Warning: This article contains spoilers from the “Fargo” season finale
After the carnage of last week’s penultimate episode, there weren’t many residents of “Fargo” left standing.
An indeed Monday night’s second season finale on FX went out on a quieter note considering the bloody body count it racked up this season, which was recapped in the episode’s opening moments showing the dead bodies of the Gerhardt clan — Rye (Kieran Culkin), Dodd (Jeffrey Donovan), Simone (Rachel Keller), Otto (Michael Hogan), Floyd (Jean Smart) and Bear (Agus Sampson)
But unlike in the Season 1 finale — which saw baddies Malvo (Billy Bob Thorton) and Lester (Martin Freeman) meet their ends by gunshots and drowning in a frozen lake, respectively — our Season 2 fugitives meet a less dramatic send-off. Let’s recap:
- Shot by Hanzee (Zahn McClarnon), Ed (Jesse Plemons) slowly bleeds out in a convenience store meat locker — but not before telling wife Peggy (Kirsten Dunst) that even if they make it out alive, their relationship is over.
- Hanzee meanwhile escapes capture, new identity in hand — “Moses Tripoli” — a name his contact picks for the much-conquered Libyan city as a reminder that “great empires fall and they’re forgotten.” Will Hanzee join a new empire, his contact asks? He replies forebodingly that maybe he’ll start his own.
- Lou (Patrick Wilson) arrests Peggy, who after all her efforts to “be the best me I can be” realizes that the “have it all ethos” of the 1970s women’s liberation movement is just setting her up for failure. She’s also still gloriously disassociated from the domino effect of deaths — including her husband’s — she started, wondering if perhaps she can be tried federally so that she can serve her time in California, in a prison with a view of the San Francisco Bay.
- Kansas City muscle Mike Milligan (Bokeem Woodbine), having successfully helped take out the Fargo crime syndicate, finds out to his dismay that working your way up the ladder of the mob means a 9-5 gig as a pencil pusher — trading shotguns and bolo ties for P&L reports, quarterly statements and optimizing revenue through the streamlining of infrastructure.
- Betsy (Cristin Milioti) survives her cancer-induced collapse (for now) and dreams of the future — one of hand-held technology and superstores, but also what her family will look like when she’s gone, which allows for brief cameos by Season 1 cast members Allison Tolman and Keith Carradine (as the older versions of Molly and Lou) and Colin Hanks.
- Her father Hank (Ted Danson) recovers from his injuries as well, and Betsy confronts him about the crazy-looking symbols she discovered lining the wall of his home office. He explains it’s his attempt to build a universal language of symbols (perhaps predicting the rise of emojis?) after witnessing so much senseless violence in the war and in his police work. “I got to thinking about miscommunication. How isn’t that the root of it? Conflict, war, doesn’t it all come down to language?,” he asks. “The words we say and the words we hear aren’t always the same thing. Pictures to my mind are clearer than words.”
- As for Lou, his fate has been guaranteed since the beginning, since Carradine portrays the older version of the character in the first season of “Fargo.” The season’s final scenes are benign ones of him tucking daughter Molly into bed and kissing wife Betsy goodnight and in a nod to radio gossip commentator Walter Winchell’s famous sign-off he ends by saying “Goodnight Mrs. Solverson, and all the ships at sea.”