Over the course of its five seasons, FX's Fargo has often sprinkled in some strange or unexplained (we still have no idea what was going on with that UFO in season 2) elements, but the current season fully leaned into creator Noah Hawley's horror influences, with a Halloween setting, music cues from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, and a character who is revealed to be a centuries-old supernatural being!
Introduced in the premiere, Sam Spruell's Ole Munch (pronounced Ola Munk) seems to be the usual stoic, ruthless killer-for-hire we often encounter in the world of Fargo, but an apparent flashback in a later episode seemingly suggests that he's been walking the Earth for a very long time.
In the scene, we see a man that looks a lot like Munch hungrily devouring a plate of gruel at a funeral. This is an ancient custom known as "sin-eating," in which a person is paid to ritually eat a meal that represents the sins of the rich, in order for the dead man to be absolved.
There was speculation that this might simply be an ancestor of Ole's, but this week's season finale made it very clear that the ruthless villain turned ally of Dot (Juno Temple) is, in fact, the same Sin Eater, cursed to live in sin and shame... until he finally allows love and forgiveness into his heart with a bit of Dot's biscuit.
"There's the thing in Wales, the Sin Eater," director Thomas Bezucha explains to Inverse when asked if Munch is supposed to be human, or something else. "I think it was originally meant to be an ancestor of Munch. But part way through the season we decided maybe it is Munch and that he could be 500 years old. And if he's 500 years old, he can't die and he is cursed."
"You see it in the writing and Sam's performance," Bezucha continued. "He speaks about himself in the third person. He doesn't say me or I, he says 'a man.' There’s this dissociative quality to his presence on the Earth. He can disappear. He can appear. I loved him. He's sort of the Anton Chigurh, or who's the guy on the motorcycle in Raising Arizona? He's just this elemental force that's blowing through this landscape."
Certain characters have popped up in multiple seasons of Fargo, so is there a chance we might see Munch again? It's entirely possible, but we still don't know if a sixth season is even in the cards.
"We've had no substantive conversations. I got my fingers crossed," says Bezucha.