Warning: Spoilers follow for the first eight episodes of Fargo: Season 3 and Legion: Season 1...
Last week on Fargo, we saw Mary Elizabeth Winstead's Nikki find a fortunate ally in the form of Season 1's Mr. Wrench (Russell Harvard) as she once again evaded certain death after a brutal battle in the snowy woods. We'll have to see what fate awaits Nikki, now that the story's jumped ahead by three months, in Wednesday's new episode, the penultimate Season 3 episode, "Aporia," when it airs at 10/9c on FX.
I had the chance to speak to Fargo and Legion creator Noah Hawley at the ATX Television Festival this week, where I asked him all about tenacious Nikki's tendency to cheat death, Gloria's lost and adrift nature, the supernatural elements that we experienced in the bowling alley last week, and - finally - a little bit about what David Haller's journey will be like in Legion: Season 2.
IGN: First off, I want to tell you how much I love Nikki. With each episode this season, I've grown to love her more because she's constantly showing me that she's not what I assumed she was. Which was, initially, a femme fatale-type who was probably using Ray to get her hands on some cash. Was it always the plan to make her lean away from that archetype?
Noah Hawley: Yeah, I mean I went through, in the writing process and in the room - we gamed it out in different ways and I think there was a gravitational pull toward her running a con on him [Ray] and I just found that uninteresting, honestly. Everyone always says that conflict is drama and I agree but I also don't think you need drama everywhere. Or conflict everywhere. Like with Patrick Wilson and Cristin Milioti last year. I mean, she had cancer but they never fought and there was never any conflict between them. I think with a story that has as much violence as we have you want to give the audience a place where they feel safe. And something they love. And the idea that she loves Ray, you know what I mean? She's the first person in his life who thinks he's the better brother. We love her for that.
Hawley: That's an act of pure goodness, and knowing as I did what was going to happen to Ray and where she was going to need to go after that, and understanding those expectations would be there -- if you see someone who looks like her and someone who looks like Ray, he's the mark -- and to not have it play out that way, it makes it so every episode you're going "wait, what is she all about?" And then you sort of lean into it. You know, once he's dead and she's in the police interview room, she's given an out. She could say "Yeah, he beat me." She could betray him at any moment and she just refuses to do it. Now we got a good old fashioned vengeance story going on.
IGN: Did you have an idea for her backstory and how she came up? And what crime she committed to go to prison in the first place?
Hawley: No, I never really needed to do that. And we didn't really need to talk about it. And Mary didn't seem to want to know what here crimes were, that Nikki was on parole for. I mean, there was a scene that we cut from Episode 5 or 6 with Ray's boss at the parole office talking about what she went in for, but it just didn't seem like we needed to know that information. When I found my way to this bridge playing duo, this identity of her as a strategist, and how we could realize very quickly that she was the brains of the operation but also that this sense of strategy - she was going to need it later. And I always like the idea of having a character that fate might throw into a position that they're uniquely qualified to handle. And so I think you're starting to see in Episode 8, and then coming in Episode 9, that this is really her coming into her own now.
IGN: I think I've thought that Nikki was done for probably two of three times on the season so far. I just thought "she's dead." Or "she's going to die." But she survives and now, with this last escape, it seemed like she was being protected by mystical forces. Was it always the plan to have this Eastern Block mysticism in Season 3? The Jewish folklore aspects?
Hawley: This season was a really serendipitous collision of things that I wanted to do with the moment that we're in. The whole Cossack story was fueled by my grandmother's story - my mother's mom - and how she escaped from the Ukraine in the middle of the night with her parents and their ten kids being pursued by the Cossacks. And then them coming to America. So I was thinking of exploring that with the Yuri character. And then we also got into the whole Russia hacking and stuff like that. All that stuff was in the mix, the idea of really looking at how shielded we are here, on some level, from the real carnage that occurs in countries around the world. This idea that Stalin starved 20 million people. Or 20 million Russians died in World War II. So it was looking at all those elements and then using it with what I've read and the research I've done. And I came across the story of Rabbi Nachman and going to the mass graves and it all just sort of came together for me in a way. Obviously, we had a UFO last year and it just seemed like these people are in the wilderness and they're so far away from everything and there's a literal and metaphorical quality to it. But it does feel like something that fits into a Coen Brothers universe.
Hawley: There's the joke that Joel and Ethan used to describe this region of American and that's Siberia with family restaurants. Which is something that I read as I was breaking the first season. So on some level there's always been this Russian connection to the show. And certainly, the Norwegian and Swedish connection too. The Nordic Hinterland aspects of the great north. And so much of the accent too. And Peter Stormare's character in the movie is clearly an immigrant from Sweden or somewhere over there. There is an old world sense. This sense that civilization has taken hold within the frozen tundra, and yet if you walk out into the woods it's old world out there. It's old world America but it's still elemental old world.
IGN: There's also an element of that world colliding with technology this season. Specifically because it's set in 2011, the social media aspect. But it's also if you're protected if you're off the grid, like Gloria. If you're not online, someone like Varga can't find you. And then you had Emmit's lawyer literally get killed because he pushed a few keys on a computer.
Hawley: I think it's physical and mental protection on some level. This idea of "Minnesota nice" as something that sprung up in an isolated frozen region. People developed this heightened sense of community because there were so few of them. And it's combined with this Lutheran humility that goes "I'm not going to talk about my feelings and I'm not going to embarrass you by asking about your feelings." It's created this regional sense that we explore on the show. Of course now we live in a world where people have 300 friends on Facebook and you post pictures of what you ate for breakfast, or a thought that you tweeted, and there's this overshare culture. And what does that do to the region? And for Gloria, especially as a woman who feels out of time, she's struggling with what she feels about any of it. She's not ready to say something yet. She's getting there but she's not ready yet. I didn't want to be preachy or anything, but I did want it to be an element of the story. You know, it took Patrick Wilson, literally, 10 hours to speak his mind last season. I think we could all do with a little more thinking and listening and a little less speaking.
IGN: When Gloria met Ray Wise's Paul during her trip to Los Angeles, we didn't know that he'd be a recurring supernatural figure. But she was still drawn to him more than someone her own age. Not that there were romantic feelings present, but if he were a suitor it seemed like she was more at home with someone old fashioned like him.
Hawley: I think she's looking for wisdom certainly. I think she's had the rug pulled out from under her and the world she thought she lived in isn't the world she's living in. And you're not going to come to a deeper understanding about the meaning the universe by reading 140 characters that someone just thought up. We thought of it, on some level, in the writers' room as the three Rabbis who Michael Stuhlbarg goes to see in A Serious Man. At that moment when the universe stops making sense you want someone who thinks big thoughts about the nature of things to help you understand. I don't think there was any romantic attraction with Ray Wise's character but there is a spiritual sense of "this is the person I need to be talking to right now."
IGN: Gloria's life has changed so much and she just seems to take it in stride. Perhaps squashing her feelings in the process. But with the murder case, she's defiant. She will argue back and speak up. Or even straight up ignore her boss.
Hawley: I think this case specifically, there's a last straw quality to it. Which is that the world doesn't make sense to her and this man that she wasn't even really related to but who she feels responsible for is dead and none of it makes sense and she's not going to stop until it makes sense. Because nothing in her life is making sense right now and so she's going to force the world to reveal itself to her. On a larger level, I think. It doesn't matter if they fire her along the way. Even Moe Dammik, his obstructionism doesn't make any sense to her either. She had the evidence that she has and the facts that she has and he's telling her that she can't go in that direction for reasons that don't make any sense to her. So she can't listen to them because it'll drive her crazy. So there is almost a metaphysical quality to he pursuit of the answers here.
IGN: Switching gears to Legion now, Season 2 will begin shooting in a few months and I wonder, with a comic book series like this, if you have to think along the lines of "Okay, for Season 2, now we'll bring in these Marvel characters from the comics." Last season had the cool Shadow King reveal and some are even wondering if someone like Mojo could come to the series. Is that an element you're considering?
Hawley: As with Fargo, there's a degree to which I'm using something pre-existing to tell a story that I'm interested in and it becomes less for me about literal elements from the comic coming in and more about the exploration of these characters that now exist on the show. David is obviously a character based on the character of David Haller and then the other characters around him I created to help complete that story. And obviously the Shadow King story. There's a degree that I'm following an idea here that is only just beginning. So I'm not really thinking about branching out over here to get that or over here to get that. It's more about "well, we were dealing with the enemy within and now the enemy's out." So what's the journey here?
Hawley: But I'm also aware that something I loved about the show, and I think other people did as well, was that in the beginning it wasn't exactly clear what everything meant. But by the end it was very clear what everything meant. But that doesn't mean that in Season 2 we're all of a sudden in this world of clarity and we know what everything means. And not just to mess with the audience but in the fundamental nature of "this story is about David's subjective experience of the world and how when things don't make sense to him they don't necessarily make sense to us." But the more he learns, the more we learn. I feel like there's something in the relationship that you have to the show where you have to use your imagination. I'm not giving you all the answers. You and I are having a dialogue about what all this is. I know all the answers but there's something to watching something - and you see it with Twin Peaks coming back. There's so much of it that is not information. It's visual. It's auditory. There's music. There's imagery. Some of it's frightening. Some of it's funny. Some of it's just time spent in a place that's creating an experience you're having that's not linear storytelling. There's a narrative, but it's a state of mind. That's what I'm interested in exploring.
IGN: So then is there a challenge finding a different way to keep David wondering about the state of things in Season 2? Now that he's cleared his body and mind of Shadow King?
Hawley: That's certainly the trick, I think. There's a couple of things that I still feel are important to do, one of which is that it was important to me in the first season that unlike a lot of other filmed superhero stories that this not be a story that can only be resolved by violence. So many of these stories are 'hero, villain, now fight.' Battles leading to bigger battles leading to the final battle. I do think that there's value in this day and age to sending a different message. So ultimately what we thought was our plucky band of rebels vs. Division 3 was really about the enemy within. And maybe if David could figure out what was going on inside of him, maybe he'd fight less. But now that the enemy's out I'm also not interested in 'now it's war.' The only way to survive is to maybe find a way to make peace with our enemies and I think that's interesting for me to explore. I also feel like just it's been revealed that David had an entity within him that was making him quote unquote crazy, it doesn't mean that now that this entity is out of him that he's this normal, sane person. If you live with voices and illusions and non-reality for half your life, you're not not okay and there's still a real story about mental illness to explore here.
Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN and a member of the Television Critics Association (TCA). Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at http://ift.tt/2aJ67FB.
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