FARGO Showrunner Noah Hawley Says Season 2 Will Be "A Lot Bigger"

The FX original series Fargo was my favorite TV show of 2014. Yep, I liked it better than Game of Thrones, better than True Detective (just barely), and better than anything else that graced the small screen last year. Showrunner Noah Hawley masterfully expanded the universe that the Coen Brothers created in their classic film, and while some of the show's characters bore similarities to the characters in the movie, Hawley made them distinct enough that they became characters I loved spending time with each week (or ones I loved to hate).

Chronologically, the first season took place after the movie, but the upcoming second season will take place long before it, in the late 70s. According to Hawley, it will follow a young Lou Solverson and detail the often-referred-to incident that happened in Sioux Falls, North Dakota. But now Hawley has given fans some more information about what to expect when the second season debuts later this year. In a recent interview with EW, Hawley says,

The scope of the storytelling this season is a lot bigger—thematically, on a character level, and story-wise. It has more of an epic feel to it. That’s exciting. Within that expansion, we’re still holding onto that Fargo tone. My feeling was that Joel and Ethan never repeat themselves, so the show would be false if we just tried to do the same thing again. We should take their example.

It’s about a small-town married couple who find themselves caught in the middle of a war between the last of the mom-and-pop crime syndicates and an out-of-town new corporate crime syndicate. It’s about how the couple manages that situation.

Last year, you could call it a four-hander—Allison Tolman, Colin Hanks, Billy Bob Thornton and Martin Freeman were really the core. We’ve probably doubled that in terms of the characters that we’re really invested in this time. Their stories are all connected. You’re essentially seeing different perspectives on the same story.

North Dakota is the frontier, even in ’79. It’s a frontier mentality, and there is a Western feel to [the season]. It’s not the ’70s in a Boogie Nights way, but it was the hangover, the morning after the ’60s, the moment before Ronald Reagan came in with his “shining city on a hill.” The idea is this was the lowest moment in American history since the Depression. We also have a Miller’s Crossing component—Gabriel Byrne was caught in a war between two sort-of rival gangs; we have a similar dynamic.

Part of the reason the first season was so fantastic was because there was a wonderful sense of surprise to it...the shock factor that Hawley was actually able to pull off what sounded like a terrible idea. (Similar to the way Phil Lord and Chris Miller have made hit after hit from what probably should have been disasters.) It sounds like the showrunner has a great sense of where he wants the new season to go, and I can't wait to see if season two lives up to the astounding quality they achieved with the first season.

What do you think? Are you looking forward to the second season of Fargo?