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By Sophie Lloyd
Pop Culture and Entertainment Reporter
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After a three-year wait, the critically acclaimed crime anthology series Fargo is back on our screens.
Based on the 1996 Coen Brothers' film of the same name, the fifth season includes the signature dark humor, outlandish twists and Minnesotan accents that Fargo fans know and love.
While previous seasons have been set anywhere from 1950 to 2011, Fargo Season 5 embraces the pre-pandemic, post-Trump election era to explore the idea of "Minnesota nice"—and what happens when polite society breaks down in a fraught political climate.
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"What we've started to see over the last few years is that people have stopped being nice, passive-aggressive, and become just aggressive," director Noah Hawley told Newsweek.
"So what happens to those people who thought they lived in a world where everyone was actually friendly, and now they realize that there aren't that many actual friendly people."
In a Newsweek exclusive, Hawley talks exploring a divided society without being "political," and why every main character in Season 5 would vote Republican.
What is Fargo Season 5 About?
Set in 2019, Season 5 follows Dorothy "Dot" Lyon (Juno Temple), a suburban mom and housewife whose dark past threatens to destroy her happy family life with husband Wayne (David Rysdahl) and daughter Scotty (Sienna King).
Corrupt sheriff Roy Tillman (Jon Hamm) and his over-confident but unintelligent son Gator Tillman (Joe Keery) are just two of the players on the hunt for Dot, while her suspicious mother-in-law—millionaire debt collector Lorraine Lyon (Jennifer Jason Leigh)—and her fixer Danish Greaves (Dave Foley) are on hand to make the situation more complicated.
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Throw in two good cops—played by Lamorne Morris and Richa Moorjani—an oddball hitman (Sam Spruell) and the snowy Upper Mid-West, and you've got everything you need for a classic season of Fargo.
While Season 5 grapples with more timely topics than previous entries, at its core is the concept of "Minnesota nice," the stereotype that Minnesotans are eerily polite yet extremely passive-aggressive.
"In polite society, people don't bend, really they just break," Hawley said. "Keep up this stiff upper lip, this friendly demeanor, even though it's killing them."
Although only set four years into the past, the latest season still features that quaint sense of Americana that has become a Fargo trademark.
"You're in this sort of Fargo universe," Hawley said. "The past is very much alive. It's kind of 2003 and 1962. There's the music and the quaint decency of people that feels like a throwback.
"So even though it's contemporary, we're still we're still carrying around that sense of America."
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'We're Not Trying To Be Political'
Although Season 5 is just as offbeat and darkly humorous as previous outings, it's also set the closest to the present. While some of the season's wilder moments are reminiscent of Home Alone and Die Hard—comparisons that Hawley agrees with—others eerily echo today's political climate.
"We're not trying to be political," Hawley said. "I think the idea is looking at society. And what happens in a society when the sense of the mutual agreement we make to live in this society together starts to break down."
Misogyny, toxic masculinity, religious dominance, freedom of speech and far-right conspiracy theories are key themes throughout the season, from Lorraine Lyon's gun-wielding family Christmas card (a nod to Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie) to Roy Tillman's fundamentalist Christian rants about wives obeying their husbands.
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When it comes to the politics of his characters, Hawley believes that almost every main character would vote Republican.
"Certainly Lorraine the Queen of Debt is in the sort of old-school billionaire class of Republican politics," he said.
"I think Roy and his family are more MAGA Republicans, but also [I can see] Lorraine and her husband, being this whole new conservative, more mainstream.
"I just wanted to explore that divide between the sense that as society evolves, people are taking some care and responsibility for each other, and the 'we're all in it alone' thinking."
Fargo Season 5 airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET/PT on FX and streams the following day on Hulu.
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