This the final episode of the season and this story. The episode get quieter as it progresses and does not build to a climax the way the finale to the first season did. It is a double episode in a way. The first part of the episode deals with the aftermath of the previous episode. The second part wraps things up and hints at connections to the prior season of the show.
Hanzee pursues the Blumquists. Lou pursues all three of them. Hanzee catches up to Ed and Peggy when they flag down a passing car. Hanzee shoots the driver and the shoots Ed. Why he didn't finish off Ed and Peggy, then and there, is a little unclear to me. He seems to be a pretty good shot.
Ed and Peggy continue to run. They make it into a supermarket that is getting ready to close down. The only person in their is someone cleaning up. They convince him to leave and then head to the back of the store. They lock themselves in the meat locker.
Lou follows the trail of blood from the spot where Ed was shot. Lou sees Hanzee and shoots at him but misses. Hanzee drops behind a car. Lou cautiously approaches the car only to discover that Hanzee is gone. Lou hears a sound. He turns around ready to shoot but it is Ben Schmidt.
Peggy starts to hear sounds coming from outside the meat locker. It sounds like someone is trying to break in. Peggy smells smoke and sees it coming in through the ventilation duct. It has to be Hanzee. She turns to Ed for help but he has died. The smoke gets worse. It sounds like Hanzee is trying to break in again. She grabs a sharp tool and unlocks the door. The door opens but instead of Hanzee she finds Lou and Ben. They don't know what happened to Hanzee.
Mike Milligan and the surviving Kitchen brother pull up at the Gehrhardt compound. They walk in and start to case the joint. They run into the housekeeper. She is cooking. Mike decides to let her live. Ricky G arrives back at the compound. He survived the massacre in Sioux Falls, unscathed. He starts to loot the Gehrhardt home when Mike and the Kitchen brother walk in. They exchange a few words before killing Ricky.
Lou drives back to Minnesota with Peggy. He tells her a story about the evacuation of Saigon, a story I had heard before in the documentary Last Days in Vietnam. He tells her the story to illustrate a point: he was wrong about Ed. He misjudged him. Lou stops along the way at the phone booth on the South Dakota-Minnesota border. He calls home and talks to Noreen. He finds out about Betsy collapsing.
The final scene with Hanzee is one where he is getting a new identity. There is the gentle suggestion that Hanzee is going to change his appearance. The implication seems to be that he is going to become Lauren Malvo. (Edit: I didn't make the correct connection here. He becomes Moses Tripoli, the head of the Fargo mob in 2006 who is killed by Lauren Malvo in season 1. The name meant nothing to me. I became aware of my mistake while listening to the the Bald Move Fargo podcast.)
There is one other connection to the previous season of Fargo in this scene. There are two boys playing catch nearby where Hanzee is meeting with his contact. After a while they stop playing ball and start arguing in sign language. Are they supposed to be young Mr. Numbers and Mr. Wrench? Before the scene ends a couple older boys start harassing them, physically, Hanzee pulls out his knife and goes after the older boys.
I thought this scene was a little forced. It felt a little tacked on. It ties this season to the previous one but it didn't feel integral to the season as a whole. It helps to explain what's next for Hanzee, but other than that it is just fan service.
In a similar way there was a scene earlier in the episode when either Betsy or Noreen starts to see the future. She sees Lou getting older and Molly becoming a police officer and eventually marrying Gus Grimly. The actors who played Gus, Molly, and Lou in the first season make a brief appearance. It makes more sense that it would be Betsy having the vision but at first I thought it was Noreen.
Mike returns to Kansas City expecting to be rewarded for killing off the Gehrhardts with another job in the field. Instead he is given a desk job, with corporate. It is probably the only humor in the whole episode. It was bizarre and surreal but the message is clear: the 70s are over.
Simone is (finally) revealed to have been killed by Bear, presumably. All that is shown is her dead body, wearing the same clothes that she was wearing the last time she was shown.
Betsy recovers from her fainting spell and Hank recovers from the gun shot to the gut he received. Everyone seems to live happily ever after. If Hanzee does become Lauren Malvo then I guess he will cross paths with Lou once again.
This episode was anticlimactic and not everything I wanted it to be. It seems to tease more than I wanted it to. I didn't need everything to be wrapped up nice and neat. I was really pumped at the end of the previous episode to see how it all wraps up. This was a definite disappointment. I feel a bit cheated but for the most part I really enjoyed this season of Fargo even if they didn't stick the landing.
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