it.”
It’s hard not to read the character’s pathetic about-face as a veiled means of addressing Ansari’s own fall from grace. In 2018, an anonymous photographer accused Ansari of sexual coercion in an article published on the now-defunct site Babe.net. Ansari released a statement in response, saying he believed the encounter had been consensual and was “surprised and concerned” about the allegations. He exited the spotlight, drifting back in several months later for a few stand-up shows, all while people debated the complicated terrain that the Babe article occupied. Then, about a year and a half after the initial article, Ansari addressed the allegations in his Spike Jonze-directed Netflix special Right Now, using the first five minutes to half-whisper that he “felt terrible” about the whole ordeal—but was glad it was making people more thoughtful about their own encounters.
If anything, the Jonze-helmed, Netflix-backed special (performed to a packed audience) was a clear sign that Ansari had evaded cancelation at the height of the #MeToo era. Netflix execs also always made it clear they were happy to have Ansari deliver a third season of Master of None whenever he was ready. While it’s unclear if taking Dev (mostly) out of the picture is the route Ansari would have taken if he hadn’t had a personal scandal, it is perhaps the only way to keep the show going without Ansari himself casting a huge shadow over the project. (In a press statement, Ansari said he had always wanted to do a deep dive on Denise’s romantic life.) Turning Dev into a self-flagellating failure is also, perhaps, a way to square the circle between longtime viewers of the show who love Ansari and want to see him in some form or fashion, and viewers who love the show, but feel morally dubious about giving it post-#MeToo attention.
After his episode 1 appearance, Dev briefly pops back up in episode 3, consoling Denise as she sells her house and contends with her impending divorce from Alicia. The scene clocks in at just under three minutes; then Dev is gone again. He’s just a guest, after all, and he wouldn’t want to overstay his welcome.
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