Summary
- Fargo season 5 concludes with the FBI successfully capturing Sheriff Roy Tillman, who is betrayed by his own son and arrested.
- Gator turns against his father, Roy, after realizing he will never receive the love and affection he craves from him.
- The finale explores the theme of debts and forgiveness, illustrating that bad people’s debts should be paid while good people’s debts should be forgiven.
Warning: This article contains spoilers for Fargo season 5.
Fargo season 5 wraps up all its ongoing storylines in the finale, including the culmination of Dot Lyon’s fight to escape the clutches of Sheriff Roy Tillman. Fargo season 5 started out with a similar setup to the original Coen brothers movie, with a Midwestern housewife being abducted from her home in a complicated criminal plot arranged by her husband. This bungled kidnapping drew Dot – formerly known as Nadine – back into an intense conflict with her abusive ex, Sheriff Tillman.
The various plot threads in Fargo season 5 all came together in the penultimate episode. A military convoy arrived at Roy’s ranch to bring him to justice, Dot escaped from his barn to fight back, and Ole Munch remained hellbent on exacting revenge. Fargo season 5, episode 10, “Bisquik,” managed to conclude all those storylines in wildly unexpected ways.
Fargo Season 5 Episode 9 Recap: Lorraine’s Fight Against Roy’s Militia & 9 Other Reveals
With action-packed storylines bringing all the characters together, the penultimate episode of Fargo season 5 is building up to an explosive finale.
How The FBI Managed To Defeat Sheriff Roy Tillman
After a season-long effort to dethrone the Stark County constitutional sheriff, the FBI finally manages to bring Roy down in the finale. At first, it seems as though Roy might escape. After Dot shoots him in the stomach with a shotgun blast, she’s mistaken for one of his henchmen and surrenders to the approaching officers. During the commotion, Roy scrambles to his feet and makes it to a nearby tunnel that will take him safely outside his compound. However, he’s surprised to find that there are FBI agents waiting to arrest him at the other end of the tunnel.
In the penultimate episode of the season, Lorraine called in the cavalry that arrived to raid Roy’s ranch. But they got there too fast to be acting on Lorraine’s orders alone. Roy deduced that the FBI agents were already on their way to take him down before they got Lorraine’s call, meaning that someone within his operation betrayed him. As Roy is seized and arrested, Agents Meyer and Joaquin smugly look down on him, enjoy the satisfaction of bringing him to justice, and, to really twist the knife, they reveal who sold him out: his own son, Gator.
Fargo season 5 was nominated for three Golden Globes: Best Miniseries or Television Film, Best Actress for Juno Temple, and Best Actor for Jon Hamm.
Why Gator Helped Turn In Roy
At the beginning of the Fargo season 5 finale, Gator is still bound, blindfolded, and stranded out in the snow after his disappointed dad abandoned him in the penultimate episode. Throughout the season, Gator has served Roy as his loyal right-hand man, doing whatever was asked of him. But, time and time again, Roy is shown to be completely unappreciative of his son’s efforts. Gator turned his dad over to the FBI when he’d finally had enough of his abuse and realized that, no matter what he did, his dad would never extend the love and affection he was craving.
Every Death At The Tillman Ranch Explained (Including Witt Farr’s)
The Fargo season 5 finale picks up where the previous episode left off as a war broke out between Roy’s militia and the FBI convoy seeking justice. As Roy tries to stay out of the FBI agents’ line of sight, he bumps into his father-in-law. Roy’s father-in-law began questioning his authority in last week’s episode, and he continues to mock and belittle Roy in this week’s finale. Eventually, Roy has had enough of his father-in-law’s insolence and coldly kills him by slitting his throat. Roy’s father-in-law is the first major character to die in this battle, but not the last.
After diving on Dot to protect her from the FBI agents’ gunfire, Witt Farr follows Roy to his secret tunnel, where he plans to escape from the compound. As Witt arrives in the tunnel, Roy hides behind the door and sneaks up behind him. There’s a brief standoff before Roy lunges at Witt with his knife. Witt fires and misses, but Roy manages to plunge the knife into Witt, killing him. Witt’s memory is honored later in the episode when Dot and Olmstead visit his grave to commemorate the first anniversary of his heroic death.
How Lorraine & Olmstead Got Revenge Against Roy Tillman
After a one-year time jump, Lorraine and Olmstead visit Roy at a federal penitentiary in Thompson, Illinois, where he’s doing time. Seeing Roy behind bars could’ve been a satisfying enough revenge itself, but Lorraine goes one step further to really make Roy suffer for his crimes. She reveals that she’s the biggest donor to the Federalist Society – the organization in charge of decisions involving the court system, like choosing judges – and she’s been using her influence to deny Roy’s appeals and keep him in jail.
And not only that, Lorraine has also started a fund to help “certain prisoners” whose debt is accruing interest and displacing their families while they’re behind bars. She uses this fund to help out the toughest, meanest inmates in Roy’s prison to get them on her side in the conflict with Roy. These inmates will mercilessly beat Roy for the rest of his sentence, because Lorraine wants to make Roy feel the abuse and fear that he made his wives feel.
Why Ole Munch Returned To Dot’s House
In the final scene of Fargo season 5, Dot and Scotty come home from the grocery store to find Ole Munch waiting in the living room. Dot gives a compassionate speech about how “debts should be forgiven,” which inspires a change of heart in Ole Munch. Suddenly, he’s not so desperate to get revenge on “the tiger.” As Ole Munch helps out with dinner and eats a delicious biscuit, he realizes he can finally get past his narrow-minded quest for vengeance to see that there are plenty of good people in the world.
The Real Meaning Of Fargo Season 5’s Ending
Thematically, Fargo season 5 has been all about debts and whether they should be repaid or forgiven. Roy felt that Dot owed him a lifetime of matrimony after escaping from the marriage, so he sent kidnappers to her house in a bid to force her to repay that debt, kicking off the whole plot. Lorraine runs a successful debt collection agency that she keeps afloat by ruthlessly overcharging her debtors. She uses the clout that gives her to get people to do her bidding, like hiring Olmstead as her head of security or sending three Roy Tillmans to Stark County.
Ole Munch felt that Roy owed him for welching on their deal and Dot owed him for killing his partner-in-crime (albeit in self-defense). For Ole Munch, collecting on one of these debts means getting revenge against one of his many enemies. The message of the Fargo season 5 finale is that bad people’s debts should be paid, like Roy’s debt to society, but good people’s debts should be forgiven. After Dot welcomes Ole Munch into her home and gives him a delicious dinner, he has a Grinch-like change of heart and chooses to forgive her.
