"The word politics has shifted in its meaning": Noah Hawley breaks down the "Fargo" finale

Roy Tillman swore it was his destiny to go out in a furious blaze of glory. Noah Hawley was never going to give him that honor. The "Fargo" creator believes in goodness, which is the reason he presents so many varieties of evil in each season of his anthology series. For this fifth round, he pits his hero, Dot Lyon (Juno Temple) against what the average person might describe as a great evil, in the form of her murderous militia-leader of an ex-husband (Jon Hamm) and a lesser one, i.e. her billionaire mother-in-law Lorraine Lyon (Jennifer Jason Leigh) who waits for Dot to fight for her respect.

Dot does that many times over throughout the season, even slipping free of the mental institution where Lorraine tries to have her committed against her will. But her daughter-in-law's last stand against the man who abused her and kidnapped her, an early highlight of "Bisquik," finally did it for Mama Lyon. Dot slowed down Roy with a gut shot, but he was able to elude the FBI team that came for her, led by Witt Farr (Lamorne Morris). Roy might have fulfilled his desire if not for his son Gator (Joe Keery) giving him up — but not in time to stop him from committing the unthinkable.

This edition of "Fargo" grapples with the theme of indebtedness — and happily, the finale ends this story well and with the sense that all can be well.  A year after Dot's ordeal, Roy is behind bars and Lorraine, the Queen of Debt, informs him of her plan to make sure he pays her back for all the pain and suffering he's caused...with interest. A more compelling conclusion, though, circles back to Sam Spruell's Ole Munch calling in the debt he perceives Dot owes him. She offers a better resolution than an eye for an eye, in the form a honey-flavored absolution, baked with love. 

At the close of prior seasons, Hawley was always asked if he intends to make another round of episodes. He used to claim he didn't know. Now the auteur is straightforward.

"The reason that I keep coming back to this thing we call 'Fargo' is that I like telling stories about decent people, and I like families that get along," he told Salon. "You know, everyone always says, conflict equals drama, and so they insist on putting conflict everywhere. I just really liked creating fun space, safe places where the audience wants to be, and then to threaten that."

How this plays out in his next project, a TV series adaptation of "Alien," is yet to be seen. But the outcome of the recently culminated fifth season's match between "basically decent people versus the forces of cynicism and corruption" feels familiar and right, even if a couple of the folks we loved watching didn't make it out of this caper. Hawley discussed those choices and other themes he explored through Dorothy Lyon's adventure in a recent interview conducted over Zoom.

The following interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

In previous seasons, you've shown either through a mid- or post-credits scene or through different characters, how all the seasons are connected. Is there any connection here to the previous seasons that people may have noticed or is it intentionally not connected? And if that's the case, why?

It’s not that Machiavellian. It's sort of organic or it's not organic. Obviously, Season 2 is a prequel to Season 1 and the Molly Solverson origin story. And then in our third year, we have Mary Winstead’s [Nikki Swango] connect to the Mr. Wrench character, and in a way that I think is very satisfying. Then the fourth year connects to Bokeem Woodbine’s [Mike Milligan] character.

This year, it just didn't really come up. On some level, the story was a sort of modern, complete story with a beginning, middle and end. There was never a moment where I was like, “Oh, I need that thing that connects this . . . ” It's sort of either there or it isn't. And I just didn't find anything that made sense.

That doesn't mean if we were to do another one that we wouldn't connect it to this one. It’s just TBD.

When I was on the set visit last spring, one recurring notion that the producers and I think Dave Foley stressed — he said it best, actually — is that these stories aren’t meant to be political. That what they are is a kind of psychological view of where American culture stands. I don't know if you agree or disagree with that.

Well, the goal of the show is not to stake a position in this polarized nation that we live in. That said, the show is definitely engaging with the struggles that we're going through, the different realities that people are living in and the different sort of definitions of who deserves what. So it's certainly topical.

I do think the word politics has shifted in its meaning. Politics was originally this idea of civic life that we had, the society that we share and the obligations and responsibilities we have toward each other. The show is definitely engaging on that level. 

. . . We're not in the stone-throwing business. And part of what was interesting to me in crafting the story was the idea that in my mind, almost all the characters in the season are some definition of Republican.

Jon [as Roy Tillman] is this sort of modern far-right Republican. Jennifer [as Lorraine Lyon] obviously is that old-money Koch brothers Republican. Even Dot and Wayne. I don't know that they voted for the last guy, but they're probably conservative small-town folks who think about the world in a certain way. And you can see Richa Moorjani’s character [Indira Olmstead] and the bootstrap story that she tells herself, etcetera. So it wasn't my way of saying you have these two sides and one side is right and the other is wrong. Let's just talk about the civic society of it, of people who believe that there are rules and the rules matter, and then people who believe they make their own rules, and they don't owe anything to anybody.

Fargo (FX)I was taken by the duality that we're presented with between Lorraine Lyon and Roy Tillman, who is a very specific kind of evil. I’ll rephrase that, since most writers don’t necessarily want to ascribe good or evil to their characters. Let's put it this way – those two aren't necessarily people that I would want to have in my life. But if I were caught in Dot's situation, I'd certainly want Lorraine in my corner more than Roy. Watching them left me wondering what you wanted to say about the way they wield power, both locally and nationally.

Increasingly we're in a place where human beings are refusing to see each other and refusing to acknowledge the humanity of other human beings. The idea that Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character, has this cliche of Dot as the sort of gold digger, low-rent skirt that her son knocked up, and she's so plebeian and oh God, now she's got this story about being beaten by this guy. “It's so much drama. Can't we just get rid of her?” . . .That’s why those scenes with Richa Moorjani and Jennifer Jason Leigh were so great, where [Indira] says, “Have you ever heard your daughter-in-law complain about anything?” 

Dot is not a victim. She doesn't act like a victim. But sometimes people are victimized, and even that doesn't really get through to [Lorraine] until she sees the pictures [showing Dot’s abuse]. 

I’m sure there are circumstances from Lorraine's life when she was young, where she was in rooms that she had to get out of. She knows, deep down in places that she doesn't want to look, that she and Dot but for things happening slightly differently could be in a similar position. Versus [Roy], who just refuses to see her as anything other than his property.

This season says a lot of interesting things about masculinity. Roy is a pretty straight case of some version of manliness we’ve seen a lot of. But I wanted to talk a little bit about Wayne (played by David Rysdahl). There are plenty of moments where he’s accidentally goofy, like when he gets shocked and his brain is scrambled. But there's never a time when it's implied that he's anything less than a man. 

Yeah. And you know, after his shock, he becomes even more decent, you know what I mean? . . .  But for me, I really wanted to explore masculinity. We were exploring a lot this concept of the wife, and looking at this idea of “wifeyness.” 

. . . The flip side of that is the masculinity of it. We're used to the stories in which the alpha male – the Roy Tillman, the jilted ex-husband – and the current husband, who's the nice guy, the beta male, that there is inevitably going to be a scene in which they have to face off against each other. And the beta male rises and becomes an alpha and dominates the alpha male, and that way justice is done. 

And I just fundamentally reject the idea that the alpha male is the apex of masculinity. Do you know what I mean? Here’s a guy, Wayne, who's raised by Lorraine, a hugely strong woman . . . and then Wayne married Dot. He's like, “I just want to play floor hockey in my socks and watch ‘Real Housewives.’” But he's a breadwinner. He owns a car dealership. He's very competent guy. He's not a doofus. He's just comfortable around strong women. And I think that's also masculinity, you know what I mean? That's the spectrum on which we're having this conversation.

Fargo (FX)

Let’s bring Witt Farr into that spectrum. There were so many times when Witt was doing the right thing and trying to be decent and working within the law only to be thwarted when he’d face the real probability of mortality by way of lawlessness. In the very end, he tries to do the right thing, working within the law, and ends up getting him killed. Was there ever going to be a scenario where Witt, instead of Wayne, would have been that person who triumphs over Roy Tillman? 

Of course. In the beginning, you don't know anything. And then as you go, you have to make choices. A big part of what defined this season was the system of justice versus “I am the law.” Witt Farr was a real believer in the justice system, a real believer in the rules. 

The tragedy of it, of course, is it's sort of what we're all struggling with in this moment: it feels like none of us are in a fair fight. And you know, 'when they go low, we go high.' How's that going to work out? Do you have to get down on people's level? 

. . . It's a kind of lose-lose situation, a dilemma that I don't necessarily have the answer to. But in that particular case, it ended tragically. And then justice was done for Roy.

It's designed to be painful, and on some level, it's because in real life, the heroes don't all live and the villains don't all die. And you know, it's messy.

And I'm guessing that you already have predicted this reaction, but as a Black viewer, I was left going, “Man . . . why did this have to happen to Witt?”

I know, I know. But I also knew that I felt like it would be stepping outside of reality on some level to give him a pass. Intentions either matter or they don't matter, right? 

We wrestled with the issue in Season 4 with Chris [Rock's] character. He was a criminal who was leading this much larger organization, and there aren't a lot of old criminals in the world who aren't in jail. 

We were very clear that we didn't want the last image of Chris Rock to be a Black man behind bars. But I also didn't want, you know, the Italians to kill him. And I also thought it's not realistic to think he lives happily ever after.  . . . So we landed on the story in which after everything had been resolved, one of the things he did came back to haunt him.

. . . I'm never going to be the guy who says I did everything right or made everyone happy. All I can say is that I wrestled with the problem, and I was aware of the problem, so then I made the choice that I made. 

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This season may not have been politically themed but the religious and spiritual overtones in the final episode were unmissable, like Dot offering Ole bread to eat as a means of forgiveness. You’ve always featured these figures who are kind of outside of our normal understanding of the world. Some are simply chaos agents. Ole is specifically supernatural and says that he's been alive for centuries. Can you talk about your decision to end his story with these specific religious references, including communion?

This season was so much about trauma, which is a word that has become a real part of the cultural conversation over the last few years. This idea of trauma, of having suffered some kind of abuse, and figuring out how to move how to move past it. Without getting too deep into the weeds, my mother [Louise Armstrong] wrote “A Speak-Out on Incest.” She was an incest survivor herself, and she interviewed dozens of women when I was nine or 10. Back then, in 1978, the word “survivor” was political. It meant that she had survived the abuse now and moved on from it. 

And then what was born in the '80s was the self-help movement in which survival then became something you did over the rest of your life. Do you know what I mean? You sort of never escaped the abuse on that, on that level. 

What I wanted to look at in the end of this is that Munch was a guy who clearly had been suffering abuse from his very early days, and then became an abuser of other people.

And Dot had suffered her abuse and had been abused by Munch, and then had injured Munch. 

The question is, well, how do we get past this? Are we just going to keep doing the “I hurt you, you hurt me forever,” like the Hatfields and McCoys? What is the way past it? Whether it's a religious idea or a civil idea, at a certain point, we're going to have to own what happened to us and own what we did, and then ask for forgiveness for it, you know, and the clarity of that. 

When Munch sold his soul to eat that rich man’s sins, he lost his sense of self, he lost the “I,” and he lost the “me.” You’ll notice he never uses those pronouns – he’s pronoun-less basically. And this is probably the first time in centuries that he's been invited to sit at a table with people who don't have murder in their hearts. And he is offered not only an act of kindness, but to participate – to make the meal, to partake of the meal, to share the meal, and then the ultimate offer, which is the offering of forgiveness. 

It's very emotional for me, those last few moments, every time I watch it. God bless Sam Spruell for that smile at the end and for really experiencing that joy as if he doesn't even remember what joy feels like. I think it's a cathartic moment. And I wanted the audience to have a moment of catharsis at the end of the story that just felt ugly, about asking if the only way for me to protect myself from you is to destroy you. I just thought this offered the audience an alternative.

All episodes of "Fargo" are streaming on Hulu.