Looking back across Season 2, the first four episodes were slow when compared to Season 1 which started with an action-packed pilot. But this penultimate episode hammers home how slow and steady building of the plot in the first half has led to an explosive second half. This episode, clearly the story's climax, brings all the plot threads together with chaotic results.
First, there's what the police do with Ed and Peggy, using their deal with the KA mafia to bring it down. Unfortunately, the spanner in the works is the Gerhardts, ruin everything. The final showdown is the most intense bit of the whole season but also so, so stupid. That's what the flying saucer highlights in its mocking way. The spotlights shine down on the fighting and dying humans and faced with this pathetic, tragic picture of humanity, people killing each other for nothing, it decides it's seen enough. It's a damning statement about the nature of humanity. In any other show, the flying saucer would be a massive wtf moment that just wouldn't work, but this is Fargo, and it fits right in.
The big question that I'm sure will be debated on forums for years is the one posed by the narrator: Why did Hanzee do what he did and when did he decode to do it? Was it a well planned did of rage at what the encounter at the bar had made him realise? That he was a servant of the people who had taken the land from his people and were now fighting each other over it? Did he look at this and think, why am I the servant of one side when they're all the same, when they all see me in the same way? That's what I think, but it was a deliberate choice of the creators to leave the answer open-ended.
It's a masterpiece. Everything comes together in such a great way, making this on par with the previous episode, which is an incredible feat.
First, there's what the police do with Ed and Peggy, using their deal with the KA mafia to bring it down. Unfortunately, the spanner in the works is the Gerhardts, ruin everything. The final showdown is the most intense bit of the whole season but also so, so stupid. That's what the flying saucer highlights in its mocking way. The spotlights shine down on the fighting and dying humans and faced with this pathetic, tragic picture of humanity, people killing each other for nothing, it decides it's seen enough. It's a damning statement about the nature of humanity. In any other show, the flying saucer would be a massive wtf moment that just wouldn't work, but this is Fargo, and it fits right in.
The big question that I'm sure will be debated on forums for years is the one posed by the narrator: Why did Hanzee do what he did and when did he decode to do it? Was it a well planned did of rage at what the encounter at the bar had made him realise? That he was a servant of the people who had taken the land from his people and were now fighting each other over it? Did he look at this and think, why am I the servant of one side when they're all the same, when they all see me in the same way? That's what I think, but it was a deliberate choice of the creators to leave the answer open-ended.
It's a masterpiece. Everything comes together in such a great way, making this on par with the previous episode, which is an incredible feat.