With the end of a season comes the end of the story, which naturally, leads to the conclusive display of the morals that have been weaved throughout the narrative as a whole, as well as the typing up of any loose ends so that we can re-enter the state of equilibrium we approached the season with.
Whilst the final two episodes of Fargo see this done perfectly, that is, the main narrative is closed: Nadine/Dorothy returns safely to her normal, safe life with her new husband Wayne and daughter Scotty, whilst her abuser Roy Tillman is wounded and sent to prison for his copious amount of crimes, the final minutes of the final episode ‘Bisquik’, highlight Ole Munch’s character development arc and his insane origins, giving us something new to feast on at the end of everything.
So, with everything nicely tied up, and an equilibrium restored, of course, Ole has to march back into the final episode demanding retribution and payment from Dorothy, disrupting everything once more, just as he had at the beginning of the season with Dorothy’s kidnapping. He saved her life back on Roy’s ranch as she hadn’t been given a fair shot to fight, she was a tiger in a cage, as he says, and now she must pay with her life for taking his ear back in the first episode.
Naturally, Dorothy questions him and demands why. Why must she pay? Why does he have to see this equalling of payment? It is at this point that we are finally shown a look inside of the character. We are finally shown his origins through his own words which are no longer coded in tongues and riddles like they had been before now, where you couldn’t be sure if they were mere metaphors or his truth.
Thus far throughout the show he has been portrayed as an enigmatic character who seems to operate by his own strong moral code. Something that remains not completely clear or understandable until those final moments of the series. It is then that he reveals who he is: an immortal sin eater. Due to his penance for consuming the sins of the dead being immortality, his mind can only see the world in simple black and whites, where everything must have an equal and opposite reaction, everything is a transaction.
This revelatory scene got me thinking and recapping the show, asking myself what his character symbolise now we know that he is a sin eater and what significance and reflections his role has within the wider narrative and story world. Before all of that, though, what is a sin eater?
You, like me, probably do not know what a sin eater is. Naturally, I had to do some deeper research into the ritualistic practice to find out what it was and then what its significance in the wider narrative was.
What is a sin eater?
‘Sin eaters’ were commonly found in the seventeenth to around the mid-nineteenth century in Wales, England, Scotland, and Ireland attending funerals where they would consume the sins of the dead (via eating bread that had been placed upon the corpse) so that the dead would be absolved of all of their sins before passing on to the afterlife.
In return, they would be paid a meagre sum of money and feared and ostracised from the community they lived in. This role was usually filled by the poor without any other choice, though it was not seen that way, and thus, people feared those who took upon the role. This was quite a common ritual that occurred and was, in turn, looked down upon by the church, adding to the isolation and hatred toward the sin eater.
Whilst mostly found throughout records stating their popularity in the seventeenth to mid-nineteenth centuries, the role of the sin eater can be traced back to the Bible, suggesting it has an older and more
widespread role throughout humanity.
What does this have to do with the show?
Season five of Fargo’s main characters all have something in common: they’re trying to get justice for one thing or another. Another common theme in Fargo is how characters mirror and are the reflections of one another. Ole falls into this, too. He is a bringer of justice as well as a mirrored image of those other characters who serve justice.
For example, Ole is very much old-timey, for lack of a better descriptor. He is very literally from the olden days and as such, he embodies the mentality of ‘tradition’ since that’s all he knows. His approach, though, is way more severe than anyone else in the show because of his roots in tradition and the ‘old ways’. (The ‘old ways’ being an eye for an eye, justice must be paid, etc.)
The only other character who is as severe as Ole, I’d argue, is Roy Tillman. And the two are both as equally horrific caricatures of justice servers because they are both dedicated to upholding traditional forms of serving justice. I feel Ole is there next to Roy so we can see how the two are extremely similar with their commitment to keeping the tradition alive. The only difference is that Ole learns to change and adapt to the future by accepting Dorothy’s biscuit and proposal for peace whilst Roy refuses the change and stews in his ignorance and hate in prison.
A key moment in the finale which also highlights Ole’s role in the show as a depiction of one of the oldest forms of justice can be seen with his involvement in the final climactic fight on Roy’s ranch. Up until he frees Dorothy from the grave hole and him returning an eyeless Gator to his father, he seems completely out of place and irrelevant.
Until, that is, we realise that all of the key players in this scene are all fighting for what they believe is right, despite all of those truths being different and the ways of serving justice all being wildly different. It brings up the question of who is right and whose way of serving justice is right. So, what is the show trying to say with this? With the inclusion of Ole and his stark difference to the other more modern forces of justice?
It wants the audience to question whether violence can ever be moral since all parties take part in it and find their forms of justice with it, it just depends on what type of violence is looked at as acceptable, even if the decision to see it as such is a difficult one (the modern types of justice, i.e. the police force, Dorothy serving justice by fighting back after having been provoked and having to use violence as the opposing parties cannot be otherwise reasoned with).
Something very interesting to think about, I suppose. Who knows, maybe I’ll dive deeper into the narrative with some media theory in the future.
