Fargo Season 4 Defended By Creator After Becoming Lowest-Rated In Show’s History

Fargo creator Noah Hawley defends season 4, which is generally viewed as the show’s weakest. After a three-year break, Fargo has returned to FX with a new season that takes place mostly in 2019, and boasts an ensemble that includes Jon Hamm, Juno Temple, and Joe Keery. For season 4, however, the Emmy-winning dark comedy went back to the very early 1950s to unfurl a sprawling saga between two rival crime syndicates. The cast featured Chris Rock, Jessie Buckley, Jason Schwartzman, Ben Whishaw, Jack Huston, Salvatore Esposito, and E’myri Crutchfield.

In a wide-ranging interview with GQ to promote Fargo season 5, Hawley was asked whether he thinks the fourth season is underrated. The creator, writer, and director of the anthology acknowledged that “it’s certainly the biggest story that I’ve told,” mentioning how there were 23 main characters. Still, in the quote below, Hawley talks about why Fargo season 4 missed the mark in some respects:

Look, I love that season. That season, in some ways, is the culmination of my work as a storyteller and a filmmaker, and it’s certainly the biggest story that I’ve told. It has 23 main characters, but I think it’s just as compelling and immersive as any of the smaller seasons.

Yes, I think that in the long run, that season, those 10-11 hours of film will go down as some of my best work. I believe that. Does that mean that in September through January of 2020, 2021, that it’s what America wanted to watch?

The show was supposed to premiere in April of that year, but we got shut down by the pandemic, and it was six months before we could go back. There was a real reckoning with race and class in America, and if it had aired in April, it would’ve come at the beginning of a trend. Because after that, there were many. Lovecraft County. I think Watchmen had come out before that. There were a number of shows and films that addressed the issue, but instead of being at the beginning of that trend, we were at the end of that trend. And so, the appetite for wrestling with that and being entertained by those characters in that question—I think we ran into some fatigue.

How Does Fargo Season 4 Compare To Other Seasons (& Where It Went Wrong)

Fargo season 4 was hardly a misfire with critics. It sits at 84% on Rotten Tomatoes, receiving praise for the performances of the cast and even the specific choice of changing the show’s setting so significantly. However, compared to the strong TV franchise and the seminal 1996 film directed by the Coen brothers, it’s a bit of a fall. For the sake of comparison, all other Fargo seasons, including the current one, comes in at well over 90%.

The strongest Fargo season, in terms of resonance and reception, is the second, which boasts a remarkable 100% score based on 234 reviews and an overall score of 9 out of 10. Set as a prequel to season 1 and focusing on an unwieldy investigation, season 2 features career-best performances from the likes of Kirsten Dunst that saw the live ratings reach a high for the finale. By comparison, as Hawley seems to acknowledge, Fargo season 4 doesn’t quite maintain the same balance. There are a lot of characters, episode runtimes are long, and it might have come out at the wrong time.

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Fargo season 5 makes efforts to adjust. Several episodes are shorter, hovering just above 40 minutes. The narrative is told in a looser way, as well, as a more comedic and thrilling chase between a bigoted sheriff (played by Hamm) and his ex-wife (played by Temple). It’s been called a comeback for the anthology, though even its less beloved episodes are better than most.