Sharp-eyed viewers of the new season of FX’sFargomay have noticed a lengthy homage to an iconic scene from the show’s cinematic predecessor. CreatorNoah Hawleyconfirms thatJuno Temple’s shocking kidnapping in the fifth-season premiere was a deliberate reference to the abduction of Jean Lundegaard.
In a new interview withEntertainment Weekly, Hawley describes how the scene was built around the scene in1996’sFargoin which Lundegaard (Kristin Rudrüd) is abducted from her home, in broad daylight, by criminals Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi) and Gaear Grimsrud (Peter Stormare). Says Hawley, “We literally recreated the beginning of the kidnapping with Juno while she’s knitting and watching the morning show. We designed the house not to be the same, but to have the same points of view of the porch outside and the guy coming up and it was really, I must say, after 41 hours in Fargo, it was kind of amazing to be behind the camera and filming a scene from the movie.”
He goes on to note that the season was built around the original film, but flipped to showcase an underseen character: while the film centers around Jean’s husband Jerry (William H. Macy), the two criminals he hires to kidnap her, and the cop (Frances McDormand) who sees through their lies, Jean herself is a minor player, and is eventually killed off-screen. Not so for Temple’s Dot Lyon: says Hawley, “I thought that was an interesting opportunity to say, ‘Okay, well, let’s put the audience in a position where they’re watching something they’ve seen before, and then their brains are going to tell them what happens next….’ But we’re going to do a different version of that, and the story is actually the story of the wife.”
What’s Happening in ‘Fargo’ Season Five?
Set in 2019,Fargo’s fifth season kicks off when mild-mannered homemaker Dot Lyon (Temple) gets arrested for accidentally tasing a police officer. That brings her to the attention of corrupt sheriff Roy Tillman (Jon Hamm), a figure from Dot’s shadowy past, who dispatches the mysterious criminal Ole Munch (Sam Spruell) to bring her to him. But Dot is not so easily abducted, and while she eventually escapes from her captors, she’s ignited a firestorm of vengeance and violence. Her husband Wayne (David Rysdahl) and daughter Scotty (Sienna King) are drawn into the madness, while Tillman and his sinister son Gator (Joe Keery) are on her trail - and the betrayed Munch is after all of them. Meanwhile, Wayne’s wealthy mother Lorraine (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and her aide-de-camp Danish Graves (Dave Foley) want Dot gone - and police officers Indira Olmstead (Richa Moorjani) and Witt Farr (Lamorne Morris) just want to help.
So far, reviews forFargo’s fifth season have been positive, with Collider’sChase Hutchinsonsingling out Temple for praise, saying she “brings not only the perfect comedic timing to deliver some real zingers but also the necessary charm to ground the chaos that begins unfolding”. And this may not be the end of the series; ina recent interview, Hawley said that he had many ideas for future seasons: “I haven’t run out of ways to tell these stories. Why wouldn’t I keep going?”
Fargo’s fifth season iscurrently airing on FX.
Various chronicles of deception, intrigue, and murder in and around frozen Minnesota. All of these tales mysteriously lead back one way or another to Fargo, North Dakota.
