'Fargo' Season Three Will Star New Characters

On Monday night Fargo closed out its excellent second season. Creator and writer Noah Hawley proved season one of the show was no fluke. Fargo, in many ways, improved. This time around the crime story was funnier, sadder, and, surprisingly, more sincere and kindhearted. FX has already ordered Fargo season three, which will, despite only taking place a few years after the 2006-set first season, not feature any of the characters from season one.

Read Hawley's comments on season three after the jump.

We already know season three is set in 2010. It was rumored the cast of season one would return to their roles, but while speaking with Vulture, Hawley dismissed that idea, saying it'd be too obvious. But Hawley did talk about some of the themes he hopes to explore in season three:

It's a more contemporary story, and I think that's exciting. Our first year was set in 2006, but we didn't really deal with what it was like to be in that region in a more contemporary world. I like the idea that we're now living in a very selfie-oriented culture where people photograph what they're eating and put it up for other people to see. It feels like a social dynamic that is very antithetical to the Lutheran pragmatism of the region. So many of our crime stories are based on the difficulty that people have expressing themselves and communicating. In a lot of ways, the tragedies that are at the heart of these crimes could all be averted if Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) could have asked his father-in-law for the money or if Lester (Martin Freeman) could have been honest about who he was, or Peggy (Kirsten Dunst) as well. I like the idea of setting up these pragmatic and humble people against the culture of narcissism and [seeing] what that generates for us, story-wise.

The first season slyly set up season two. In one scene, Lou Solverson (Keith Carradine) told his daughter about the last time violence shook their town — the 1979 Sioux Falls massacre. This line led to season two, but there's nothing in the latest chapter of the show that hints at the future of Fargo:

We didn't really tee up the story of season three within the body of season two. That said, it's very exciting to now think once more, what else can you do with Fargo? What other kind of movie can it be? It proved in its first year it could be a similar but different story to the actual film. And in the second year, it proved that it could be a much larger epic that somehow managed to turn 1979 into a crime story. And then in the third year, the question becomes, structurally and stylistically, what's left to say, what do we do that feels similar but is different so we're not repeating ourselves? That said, we're always looking for connections and things that fit into the larger body of work that we're building.

Hawley has already written the script for the premiere of season three, which won't debut until 2017, and soon him and the writing staff will begin plotting out the other episodes. Fingers crossed next season is as delightful as what we got this year.