FX’s stellar small-screen drama Fargo wrapped its second season last night. Critical response to the series on the whole has been unanimous – it’s the best show since time began – and therefore, the network is happily giving its creator Noah Hawley space to craft a solid third season. How much space? Over a year.
Here’s what Hawley told The Verge:
“It’s a winter show, for better or worse, and… there isn’t time to shoot another year before this winter is over. I’ve written the first hour and we’re about halfway through breaking the season, and we’ll be writing over the next few months… we’ll be shooting in November and hopefully back on the air in the spring of 2017.”
Viewers are in for a long, barren Fargo-less winter of their own now, something they’ll be used to. After all, a whole 18 months passed between the first two seasons. Now that the network knows the wait is worth it – the show’s scooped up every small-screen gong – Hawley and his team of writers are able to take their time in cultivating a terrific storyline. And, as promised, it will return to contemporary times and dabble with a very contemporary issue that everyone can relate to:
“I like the idea what we’re now living in a very selfie-oriented culture… it feels like a social dynamic that is very antithetical to the Lutheran pragmatism of the region. So many of our crime stories are based on the difficulty that people have expressing themselves and communicating… I like the idea of setting up these pragmatic and humble people against the culture of narcissism and [seeing] what that generates for us, story-wise.”
Now that we know for sure season 3 will leap back to the present day, does this mean the return of Molly Solverson? Prepare to have your heart broken by Hawley’s reply.
“None of the main characters from our first year will be back for our third year. As much as I love those actors and characters, the dangers of bringing them back and putting them through their paces for another sort of crazy case is that then the artifice of the whole thing becomes too clear and suddenly it just feels like we’re doing it because it’s fun and we like them, but we’ve broken our own rules.”
Well, gosh darnit. That’s a bit of a blow, but, we knew it was coming by the whole “anthology series” description. While that’s all we know right now, we’ll keep you posted with any new developments on the next season of Fargo.