All posts by RebeccaLewis20

Yep, Season 4 is first — set in the 1950s during the Kansas City crime syndicate wars. After that comes Season 2, which takes place in 1979 and covers the Gerhardt family and the Sioux Falls Massacre (you even meet a young Lou Solverson there). Then it’s the movie Fargo, set in 1987. Season 1 happens in 2006, about 19 years later, and Season 3 jumps ahead to 2010. So if you’re going by the story’s timeline, it’s- S4 ~ S2 ~ Movie ~ S1 ~ S3. Season 5’s timeline is a bit fuzzy — it’s modern-day, so it sits after S3.

Yeah, that’s pretty much the beating heart of Fargo- ordinary-ish people making one bad choice, then doubling down instead of owning up — and watching everything spiral out of control. The movie sets the template with Jerry Lundegaard, whose petty scheming explodes into multiple murders. Season 1 mirrors that with Lester, who could’ve just told the cops what happened with Malvo but instead lets pride and fear push him into darker and darker choices. Each season riffs on that idea in different ways. Season 2 has the Gerhardt family and the Blumquists — the Gerhardts try to hold their crumbling empire together through violence. The Blumquists just want to protect their own little bubble, but both dig themselves deeper. Season 3 has Emmit and Ray Stussy’s feud turning petty grievances into full-on catastrophe. Even when characters start out decent or harmless, once they decide to 'manage' a crime themselves instead of facing the truth, they’re doomed. It’s not just a plot device — it’s the show’s moral engine. Fargo is about how denial, greed, and ego can turn an avoidable mess into a bloody disaster when the universe seems to have a talent for putting wolves in your path.

Yeah, the show dips into the supernatural now and then, but it’s never spelled out 100%. It’s more like these strange, almost mythical elements drift into the story. Season 1 has that rain of fish — straight out of the Bible or a tall tale. Season 2 has the infamous UFO sighting during the massacre, which is either an alien encounter or just a bizarre coincidence nobody can explain. Season 3 plays with more symbolic weirdness with V.M. Varga feeling almost like a demon in a business suit. The Coens themselves always liked mixing realism with the surreal — think of A Serious Man or the dream sequences in The Big Lebowski — so the series kind of carries that over. The 'supernatural' in Fargo isn’t ghosts or spells; it’s more like the universe winking at you, or shoving something impossible into the middle of an otherwise grounded crime story.

The Fargo TV series starts with the 1996 film, but it borrows DNA from other Coen Brothers movies too. You can see the dark absurdity and botched crime energy of Blood Simple and Burn After Reading, the small-town moral unraveling of A Serious Man, and the wandering, almost folkloric storytelling style of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. There’s even a little No Country for Old Men in the way unstoppable forces (like Malvo or Hanzee) crash into everyday lives. Theme-wise, Fargo is obsessed with moral choice. The show keeps asking- what happens when decent people get pushed into bad decisions? There’s also a strong undercurrent of fate vs. free will — the idea that you might just be caught in some cosmic joke you can’t escape. The Midwestern politeness is a constant counterpoint to bursts of violence, creating that strange tonal mix of cozy and horrifying. Greed, pride, and human weakness drive most of the plots, but there’s always that flicker of hope that decency can survive — embodied in the show’s various 'Marge Gunderson' types, who try to do the right thing even when the snow is up to their knees and the bodies keep piling up.

That’s like asking which blizzard is the coldest — they’re all miserable in their own way. But if I had to pick the worst, I’d go with Lorne Malvo and V.M. Varga. Malvo is just pure chaos — he enjoys dismantling people’s lives for sport, like a cat batting around mice. He’s clever, patient, and remorseless, which makes him terrifying. Varga, on the other hand, is a different breed of evil- insidious, manipulative, and more about rot from the inside out. He doesn’t just kill you — he erodes everything you stand on until you collapse, and then he feasts on the remains. Hanzee is up there too — he’s a tragic figure, but once he flips, he’s unstoppable and merciless. Jerry Lundegaard is more pathetic than evil, but his cowardice causes so much unnecessary bloodshed that it’s hard to forgive. Carl and Gaear? Dangerous, sure, but they’re blunt instruments compared to the others. Roy Tillman is awful in a more grounded, real-world way — he’s the kind of bad guy you could encounter, which maybe makes him even scarier. So, worst? Malvo for the sheer predatory thrill of it, Varga for the creeping corruption, and Hanzee for the way his personal pain transforms into a storm that destroys everyone in his path.