SPOILERS for Fargo’s Season 2 & last night’s finale

I haven’t written much about my Fargo love because it feels so precious to me. The show is easily one of the best-written shows on television, arguably THE best written show. I binge-watched the first season after it aired, but I’ve been watching Season 2 as it aired, and I honestly have to say… there’s no True Detective-esque sophomore slump. At all. Season 2 is completely on par with the quality of Season 1.

After the bloodbath of last week’s penultimate episode, I was expecting more death and destruction in the wake of Sioux Falls massacre fallout. Every major Gerhardt was dead, and the only “criminals” left standing were Hanzee, the Gerhardts’ adopted Native-American “son” and Mike Milligan and his man. I thought we were about to see one or both of those characters involved in some kind of reckoning. There was no reckoning. Mike Milligan goes to Kansas City corporate and finds out that the crime syndicate really is run like a corporation. For his murderous cowboy shenanigans, Mike Milligan was rewarded… with a small office and some advice to bone up on golf and spreadsheets.

As for Hanzee, easily the most interesting character of the season, he ended up not hunting down Kirsten Dunst’s Peggy. He did shoot Ed – the brilliant Jesse Plemons – but Ed still got to have his moment with Peggy in the walk-in freezer, where he summed up his life philosophy and told her that they never would have worked out, long-term, as a couple. We were led to believe that Hanzee had stalked the couple into the supermarket, but in reality, Patrick Wilson’s Lou Solverson had scared him off. In the end, Hanzee will get a new face and a new identity, courtesy of some unknown criminal-type. Hanzee will live to fight another day. Perhaps he’ll even thrive somewhere else. Incidentally, Zahn McClarnon – the Native American actor playing Hanzee so brilliantly – has a wonderful interview with Vulture here.

In the end, Peggy was hallucinating and she was in profound shock, although even on her worst day, she was still able to get the drop on dozens of cops and professional criminals. Lou brought her in and Peggy’s only wish at this point is to go to federal prison in California so she can “see a pelican.” The way Kiki delivered all of her lines in the back of the cop car… it was perfection. Her whole performance has been amazing. I hope she wins some major awards, because she is very deserving.

As for Lou and his cancer-stricken wife Betsy and the recovering Ted Danson… everything is fine for now. We know Betsy will die within the year and we know Lou will leave the force eventually and raise his daughter Molly by himself. We know this because of Season 1, and we know this because of Betsy’s dream, in which she saw the way her family would move past her death. Props once again to Noah Hawley for connecting the two seasons and bringing back Allison Tolman, Keith Carradine and Colin Hanks for dream-sequence cameos. Props to Noah Hawley for creating a completely amazing Coen-centric world for these magnificent characters. Props to Hawley for everything.

And Fargo is getting a Season 3, and Fox/FX is basically greenlighting whatever Hawley wants to do. Hawley promises that Season 3 will be a modern crime tale, that it will take place in 2015/16, I guess.

Photos courtesy of Twitter and FX/Fargo.