Summary
Fargo ratchets up the tension considerably in Episode 3, laying the groundwork for a violent confrontation to follow.
The first two episodes of Fargo Season 5 were, naturally, about setup. They introduced the characters and their connections to each other, claimed to be based on a true story even though they’re not, and set the ball rolling for a rather demented story of home defense, double lives, male entitlement, and female empowerment. Episode 3, “The Paradox of Intermediate Transactions”, feels turbo-charged in its freedom from expositional responsibilities. Dot prepares to defend her new home and life, much to the visible horror of her mild-mannered husband, while Roy’s forces, including his idiot failson Gator, attempt to capture her.
But there’s plenty more going on besides this, so let’s do our best to unpack everything — including some potential occultism and a 500-year flashback to religious, rural Wales.
Fargo Season 5 Episode 3 Recap
For Services Rendered
Ole Munch is owed some money. As we saw at the end of Episode 2, in order to leave Gator and Roy a message, he killed Gator’s partner outside a gas station, forcing Gator to do what he apparently does best — run to Daddy for help.
Roy wants to keep things under wraps. He’s too busy trying to kidnap a woman and clandestinely arm what I think is intended to be an uprising — he’s illegally acquiring weapons to sell to his second wife’s father so he can “take the country back” — to have law enforcement sniffing around his activities. So, he instructs Gator to cover up the murder, inform the man’s wife of the tragic accident, and sleep with his hammer cocked — if he sleeps at all. Ole Munch is dangerous and he’s out for blood, and he isn’t going to stop until he gets it in large quantities.
Roy skulks home to his second wife, who offers to cosplay as an “angry feminist” for Roy’s sexual pleasure, but he’s too focused on Dot to bother sticking it to the left in a literal sense.
Wales, 1522
Fargo is known for being weird, but even by the show’s usual standards, it was a bit of a surprise to see a title card informing us that Fargo Season 5, Episode 3 is depicting events in Wales, in 1522. It’s treated as an explanatory flashback for Ole Munch’s origins, but it can’t be, can it? The same guy who was a rural “sin eater” 500 years ago can’t also be a present-day hitman, can he? Well, that’ll depend on how much this season wants to lean into occultism and dark magic. But Ole does sacrifice a goat later in the episode, which is usually a bad sign.
Other than that he shacks up with an elderly woman who might be his actual mother or might just as easily be someone who has realized that when a strange man takes up residence in your home and creepily states, “I live here now,” it’s better to be thankful for the company than to ask too many questions.
Guns, Lots of Guns
Meanwhile, it’s Halloween in Scandia, where Dot is preparing for an upcoming war. After swapping around all the neighborhood’s signage, she lures Wayne to Gun World on the pretext of acquiring embellishments for a “zombie hunter” costume and has him purchase five grand’s worth of firearms, including a shotgun, an assault rifle, and a Desert Eagle, of all things. However, there’s a week-long waiting period before she can acquire the guns so that the state can verify she isn’t psychotic — if only they knew — so she has to make do with some lighter purchases, including pepper spray, in the meantime.
Gator steals evidence
It was an inspired choice to cast Joe Keery as a weaselly deputy sheriff who listens to metal in his bedroom — full of posters and paraphernalia, like a kid’s room — while repeating “I’m a winner” to himself over and over again. There has been no evidence to support this claim yet, but that doesn’t stop Gator from pretending it’s true any chance he gets. The next one comes at the North Dakota Highway Patrol office, where he steals evidence from Donny Ireland’s case box in full view of Witt, who is on crutches but is still unwilling to let Iron Mike’s death go.
Witt, the closest thing the season has offered to an everyman POV character, hates Gator, which is understandable. He also smells a rat in the case, so he begins conducting his own investigation into Dot.
Wolf in sheep’s clothing
Iron Mike’s death didn’t go unnoticed by Indira either, whose investigation into it takes her to the offices of Lorraine. However, the trip is fruitless, since Lorraine wants to downplay any suspicions around her daughter-in-law or potential dangers she might be facing so that she can handle the matter “internally” using a specialist crew out of Vegas. Danish Graves — that name! — has also hired an ex-CIA private investigator to look into Dot, so her former life may very well experience some additional scrutiny sooner rather than later.
Lorraine’s an obvious caricature of the obscenely wealthy, but her rant to Indira about the function of cops as essentially gatekeepers with a mandate to keep the riffraff out of high society is uncomfortably close to accurate.
How does Fargo Season 5 Episode 3 end?
At the end of the episode, quite by chance, Gator and his team spot Dot and her family heading inside after an evening of trick-or-treating, setting up a major Home Alone-style confrontation for next week.
And in a clever editing trick, Ole Munch, covered in mud and goat blood, creeps naked into a house. It’s supposed to look like he’s following Dot into her home, but the door’s different and opens the other way, so he’s actually somewhere else. Where? We’ll have to find out next week.
What did you think of Fargo Season 5 Episode 3? Let us know in the comments.
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