So Rarely Seen: The Anonymity of Good and Evil in Fargo Season 3
(Spoilers for Fargo Season 3.)
The one-way mirrors in Emmit Stussy's confession room create an infinite number of Emmit Stussys. We cannot even be certain the foregrounded Emmit is real and not simply another reflection. The viewer may be forgiven, then, if they allow themselves a moment to question if any of the Emmit Stussys are real at all.
Identity is an important motif in Fargo’s Season 3 - and not just in the mistaken case - a motif and tool that Good and Evil interact with in unique ways. For the former, identity is ever-fleeting, and that anonymity becomes a curse that renders it impotent. For the latter, identity is ever-changing, a tool and a mask beneath which it can persecute its will. And the space between the two is the tension in which we will find purpose - and determine whether either force matters at all.
When Nikki Swango's quest for vengeance finally lands her an audience with Season 3's erstwhile villain and master of puppets, V.M. Varga, she has one question for him. "What's your name?"
It's a question to which she receives no answer.
Gloria Burgle, the Eden Valley Police chief, digs at V.M. Varga's identity during an office interrogation. "I didn't get your name," she notes.
Varga does have answer: "True."
He may have done just as well to answer with the name the viewer knows, 'V.M. Varga', for it appears to mean very little itself. The audience is never told what the acronym 'V. M'. stands for, and 'Varga', depending on your source, is either Spanish, Hungarian, or Iberian in origin and means 'shoemaker', 'hillside', or 'one who laments'.
Meemo, one of Varga's more effective goons, is at turns non-descript thug and suited lawyer. Yuri Gurka is track-suited Russian gangster, wolf-head-wearing terror in the wood, and (perhaps) a Russian Cossack reincarnate. Ray Stussy impersonates his own brother on occasion, and, it must be noted, is played by the same actor.
Evil is slippery in Fargo Season 3. Too slippery. It weaves in and out of reality, manifesting only when it is ready to act, in whatever form suits it, before it drifts away again, ephemeral. "I'm so rarely seen," Varga notes at one juncture. "I may not even exist."
Perhaps Varga does not answer Nikki because there is no answer to give. He is nothing and no one, and therein lies his power.
Good, on the other hand has such a tenuous grip on reality that it struggles to find permanence and presence even when it wants to. "I feel invisible," Gloria remarks to her fellow police officer. "Or... not invisible. Unreal." She and her code of ethics exist in a reality separate to everything and everyone else. Her boss routinely ignores her evidence, her questions, her successes - even when Emmit Stussy sits in her interrogation room begging to sign a confession to conspiracy to murder.
Varga takes no interest in recognizing her either. "It's your story, detective," he says to her accusations.
"Chief," she corrects him. "Not detective."
The robot Minsky is likewise unseen and as a result just as ineffective. “I can help!” he insists when confronted by endless tragedies and innumerable victims in need. Yet he never does. Civilizations rise and collapse around him, despite his protests; his own body is mutilated by strangers. He, too, is a non-entity.
Machines fail to acknowledge Gloria’s presence altogether; automatic sliding doors and soap dispensers remain closed at her approach. Even the Internet itself appears to have no awareness of the Eden Valley police chief. This last example proves to be one boon for Good, for it removes one of V.M. Varga’s most powerful tools – the ability to dig up information about his targets, however innocuous, and use that knowledge to gain advantages against his opponents. Against Gloria, however, he is powerless.
Regardless, we never see Gloria save the day. Minsky is eventually saved by an alien race who download his memories, everything he has seen and experienced, for the edification of future beings. This final, passive task complete, he is at last laid to rest - but not before the world he had explored is reduced to rubble.
Is the idea of good a start, though? It's mere existence poses a threat to our villains. Varga notes, with disdain: "The problem is not that there is evil in the world, the problem is that there is good. Because otherwise who would care?"
Consider Minksy. Though he wants to help, he does fulfill his mission in the end. He does not directly effect change, but he does provide information. Is that enough?
It’s hard to say. Despite evil's anonymity, the impact of its actions are very real. People are actually killed; lives are actually ruined. Its non-existence is only a mask to cover its tracks, a metaphor for the refusal of the world to acknowledge its existence, an act of ignorance that grants evil free reign in the world.
Contrast this to good's ephemerality, who, despite deliberate attempts to enact its will on reality, is entirely ineffective. In Fargo, it is not enough for the mere idea of good to exist. The concept of what can and should be done, the fight that should occur, is insufficient to effect change. Something else is needed.
And so the clock ticks down on Gloria's interview with V.M. Varga, and the camera cuts away without an answer. Fargo is not in the mood to answer our questions, only to ask them.
“There’s violence to knowing the world isn’t what you thought,” Gloria tells her son, surveying the wreckage and considering whether she wishes to pass her knowledge on. We fill find later that she is not done fighting, but the question of whether or not her will can be made manifest in our world is left to the viewer to decide over the season’s closing credits.
Our established heroines and heroes cannot do the work for us. It’s a shocking turn for the Fargo series, and a surprising statement to viewers looking for a pleasant promise that good always triumphs over evil. In fact, it rarely does. It rarely even gets noticed at all.