The apocalyptic ending of “Fargo” this week put an end to at least some of the series’ iconic characters, enough to assure that season two will be very different.
But even those who didn’t die might not be part of a second season. Like the year’s other standout limited series, HBO’s “True Detectives,”
“Fargo” creator Noah Hawley, who borrowed the tone and approach of the series from the Coen brothers’ iconic film of the same name, has said all along that he plans future seasons using the same elements, but not necessarily the same cast, and certainly not the same story.
Indeed, as he was introducing the first season he told reporters “the exciting thing about going into a second season, which I’ve already started planning, is you get to tell a whole other story.”
That was the plan all along, Hawley said.
“I pitched it as an anthology series because I felt like, at the end of the movie, what really made the movie so satisfying was when Marge gets in bed at the end after this very strange and violent case that she’s just investigated, we know that tomorrow she’s going to wake up and it’s going to be a normal day.
“And I think that sort of innocence and small townness is what makes us feel good as we go out of that movie,” he said.
“So it seemed like the wrong idea to make a sort of ‘Picket Fences’ style show where every week something kooky happens and because, A, I don’t think that’s a Coen model. But also, she’s not going to be the same person. After she sees enough dark stuff, she’s going to be on ‘Criminal Minds,’ and that wasn’t really where I wanted to go with the show.
Instead, he added, “after a season or two of the show, people who see the movie might say, ‘That was a really great episode of “Fargo.”’ … because each season is a separate true crime story from that region, the movie now fits into the series as another true crime story, you know, from the region.”
Though he didn’t go there to research (and shot in Alberta instead of Albert Lea), Hawley said, “there is something really compelling about the region and the just the Coen brothers’ style of storytelling, which is not plot driven, but telling a story that’s both dark and comic. I mean, I don’t really see an end point to that, for me, creatively.”
He mentions a scene in the Coens’ “Fargo” that stuck with him as much as that of the characters of Steve Buscemi, Frances McDormand and William H. Macy.
“It’s the Mike Yanagita [character],” he says. “It’s the guy from high school who calls her on the phone, and she meets up with him, and he tells her this weird sob story about his wife who died. And then she finds out he made the whole thing up and he’s just kind of nuts. And you watch it, and you’re like, ‘Well, why is that in the movie?’ It doesn’t have anything to do with anything, except it’s a detail that feels like the only reason you would put it in the movie is because it really happened to her, because it’s true.”
There were similar moments in the series when Alison Tolman’s character Molly Solverson repeats a story about a guy who had spiders hatch in his neck.
“I think that’s a great template for a crime story, that broader element of randomness and ‘real world’ details that are stranger than fiction,” Hawley said.
Other recent anthology shows, such as the other FX series “American Horror Story,” uses much of the same cast every season, albeit in different roles.
But Hawley said “Fargo” is not conceived as a show like ‘American Horror Story’ where the same actors would come back and play different characters, but I haven’t really thought that far ahead. I like these actors. I’ll say that.”
But just as the short-series approach was crucial in landing Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson to “True Detective,” so it was for Billy Bob Thornton, who played the central villain Lorne Malvo. “When they said it’s only 10 episodes and then you go back and do movies, I said, ‘Bingo!’”
Thornton wouldn’t say much about Malvo at the start of the season other to say, “He’s truly an enigma. He’s a mysterious stranger from out of town. Nobody knows why he’s there, what he’s up to, that kind of thing.
“What I love about what Noah has done with the character is that it’s not a typical bad guy,” Thornton said. “It’s sort of God and the Devil and all wrapped up into one, a puppet master in some sense who is not only capable of very dangerous things, but he also is very mischievous and toys with people.”
For his character Hawley said, “I wanted a name for him that nobody else had. And Lorne had a very Old World, you know, “Bonanza” feel to it. And Malvo may be a little on the nose with the Latin mal. But it just had a ring to it that felt, you know that felt right. And Billy has embodied it, certainly.”
As for the finale of “Fargo,” it gets to miss the criticism that some mysteries have because it’s not a mystery at heart. The series, he says, is like what the Coens did. “The movie is not a whodunit. There’s no mystery; right? And you’re following all the players. You’re following Macy’s character and Buscemi and also Marge’s character. So what we’ve constructed here is really an ensemble piece that follows Martin [Freeman]’s character and Billy’s character and Allison and Colin [Hanks], playing the police officers.
“You know, Joel and Ethan said something about polite society as often being the most violent, and I was really interested in this idea of taking a man like Lester Nygaard, Martin’s character, who is so squeezed by life, and, pushing him to the point where he might snap. And then how does that man deal with the aftermath of that?
And the idea that Martin’s character meets Billy’s character, who is a sort of a drifter, I guess, is the way that it’s described in the show, but, you know, someone who represents the kind of wilderness, and that there’s an infection that takes place there between Billy and Martin. So following Martin’s journey and taking Billy on his journey and Allison and Gus as they try to figure out what happened and who’s responsible. But, you know, we’re heading toward a collision, a big collision, at the end of the thing.”
And that’s just where it ended.