The first season of Fargo was a pleasant surprise, to say the least. On paper, there’s no reason it should have worked. It was a television series that (a) was based on a beloved 20-year-old movie, (b) had no involvement whatsoever from the movie’s iconic auteurs, and (c) brought back none of the cast. The degree of difficulty was really, really high. But creator Noah Hawley pulled it off in spectacular fashion, thanks in no small part to performances from Billy Bob Thornton, Allison Tolman, Martin Freeman, and the rest of the cast. It ended up as Uproxx’s best show of 2014. That’s high praise.
But all of that begs an important question: “So, uh, what now?” The show was picked up for a second season last summer, and news about the cast and plot has been dribbling out ever since then. While Season 2 doesn’t premiere until “late 2015,” per FX, this still seems like a nice time to round up everything we know so far about where we’re headed.
We’re starting fresh, and going back in time.
Season 2 will take us back to 1979, when Lou Solverson — Molly Solverson’s dad, albeit in a much younger form — was a Minnesota State Patrolman, four years removed from serving in the Vietnam War. According to Hawley, the season will lead up to the grisly event in Sioux Falls that Lou referenced in the first season that caused him to leave the force for good. The one that involved bodies “stacked so high, you could’ve climbed to the second floor,” and was described as “savagery, pure and simple.” More of this, basically. Not a complaint.
We got a mob turf war going on. Ronald Reagan is involved. Kind of.
The trigger for all this impending violence is a battle between the small-town Gerhard crime family and a large mob syndicate from Kansas City who wants to come in and take over. If that sounds a little like the crime version of what happened in the business world as the country rolled into the 1980s, well, there’s a good reason for that. “The second season is really is about the corporatization of America. It’s the difference between a mom and pop family business and a Walmart,” FX big wig Warren Littlefield explained recently.
Driving that point home even more, the season will be set “against the backdrop of Ronald Reagan’s first campaign for President of the United States,” and Reagan will appear as a character. Lou will be a member of the future president’s security team, presumably when he rolls through town to shake a few frigid hands and kiss a few parka-wearing babies.
Bruce Campbell will play Ronald Reagan.
BRUCE CAMPBELL WILL PLAY RONALD REAGAN.
The rest of the cast ain’t too shabby either.
I mean, look at this paragraph:
The all new “true crime” case of Fargo’s new chapter travels back to 1979 in Sioux Falls, South Dakota and Luverne, Minnesota, where a young State Police Officer “Lou Solverson” (Patrick Wilson), recently back from Vietnam, investigates a case involving a local crime gang and a major Mob syndicate. Helping him piece things together is his father-in-law, “Sheriff Hank Larsson” (Ted Danson). The investigation will lead them to a colorful cast of characters that includes “Karl Weathers” (Nick Offerman), the town lawyer of Luverne, Minnesota. A Korean War vet, Karl is a flowery drunk blessed with the gift of gab and the eloquence of a true con artist. Three-time Emmy winner Brad Garrett will play “Joe Bulo,” the front man for the northern expansion of a Kansas City crime syndicate. The new face of corporate crime, Joe’s bringing a Walmart mentality to small town America. His number two is “Mike Milligan” (Bokeem Woodbine). Part enforcer, part detective, Mike is always smiling – but the joke is usually on you. Bulo and his crew have their sights set on the Gerhardt crime family in Fargo, currently led by matriarch “Floyd Gerhardt” (Jean Smart). With her husband at death’s door, Floyd takes over the family business, frustrating her eldest son, “Dodd Gerhardt” (Jeffrey Donovan). An impatient hothead with a cruel streak to match his ambitions, Dodd can’t wait for both his parents to die so he can take over and expand their business from kingdom to empire. “Bear Gerhardt” (Angus Sampson) is the middle son, an intimidatingly large man who, although inarticulate, is the most decent of his clan. “Rye Gerhardt” (Kieran Culkin), the youngest of the Gerhardt clan, views himself as a big shot, but in reality he’s just a small dog who barks big.
And once you get past Jean Smart as a mob boss named Floyd and Nick Offerman as a flowery drunken con artist lawyer named “Karl Weathers” (and really, take a few minutes to let that sink in), let’s go ahead and add some more names to that list:
- Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons as Peggy and Ed Blomquist, “a small-town married couple who find themselves caught in the middle” of the aforementioned turf war.
- Adam Arkin as a member of the Kansas City mob.
- How I Met Your Mother vet Cristin Milioti as Betsy Solverson, Lou’s wife, who is described as “a woman of the plains — pretty but firm — she can both jump start a car and make a casserole, clean a gun as well as the gutters.” (If you’re wondering if I plan on making lots of very bad jokes about us how we are meeting Molly Solverson’s mother, the answer is yes. I apologize in advance. Profusely.)
Still no word on if we’ll see some sort of ancestor of my favorite character from Season 1, though: the sketchy guy with the van filled with criminal bricabrac ranging from guns and drugs and surveillance equipment to, apparently, bags of clean urine. I loved that guy.
It’s going to be bigger, both in size and scope.
Sayeth Hawley:
Last year, you could call it a four-hander — Allison Tolman, Colin Hanks, Billy Bob Thornton, and Martin Freeman were really the core. We’ve probably doubled that in terms of the characters that we’re really invested in this time. Their stories are all connected.
Sayeth Hawley again:
“The scope of the story- telling this season is a lot bigger, it has more of an epic feel to it,” says showrunner Noah Hawley, who adds that the earlier time period and even more rural setting gives the show an almost Western-like quality. “It’s not the ’70s in a Boogie Nights kind of way,” he assures.
So, there’s that.
This all sounds… hmm, how would one describe all this news?
Yup, that’ll do it.
