Monthly Archives: June 2017

Fargo Third Season Finale

The third season of Fargo ends with a conversation between protagonist Gloria Burgle and antagonist V.M. Varga in a Homeland Security detention facility. Gloria expects that Varga will soon be arrested and charged with a series of white collar crimes, whereas Varga is confident that his release is imminent. Gloria appeals to hard facts–what really happened–while Varga describes narrative’s power to shape facts through (mis)perception.

This season of Fargo feels much more attuned to Christopher Nolan’s work than the previous two seasons. Varga’s pitch forks-and-torches monologue evokes Christopher Nolan’s Bane and his mantra–that “perception of reality becomes reality”–is reminiscent of Nolan’s Memento. Varga succeeds in covering up his crimes throughout the season by creating the appearance of patterns that aren’t there, such as a serial killer with two M.O.s.

This theme is especially relevant in the context of the “fake news” controversy that has afflicted us since the 2016 presidential election. Varga acts under the assumption that whatever story you put out there becomes true, which is precisely the effect that fake news or propaganda more generally has on the populace. When Varga claims that the lunar landing was faked, he is observing that the event is only “true” insofar as the image of Neil Armstrong walking on the moon was disseminated through television.

The final conversation between Gloria and Varga builds on one of Fargo’s critical moves. The show inverts the central trope of detective fiction, so that instead of the audience following the detective as he or she solves the crime, we watch the characters try to piece together events which we have already witnessed. The third season especially is a sustained exercise in dramatic irony. We already know every detail of the numerous murders throughout the season, as we watch the police try to makes sense of the strange circumstances and seemingly contradictory evidence. Like the show’s first two seasons and the original Coen Brothers film which inspired it, Fargo’s third season suggests that what is true often strains credulity. Human motivations are so tangled and people behave so irrationally that the truth is generally implausible, grotesque, and bizarre.

Although Gloria has managed to uncover Varga’s crimes, even her knowledge isn’t completely accurate. Gloria believes that Varga ordered the murder of Emmit Stussy, although we know that Varga wasn’t involved. Although Gloria closely resembles her counterparts from the original film and the first two seasons of the show–all whip smart female officers hampered by overconfident, unintelligent male superiors–her character is even more plagued by the difficulty of discovering what really happened.

The finale ends, like the ending of Inception, without revealing whether Varga or Gloria is correct. This puts us, the audience, in the uncomfortable position of the characters for the first time all season. Now we have to decide what happened without the omniscience that we have heretofore enjoyed. This ambiguous ending works well because both Gloria and Varga are right. Gloria is right that there is a fundamental difference between events, especially crimes, which “really happened,” and those that are only supposed, conjectured, assumed, or alleged. Yet, Varga is correct that, in practice, (mis)perception creates narratives which become “true” insofar as they are widely accepted.