Fresh off the “Massacre at Sioux Falls,” at the start of Fargo‘s season 2 finale, we’re lulled into a false sense of security by a montage of dead Gerhardts. But it’s not long before we see the Blumquists on the run from Hanzee, getting yet another innocent bystander killed. As “War Pigs” jolts us from our slumber and Ed collects a bullet from Hanzee’s rifle in his chest, Ozzy Osbourne’s macabre yell seems to indicate that death has yet to leave Sioux Falls for the night.
The music of Fargo has played quite the prominent role in this season, mostly dominated by cover songs of 70s hits that seem to match the scenes even better than the originals. Here, Noah Hawley and Adam Arkin expertly use “War Pigs” as a chase song for Ed & Peggy as they flee certain death, connecting them in the universe (as well as time period) with Mike Milligan, who’s got the song playing in his car as he approaches the near-empty Gerhardt compound. For Milligan, it’s more of a victory march; after witnessing the scene at the Motor Motel, he understands himself to have conquered the northern territory. He’s just left to perform one act of kindness…and one act of cruelty.
As the Blumquists flee a scarred Hanzee’s dogged pursuit into a supermarket, finding refuge in the cooler, the couple has reached the end of their rope. It’s only here, dying in a cooler, amid the hanging animal carcasses, that Ed realizes that the life he wants will never make Peggy happy. But even as he tells Peggy, “All I’m ever going to want is to get back to what we had,” Peggy is lost in her delusion, coping with their dire situation by drawing on an old TV movie, and hallucinating. When she finally comes out to find not Hanzee, but Lou Solverson and Ben Schmidt, Ed’s death becomes real, and she finally loses control.
Kirsten Dunst’s performance as Peggy Blumquist is certainly one of the show’s highlights—for the first few episodes we hated her with a passion, only to be moved to sympathy as we understand her motivations, and finally achieving a removed empathy as we come to understand her plight yet acknowledge she handled it as about as poorly as one could. Noah Hawley certainly wrote the character with meticulous detail, but it’s Dunst’s performance, immersive and nuanced, that brings Peggy’s existential dread to life. In Lou Solverson’s prowler, Peggy provides further context for her angst, rationalizing the fuel for the delusions that led her to drive home with a Gerhardt in her windshield and start cooking dinner. She seems to have a point about the lack of agency available to women in 1979, though it’s rendered irrelevant by the scores of dead people she left in her wake, something Solverson is quick to remind her.
When we next see Hanzee, he’s patched up, watching two deaf kids play catch at a park and getting new papers from a mysterious figure monologuing about the rise and fall of Tripoli. It seems to confirm that Hanzee betrayed the Gerhardts on behalf of the Kansas City family, but when the mystery man asks if Hanzee will seek retribution against Kansas City, he seems to answer confusingly in the affirmative. As he storms onto the field to seemingly knife the two teen bullies now attacking the deaf children, his motivations are less clear than they were during the massacre.
Back in Kansas City, Mike Milligan returns to “corporate,” only to realize just how corporate it is. Rather than the parade he’d hoped for, he’s shown his cubicle, told to cut his hair, ditch his bolo tie, and learn golf. Gail from HR is going to give him some forms to fill out—health insurance, 401(k)—and quarterly projections and revenue statements are due on the 13th. Welcome to the ’80s, Mike.
In Luverne, the Solverson clan is intact; Betsy, who didn’t get the sugar pill, is going to survive this season, at least, and Hank Laarson is all patched-up. Laarson and Solverson decide to just pretend they never saw that UFO that saved Solverson’s life, and we get the surprisingly boring answer for the bizarre symbols all over Laarson’s office. No, he wasn’t possessed by aliens, or losing his mind to dementia; he’s just a conlanger. Good for him.
As tense and exciting as this season was, it’s a bit of a letdown to see it fizzle out with a whimper, Lou and Betsy in bed together, quoting Walter Winchell. But after all they’ve been through, I suppose they’ve earned it.