Fargo Season 5’s Unintentional Stranger Things Homage Featuring Joe Keery Explained By Creator

Creator Noah Hawley explains Fargo season 5, episode 4’s unintentional homage to Stranger Things. Based on the Coen Brothers’ 1996 film of the same name, the anthology series returned to FX on November 24 to tell a new story involving a seemingly ordinary housewife, Dot Lyon (Juno Temple), whose mysterious past resurfaces after a run-in with the authorities. The Fargo season 5 cast includes Joe Keery, best known for his role as Steve Harrington in Stranger Things, as the brash Deputy Gator Tillman.

In an interview with TV Insider, Hawley explained the unintentional Stranger Things homage in Fargo season 5 episode 4, “Insolubilia.” Keery’s Gator uses a nail-spiked-bat to threaten Dot, a weapon that Steve famously uses in Stranger Things. However, Hawley says the homage wasn’t deliberate. Read his full explanation below:

When Wayne comes home, and there’s a sledgehammer over the front door, and the windows have been electrified, and his daughter is hammering nails into a baseball bat, it was a great scene for me… [Wayne’s] like, “Why is there sledgehammer in the vestibule? And why is Scotty making a zombie killer?” But then, of course, I’m stuck with this baseball bat with the nails in it, and once you’ve got that, you kind of have to include it when there’s a siege of the house.

So no, it wasn’t really deliberate, but it doesn’t bother me that there are those associations and that there’s sort of an homage to… We’ll see what Ross and Matt Duffer think about it when they see it in there. But Joe and I didn’t really talk about it if you want to know the truth.., It wasn’t a thing. It was more of a thing to cut his hair than it was about the zombie killer.

Fargo Season 5 References Explained

Fargo season 5, episode 4’s nail-spiked-bat used by Keery’s Gator, albeit intentionally, serves as an homage to his most famous character, Steve Harrington. In Stranger Things, the weapon was originally the Wheelers’ baseball bat which Nancy retrieves from their garage to fight the Demogorgon, and Jonathan Byers later hammers the nails into it. However, after he uses it to help defeat the Demogorgon, the spiked bat became synonymous with Steve Harrington. He later uses the weapon to defend against the Demodogs in the junkyard.

While its homage to Stranger Things wasn’t deliberate, Fargo season 5 has intentionally referenced The Nightmare Before Christmas multiple times. The first episode sees Dot having a vision of three men coming to kidnap her, one of them wearing a Jack Skellington mask, while episode 2 uses Danny Elfman’s “This is Halloween” as a needle-drop. Fargo season 5 episode 3 ends by revealing that Gator is the one wearing the Jack Skellington mask. In a prior interview with TV Insider, Hawley explained the Nightmare Before Christmas references in Fargo season 5: