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‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’ heads back to Super Bowl LII this week

The Gang Goes to Minnesota

IT'S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA — "The Gang Wins the Big Game" – Season 13, Episode 9 (Airs October 31, 10:00 pm e/p) Pictured: (l-r) T.J. Hoban as Rex, Travis Schuldt as Ben the Soldier, Andrew Friedman as Uncle Jack, Lance Barber as Bill Ponderosa, David Hornsby as Cricket, Kaitlin Olson as Dee, Mary Elizabeth Ellis as The Waitress. CR: Patrick McElhenney/FXX
IT'S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA — "The Gang Wins the Big Game" – Season 13, Episode 9 (Airs October 31, 10:00 pm e/p) Pictured: (l-r) T.J. Hoban as Rex, Travis Schuldt as Ben the Soldier, Andrew Friedman as Uncle Jack, Lance Barber as Bill Ponderosa, David Hornsby as Cricket, Kaitlin Olson as Dee, Mary Elizabeth Ellis as The Waitress. CR: Patrick McElhenney/FXXRead morePatrick McElhenney/FXX
    by Nick Vadala
    Updated 
    Published 

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia will wrap up its Super Bowl LII saga this week with "The Gang Wins the Big Game," the second episode of a two-parter that brings the show's antics all the way to Minnesota.

Set to air Wednesday at 10 p.m. on FXX, the episode follows the It's Always Sunny crew on their trip to the Super Bowl in Minneapolis. There, Mac, Frank, Dee, and a few other classic characters unleash the best (worst?) that Philadelphia has to offer on US Bank Stadium, all while strictly adhering to their own superstitious football rituals.

As a trailer for the episode shows, the Gang also appears to celebrate at the Big Game in style with a visit to a luxury suite. Missing from the group, however, is Charlie.

That's because he was left behind in Philadelphia in last week's episode, "Charlie's Home Alone." A joint Home Alone parody and Super Bowl victory celebration, the episode showed Charlie completing a set of "color rituals" to help the Eagles with the Big Game. The process, unfortunately, was interrupted after Charlie stepped on a bear trap he had set in the bar in a twisted callback to Kevin McCallister's booby traps in Home Alone.

Eagles fans made out well on Charlie's injuries, which resulted in cameos from Jason Kelce and Beau Allen. The pair appeared as hallucinations in the episode, brought on by Charlie's blood loss in the bear trap incident. Eventually, they explained to him how to get out of the trap, allowing him to watch the Super Bowl on TV.

A cliffhanger, the episode ended with Charlie deciding on putting his injured leg back in the bear trap to give the Eagles a little extra mojo at the end of the game. This week, we get the thrilling conclusion, but given the fact that the Birds won earlier this year, we think we can guess the outcome to Charlie's choice.

Though last week's episode dealt with a topic that is popular in the Philadelphia area, it ended up drawing some of the lowest ratings all season at about 294,000 viewers, according to TV ratings aggregator TVSeriesFinale. That's significantly below It's Always Sunny's average for its current 13th season, which stands at about 373,000 viewers per episode. Last season, the average was slightly less than double that number at 601,000 viewers on average per episode. (Perhaps Patriots fans couldn't stomach watching?)

Despite that ratings rut, the series isn't likely to be canceled any time soon. In a 2016 deal, the show's creators extended its run to 14 seasons, putting in production at least through 2019.